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Here's An Xbox Series X|S Tip To Potentially Save Yourself Some Storage Space

An Xbox Series X owner took to Reddit to resurface a helpful tip to preserve space on the console's internal SSD and compatible external hard drives.

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If you're running out of room on your Xbox Series X|S--perhaps as you attempt to install the 100 GB+ required for the just-released Microsoft Flight Simulator--there's a useful tip you should be aware of. As shared on Reddit, it's possible that external storage drive users have a game installed more than once, costing you valuable space.

User tamdelay (via GamesRadar) posted on the Xbox Series X subreddit that there's a "small to medium risk" a game may accidentally install on both the console's SSD and an external drive. We've seen this issue pop up in our own testing as well, where games were cloned multiple times over.

There are three probable causes for this duplication. The first is upgrading an Xbox One game to Xbox Series X, while another is restarting a download after it fails and changing the installation's hard drive location. Users could also just forget they have a game and redownload it on a separate drive.

While there isn't a more streamlined way to manage storage, tamdelay shared six steps to double-check if a game has been duplicated. Users should head to the Settings menu on the Xbox Series X, select Devices, then tap Media Remote. There will be an option to choose a custom app for the remote guide button; select this one. From there, scroll through the list of every game on the system. Any title with bracketed numbers have been installed multiple times. Once the duplicates have been identified, go back to the game to enter the Manage screen and simply remove them from a drive.

Tamdelay reportedly saved 200 GB performing these steps. Commenters on tamdelay's post also saw their Xbox Series X storage capacity increase, with some saving anywhere between 60 to about 200 GB in hard drive space.

It's not a new tip, per se. However, it is one of the many to continue using to better manage the Xbox Series S's meager 364GB hard drive or Series X's mere 802 GB internal SSD. We also have a roundup of a few other tricks to preserve storage space across both current-gen Xbox systems.

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