Thanks to the enduring memory demands of the AI boom, fast storage in the form of SSDs has become more and more expensive with each passing week. That has made repurposing your existing hardware more important than ever, which is where a recently discovered method for using the Xbox storage expansion card on PC might come in handy.
The small form factor SSDs that Microsoft manufactures with Seagate for the Xbox Series X and S aren’t proprietary, instead using a format that has been used with digital cameras for some time. These cards are called CF Express Memory Cards, and their popularity outside the Xbox ecosystem means there’s a plethora of options for adapters on PC. Not all of them work, but one Reddit user has found at least one that turns the storage card into usable, albeit slightly slow, storage for your PC.
The adaptor in question plugs into one of your PCI-e ports on your motherboard, and gives you a slot that fits the Xbox expansion card. Plug it in, and your PC should immediately register that as a new SSD ready for use. The speeds aren’t fantastic, thanks to the limited bandwidth of the adapter, but it’s still drastically faster than a SATA hard drive and should be perfect for normal gaming use, whether that’s just storage or running games off of it directly.
Of course, this solution only really makes sense if you already own an Xbox expansion card, as prices for new ones have increased recently, too. But it’s a much cheaper way to add at least 1TB of storage to your PC if you do have one, which might help you store a whole library of new games now that Xbox Game Pass has become cheaper.