SanDisk expansion cards for Xbox Series X|S now available on Amazon — alternative storage solution to Seagate, WD arrives on the market five years after the launch of the consoles
Xbox gamers now have an alternative to Seagate if they want to increase the capacity of their Series X|S consoles.
An alternative storage solution for the Xbox Series X|S finally arrived on the market five years after its launch. The SanDisk Optimus GX C50 starts at 1TB on Amazon and costs $249.99, while the 2TB version will set you back $486.99. SanDisk initially announced the Optimus SSD lineup in early January 2026, but it only revealed this storage solution for the Xbox Series X|S in August of this year. These drives are also listed at a discount directly on the SanDisk website, with the 512GB available for just $109.99, and the 1TB and 2TB versions priced at $199.99 and $339.99, respectively. However, they’re all listed as unavailable at the time of writing, meaning you’ll have to be patient and click on ‘Notify Me’ to get informed once stock becomes available.
- Get the SanDisk Optimus GX C50 Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S on Amazon.
Seagate was the only brand to offer a storage expansion card for the Xbox Series X|S at launch, with the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S, initially available at a 1TB capacity with an SRP of $199.99. Unfortunately, the AI-driven memory and storage chip shortage has caused NAND prices to balloon, meaning the cheapest brand-new options from third-party sellers on Amazon now start at $318. The brand followed this up with 2TB and 4TB options, with an SRP of $299.99 and $549.99, respectively, but Amazon pricing has brought the former up to $473.99 while the latter remains unavailable.
The Xbox Series X|S launched in 2020, meaning it has been more than six years since these consoles arrived on the market. Despite that, Seagate and SanDisk are your only options if you want to play games directly off the add-on storage slot. Western Digital also used to make these add-on cards for the Xbox, but its decision to focus on HDDs and the spinoff of SanDisk as a separate entity meant that gamers can no longer buy WD storage expansion cards.
These specialized storage expansion cards are only needed if you want to increase the capacity of your console to install more games directly on it. You can still keep your games offloaded on an external hard drive and just plug it into the console when you want to play it again. Crucially, you'll have to move the games from your hard drive back to your Xbox's SSD to ensure the games run properly, which is why these expansion cards are a popular alternative.
This is a different take from Sony’s PS5, which comes with an NVMe slot right on the console. This means that you don’t have to buy proprietary PlayStation SSDs to upgrade the capacity of the console — any PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD would work, making capacity upgrades cheaper. The Nintendo Switch 2 took a similar approach, where it allowed users to upgrade the capacity of their handhelds with a microSD Express slot. It must be noted that microSD Express cards are quite niche, though, and more expensive than ordinary microSD cards, but they could potentially be used on other devices that have a similar slot, making them far more useful compared to the Xbox Series X|S expansion cards, which only work with the particular consoles.
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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
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Dillon5565 Despite SanDisk and WD going back to being mostly separate entities, with SanDisk taking their focus on SSDs and WD putting theirs into HDDs, these new expansion cards are a direct replacement to the WD Black cards. That's why both share the same "C50" model number. We didn't lose or gain any options, one just got a refreshed look to match what's been happening behind the scenes.Reply -
JLE73 they're still stupid expensive for what they are... we're coming to the end of this generation of consoles and they should have dropped in price by now. they also should have gone the same route as sony and just had a slot for a generic ssd instead of trying to sell some proprietary stuff for twice the price. I keep seeing posts saying they're on offer and it's the same high pricing with no reductions whatsoever. It looks like they're trying to sell a few before the next gen comes in... but at the same stupid price.Reply -
Dillon5565 Reply
It doesn't help that the prices of NAND and RAM chips have been going up with the boom in AI data centers. Their consumption of these products has been driving up the prices on SSDs, flash storage and RAMJLE73 said:they're still stupid expensive for what they are... we're coming to the end of this generation of consoles and they should have dropped in price by now. they also should have gone the same route as sony and just had a slot for a generic ssd instead of trying to sell some proprietary stuff for twice the price. I keep seeing posts saying they're on offer and it's the same high pricing with no reductions whatsoever. It looks like they're trying to sell a few before the next gen comes in... but at the same stupid price. -
JLE73 Reply
I accept that... but.... by choosing a stupid xbox only form factor and licensing we're locked into a couple of different suppliers that have licensing and so can effectively price fix the drives. they would never bring down the price of the drives (even with dram shortages) as they would be trying to recoup and licensing costs. hopefully next gen they will do the right thing and just add a user replaceable nvme drive.Dillon5565 said:It doesn't help that the prices of NAND and RAM chips have been going up with the boom in AI data centers. Their consumption of these products has been driving up the prices on SSDs, flash storage and RAM -
Dillon5565 Reply
There's almost no price difference between regular NVMe drives and these expansion cards though, if you're looking at comparable products. Unless you're looking at drives that are significantly slower, or you're looking at some cheapo Chinese drive with extremely limited read/write cycles, these cards are within $10 to $15 of a normal NVMe, and are sometimes even cheaper than their standard 2280 counterparts from the same brandJLE73 said:I accept that... but.... by choosing a stupid xbox only form factor and licensing we're locked into a couple of different suppliers that have licensing and so can effectively price fix the drives. they would never bring down the price of the drives (even with dram shortages) as they would be trying to recoup and licensing costs. hopefully next gen they will do the right thing and just add a user replaceable nvme drive. -
JLE73 they're a similar price now... but that doesn't mean the expansion cards are good value... it just means these cards AND nvme are now both overpriced. that wasn't always the case though. when they released they were double or more of what a standard nvme drive cost for the same thing with a proprietary edge connector. a complete rip off. Pretty much ALL nvme drives are produced in the far East. Chinese made doesn't mean what it used too...Reply -
SledgeMaximus Reply
But this isn't new for Xbox. Microsoft has been doing proprietary expansion cards since the OG Xbox, and the ALL sell at a wicked high price.Dillon5565 said:It doesn't help that the prices of NAND and RAM chips have been going up with the boom in AI data centers. Their consumption of these products has been driving up the prices on SSDs, flash storage and RAM