Data Backup Digest

The Xbox One launched back in 2013 and continues to go strong. While not the blow away success that the Xbox 360 was for Microsoft prior, the One has seen fair success against competitors Sony and Nintendo.

A couple of months ago, Microsoft launched the Xbox One X. A high-end version of the original console, this piece of kit contains upgraded hardware with the main aim of supporting games being played at 4K resolution. It also provides performance enhancements for existing Xbox One games.

The Xbox One X is compatible with all existing games and peripherals, so while it might bring some new players into the Microsoft console fold, it’s also likely to be purchased by those who already had the original console.

As such, those group will be wanting to know how to transfer their data from their original console to the new Xbox One X. We’ve got you covered.

There’s a couple of ways to transfer your data. The best and easiest way is by using an external hard drive. Your hard drive needs to have more than 256GB of space and be USB 3.0 compatible. It also needs to be formatted, which means wiping everything on it, though the console will prompt you to do that when you first plug it in.

To begin, connect the hard drive and on your Xbox One go to Settings > System > Storage. This will list all of the available drives and will show your internal drive and the external drive you connected moments ago.

Select the internal drive, then select ‘Transfer’. You will be presented with a list of all your games and software. If you want everything, just tick ‘Select all’. Alternatively, you can choose each in turn by working your way down the list.

You’ll probably also want to bring over your system settings, which includes things like themes and settings. This is contained in a different section, found via Settings > System > Backup and Transfer > Back up to device. This will then guide you through the process of backing them up to your external drive.

If you don’t want to use a hard drive for this process, you can use a network transfer. But this requires you to have both systems turned on at once and might be slow, depending on how much content you need to bring over. You could use a wired connection if you want to speed things up a bit. Either way, both systems need to be on the same network to be detected, and Microsoft say that it won’t use your internet bandwidth since it’ll all be done locally. To do this, go to Settings > System > Backup and Transfer > Network transfer.

Now it’s time to focus on the Xbox One X and bringing that data over. Plug your console in along with the external hard drive. Turn it all on and it’ll detect that you’ve done a backup. Selecting ‘Load settings’ to transfer everything over. It’ll also update your system at the same time, if necessary. And you’re done!