8TB External Media Drive, Xbox One Won't recognise media files past 2TB - Any ideas at all?

RobbyR2020 · Dec 29, 2019

Hey all,

This one has had me tearing my hair out, not least because every new solution takes at least 20 hours to test (and then find out it's failed).

Basically I have several 1TB and 2TB external hard drives that I used on my Xbox 360, and then Xbox One, with no problems at all. It was great to not have to format new drives to FAT32 once I got the Xbox One.

As I have so much media, and swapping them around was a hassle and no doubt also reducing the life of the drives, I decided to get an 8TB drive and consolidate my media collection, so got a 8TB Seagate Drive advertised for use with XBox.

Copied a few files to test it would work - no problems, 8TB drive recognised, chose to use as media device, videos played fine.

So I spent 3 days copying some 7TB worth of files on to the drive.

Plugged it in, Xbox One recognises device, all my folders are there. Except the vast majority of them are empty - no media files. What?

So I plug the 8TB drive back into laptop - all the videos are there and playable. Double check with original drives on XBox One, no problem with any of the files.

Then I notice that the first several hundred media folders all do have files, but everything I copied over after that is empty.

I found a few forums with people having this issue but no real solution. It seems bizarre that I can buy an 8TB disk with a Microsoft disk operating system on it, plug it into a Microsoft Device, and have this level of profound hassle trying to simply get
my video collection to work.

The disk being new was formatted to NTFS, I read someone say they had fixed this issue by reformatting the external drive to exFat - so I tried that, spent 20 hours amassing enough copied videos to see if I could beat the 2TB threshold. I thought it might
work

But sure enough, I can read my first 2TB copied drive contents on the 8TB, but anything I copy over that simply creates an empty folder which shows nothing in Films and TV, VLC, Files and Folders lite - yet the files are clearly there when accessing through
Windows 10. There is clearly something going on with the XBox one when it reaches 2TB of files on the 8TB external hard drive, but nobody appears to have any solution to this whatsoever.

No, I am not using this as a gaming drive, I have no reason to do that, but I spent a lot of money on a drive billed as an Xbox Storage Drive and it simply doesn't do what I would expect it to do - ie allow me to copy my video collection on to one external
drive. At best I have so far bought a very exensive backup disk which I didn't need (all my 1TB and 2TB drives are backed up on to separate 1TB and 2TB drives in case of failure).

Is there something very simply I am missing here? I wouldn't have thought it would be so hard to do something as relatively simple as store media on an external drive to its capacity and have a device as clever as the XBox be able to play the stored videos
instead of saying any folders after 2TB has been added are empty... As files get bigger and bigger (eg 4K video files) this situation is going to become ludicrous as the Xbox one seems unable to work with any external media device larger than 2TB for some
reason... and having a pile of 25 2TB drives and trying to find that one video on them all just doesn't seem practical.

Any ideas or suggestions would be gratefully received! Of course with this problem, any potential solution is going to take at least 20 hours of copying files to pass the 2TB mark and see if it works....

Many thanks

:)

RobbyR2020

Dear
ngocphi

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my questions here.

Except regardless of system you cant use anything but FAT32 for media

Ntfs is only for system files and game files for xbox

Vlc etc wont recognize ntfs unless the system does

BUT anytime you use ntfs or exfat xbox or.sony will require you to format it for game drives

However I'm not sure I understand. I have been using 2TB NTFS formatted drives as media drives on the Xbox One since I got the Xbox One. They are not FAT32 formatted drives, they are NTFS, several of them are Seagate 2TB drives out of the box, native NTFS.
I have never once been told to format them and the Xbox One - whether VLC, Films and TV or any other player, has played them flawlessly for a couple years now!

If you are saying that any drive over 2TB has to be formatted over FAT32 then this is not possible as anything over 2TB won't format to FAT32.

IF it's not a bug, the Xbox should say "this drive is larger than 2TB you cannot use it for media" and force you to format it for gaming, however it doesn't, it recognises it as a media drive and lets you use it, then breaks when you try to copy more than
2TB, that's simply not good design.

My point stands, in the age of 4K media files, this restriction is ridiculous, even more so if it's actually a feature and planned to be that way by Microsoft - why on earth sell a multimedia console then cripple it like this?!

However there is another work around but yiu can only use 3 partitions

Partition the drive unfortunately since you are talking about 8tb you will lose 2tb

Hmm, like I said, I partitioned the drive and tried it, and I had 4 partitions that showed up. I'm wondering if the 4th will disappear when I try it with another drive plugged in? I'll try it but the first 2TB still copying on to it....

I really do appreciate your reply and realise you are not Microsoft support etc, thank you for taking the time to reply

I'm taking it up with Seagate as well. A person shouldn't expect to have to be an IT expert when purchasing a hard drive. If a drive says it is Xbox One compatible etc, a reasonable person wouldn't think "Now, I am buying a 8TB drive for a lot of hard
earned money, but should I first of all do extensive research to find out whether I can in fact only use a quarter of the drive for the purpose stated in the description?" If you bought a car and it said it had a 10 gallon petrol tank and petrol started
spilling out over your shoes when you only filled it to 2.5 gallon, you would rightly have cause for complaint. Nobody would think to start asking around whether the 10 gallon car actually did have a 10 gallon tank because it would be illegal to sell it with
that description... There should be at least a clear disclaimer somewhere that says something like "although this drive is Xbox One compatible and clearly sold as such, PLEASE NOTE IT IS FOR GAMING ONLY AND YOU CAN'T USE IT AS AN 8TB MEDIA DRIVE AS IT WON'T
WORK"

FFS! (For Format's Sake! ha ha)

XBF Brad A

Hello all,

As this is an old thread, I will be locking this one. Updates, games and everything changes often so would be best to create a new thread. Once a new thread is created we will be happy to assist you in any issues or questions you might have.

Thanks,

Brad

Frathos

Interesting issue that you have discovered. I wonder if the same limit applies to my smaller 3TB Seagate (used for extended GameDVR clips) and will content above 2 TB limit be inaccessible on it too?

I don't know if the Dashboard team review issues posted here on the forum or if the Microsoft support agents forward relevant issues for follow-up to the applicable teams.
If you would like to provide additional data to Microsoft Dashboard team directly for troubleshooting etc even if you don't have your console in the Dashboard Preview program, try downloading the Xbox Insider app. Once
app is installed, press and hold the Xbox nexus button on your controller...then select the Report a Problem button. Select Add new problem, then select System and settings as the category, then Storage as the sub-category and enter in your problem title and
description of the issue and your suggested work around.

Good luck!

RAYFEDDY63

Hey just had a similar situation. My hard drive was not recognized for the first time in forever. I just plugged it in to a different usb port and it worked again even though i never touched it to begin with. Dont know if that helps

ngocphi

https://beta.support.xbox.com/help/xbox-360/accessories/using-usb-flash-drive

Is the restrictions on fat32

Two

Xbox cannot recognize exfat as ita not a ms format ita actually unix/linux format

https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/xbox-one-external-hard-drive-format.html

8TB External Media Drive, Xbox One Won't recognise media files past 2TB - Any ideas at all?