Does installing Elite on an SSD improve the experience?

JonathanBurnage

JonathanBurnage
As per thread title really. I had sort of assumed that the Xbox One X incorporated the same hybrid drive that the special Elite version of the base console had. However, I read the other day it’s just the same 5400RPM spinner. Which is a bit lame.

Do loading times drop significantly with an SSD? How about opening the system / galaxy maps? I watched a video the other day of the record speed run to Colonia, and was amazed how fast the galaxy map was opening (in fact this is what spurred my interest in the Xbox drive type).
 

Tim Langfeld

Tim Langfeld
JonathanBurnage said:
As per thread title really. I had sort of assumed that the Xbox One X incorporated the same hybrid drive that the special Elite version of the base console had. However, I read the other day it’s just the same 5400RPM spinner. Which is a bit lame.

Do loading times drop significantly with an SSD? How about opening the system / galaxy maps? I watched a video the other day of the record speed run to Colonia, and was amazed how fast the galaxy map was opening (in fact this is what spurred my interest in the Xbox drive type).
Click to expand...
Hi there o7
I used an ssd for my xbox one and this did help speed up some lading screens with various games. Something like fallout 4 seemed to have big improvements in loading times.

Since changing to the xbox one X I don't see much of a difference, if any. Not sure if others echo this experience, I'm not super-technical, so please don't just take my view on it.

Fly safe CMDR o7
 

Northpin

Northpin
cba to rewrite so...

Northpin said:
I play on XBox One S.
I had ED on the internal HDD - it took about 3.5 minutes to load
I got an external USB3.0 SSD and moved the game to SSD - this shaved about a minute from the loading time.
Not spectacular, but still a noticeable improvement
Click to expand...

Besides start-up times, ED does seem to be a little more responsive.
Not much else to be done since i'm not willing to open up the console and try to clone the internal hdd to a ssd.

Next big step will be the next gen XB, one year from now on.
 

JetsonRING

JetsonRING
Like any other program that reads data from a disk, installing Elite Dangerous to an SSD will improve performance, especially in the time it takes to initially load the game and in loading menus in fact, Elite Dangerous was the reason I installed an SSD into my PC. o7
 

XT356

XT356
I got two ssd hooked up externally to my one with elite dangerous on one of them, The impact has been minimal. As Northpin said, it does feel more responsive and the galaxy map doesnt hang up as much or at all at times. But since I am still rocking the og xbox one, there is no reason for me to open it up and replace the spinner in it due to only being a sata 2 interface.

Other games such as fallout 4, battlefield 1, wot and any game with long wait times benefits a LOT.
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
I don't have any spinner drives left on my PC to test...but if memory serves, E-D loaded faster if nothing else after transferring it from my old 2TB hybrid games HDD onto a 2TB NVME. No idea on the gains from installing on SSD via an Xbox.

Anything server related as opposed to local client side, an SSD makes no difference in the slightest.
 

dreampage

dreampage
I have Elite installed on a very fast SSD (Samsung 860 Evo). Loading times are noticeably shorter, especially when you start the game. It loads in a few seconds most of the time. However, in-game performance isn't greatly improved as hyperjumps, dropping from supercruise etc depend more on network access rather than data loading. I think it's the same story with the maps. It's not bad but opening either the system map or the galaxy map is not instantaneous. It still takes 2-3 seconds. I'm playing on an Xbox One X with the SSD connected via USB 3.1. It does improve things but not dramatically I would say. Many other games benefit way more from SSD.
 

Sunyavadin

Sunyavadin
I installed a rack of hybrid drives connected to my XBox One, in order to get a speed boost (Hell, just a jump from 5400RPM to 7200 will help you there), and to up my storage capacity over 8TB, so I'd not need to worry about having to delete games I like to play regularly.
I saw a definite improvement to initial load times, and most transitions in all my games. I remember at the time Recore was the XBox One load times equivalent of the old "can it run Crysis", with some area transitions exceeding a minute and a half for many people on the base 5400 HD. My drives neatly brought that down under 45s on first load, with it getting as low as 25 on subsequent loads thanks to the solid state cache maintaining the data that regularly needed to be loaded for my most recently played few games on each drive.

Once I can get 8TB of SSD storage for under £300, that's when I'll consider switching my XBox storage over.
 

Lazy Murph

Lazy Murph
I finished swapping the internal 5400rpm hdd with an ssd on my One X last night and loaded up the game quickly to see if there was any difference.

The intial load (with the 'elite dangerous' splash screen) seemed to be the same. However, the menu loaded into the hangar in about 2 seconds. So fast that the textures didn't have time to load onto the ship model in time, they loaded in about 2 seconds later.

I loaded my save and the ship on the loading screen didn't even have time to do a full 360 before I was loaded into the game. I then tried system/galaxy map and they both loaded almost instantly and the galaxy map had zero lag when zooming from one side to the other. Didn't have time to play really so I haven't tested dropping out of SC or jumping systems yet. I'll do that tonight and post again with the results.

Xbox One X has internal SATAIII which is faster than USB 3.0 so even if an ssd is hooked up externally it won't be as fast as the internal ssd I've hooked up.
 

Lazy Murph

Lazy Murph
JonathanBurnage said:
How easy is it to replace the internal drive? Are there companies you can pay to do this? I am aware it would void the warranty.
Click to expand...

My warranty has already expired anyway as I have 2 launch Scorpio editions.

For me it was simple but I'm used to building PC's from scratch and I've already taken both scorpios apart once before to change the thermal paste on them.

For cloning the hard drive I followed videos on a youtubers channel called XFiX. He has multiple videos on his channel but the one I used is this one:

Source: https://youtu.be/xBvGFUaOGB4

And this is a video of an X being stripped. Can't remember the exact video I watched, but the X has been designed to be user repairable and is surprisingly easy to take apart and put back together again:

 
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Lazy Murph

Lazy Murph
I've played for a few hours this evening and can report that jumping between systems seems to be more or less the same. The big difference is coming out of supercruise to a station or dropping into a cz etc. On average that is taking between 1-3 seconds.
 
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