Microsoft has just released in beta the new update of the Xbox One which will introduce support for external USB 3.0 drives, and players were not the opportunity to test the new feature, with very interesting results.

Several players have checked that, using particularly fast disk (though faster than the inner ring of Xbox One, which runs at 5400 RPM), you get actually the improvements in game loading times and levels. On the beta forums, a user claims to have logged on to the console a custom configuration of disks Western Digital Black in a USB 3.0 RAID StarTech , obtaining excellent results: in relation to the internal drive in Forza Motorsport 5 noted an improvement of 4 seconds in the initial loading of the game and even 17 seconds (from 54 to 37) in loading the circuit of Le Mans; in Dead Rising 3 has noticed an improvement of 20 seconds (from 61 to 41) in the first loading the game and 17 seconds in loading the game from the main menu.

Another user writes on NeoGAF have tested a disc Seagate 4 TB with a 16-second improvement in loading a level of Ryse: Son of Rome .

It seems then confirmed that, with the fastest external drives, you can achieve good performance increases in loading games and levels: testing even faster disks, such as SSDS, improvements should be even bigger.