Xbox Series X and S: YouTuber Claims SSD Storage on Microsoft Consoles Is Impossible To Repair

A prominent YouTuber has just claimed that Microsoft’s Xbox Series X SSDs are impossible to repair on your own. The Coder is an electronic technician who posts videos on YouTube where he tweaks and repairs a variety of different gaming consoles such as Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and more. He claimed that the Xbox Series consoles are anti-repair in design, as they do not allow users to repair or replace their SSDs on their own.

Xbox Series X SSD anti-repair claims

The Coder tried various different methods in his video to fix a particular Xbox Series X console which had a faulty SSD. He mentioned that the next-gen console has a 1TB Custom NVMe SSD, on which is a hidden partition. That hidden partition is 1GB in size and allegedly contains an encrypted key. He claims that the console’s SSD is linked to the motherboard through that hardware key. The Coder also revealed that the key is unreadable to normal users since it is in the XBFS (Xbox Boot File System) file format. Even if it was readable, the key is encrypted, so users cannot access it anyway. He also mentioned that this design choice is for Xbox Series consoles as the previous console, Xbox One, featured an SSD that allowed users to replace SSDs on their own.

The YouTuber also mentioned that a user’s Xbox can pretty much be rendered useless if the SSD gets corrupted, as the console will not boot up without a functioning SSD. He said that the only solution for this situation is to send the console back to Xbox so that they can repair it, since they have access to the encrypted key. The Coder also tried to clone the original Xbox SSD to a new NVMe SSD, but it did not work as the console refused to boot up with any other SSD installed since the motherboard is paired to the console’s original SSD storage.

He also highlighted a key problem for SSD storage in general, since all SSDs have a limited lifespan which is dependent on their usage. The Xbox series used to have the sleep mode as its default power option. This mode allows the console to remain powered on in a suspended state so that it turns on instantly whenever the user wants to get back to gaming on the console. It was also a power-consuming mode and Xbox announced, in January this year, a new update that put all the Xbox Series consoles on the new energy-saving mode as the default power setting.

The Xbox Series X console in this particular video used to be on the sleep power setting, which meant that even when the user was not necessarily using the console, its SSD was constantly operating along with the rest of the console, which deteriorated the health of the SSD.

Louis Rossmann, a popular YouTuber with over 1.8 million subscribers, backed The Coder’s claims in a video. He did a breakdown of what The Coder highlighted in his original video. Rossmann also laid emphasis on the part that just like hard drive disks, solid-state drivers also have a limited lifespan. He also mentioned in his video that even if a user manages to clone their SSD and the console boots up, it will not be successful in the long run as the encrypted key will allegedly change whenever a new update is rolled out.

We have reached out to Microsoft to get more clarity on the matter, and we will update this story if and when we receive a response from them.