Can't downlaod games on external hard drive

Asirex 274 · Jul 7, 2022

Hello everyone,

I've been having issues with the Xbox app since I first bought the subscription. First, I couldn't downlaod Sea of Thieves up (which I already gave up on) due to a lot of different errors that popped. But now I can't download any games on the external hard drive, even though yesterday morning, I could. I've tried to change the location of the downloads in the general settings, but whereas when I change it to the internal drive I can change the folder I want the downloads to go to, I can't do it with the external, and when I try to downlaod any game, the only option I get is to download it in the internal hard drive. How can I solve this?

Thanks in advance (tell me if you don't understand something, English isn't my first lenguage)

:)

Lucas Lauer

If you use the "convert" command I sent you above, you will not lose any data. But sometimes, exFat cannot be converted to NTFS and it will ask you to format the drive. In this case, you either need to backup/paste the drive data on another drive or online cloud storage or you will lose it, my friend. I'm really sorry about this.

Asirex 274

Thank you very much, I've tried it with the pendrive and now it works. Just one last question, is it possible to change from exFat to NTFS without losing the data? Because I have 1.2 TB in the hard drive so I can't paste the data in the internal drive because I don't have much space there, and then once the external is formatted paste it back.

Lucas Lauer

Do you know if your external drive is NTFS? The Xbox app only allow games to be installed on NTFS partitions.

- Go to Start > Computer > Right Click the drive you wish to check > Properties.

- In the Disk Properties window, you will see it next to File system.

If it's FAT32, just convert it to NTFS:

Open a command prompt window by typing Command prompt in the Windows search box. Right click on it and Run as administrator. Type:

convert E: /fs:ntfs

Press Enter to being the process. That's assuming E: is your external drive partition. If its partition is another letter, just replace E with the correct letter.

The file system conversion process should not take very long and the on-screen details are fairly intuitive. Once completed, your FAT32 drive will be converted to NTFS. Close the Command Prompt window and you’re all done.

Also try changing the default location for new apps in Windows to your external drive and then try installing the game again:

Go to Start (Windows Start) -> Settings -> System -> Storage -> Change where new content is saved (under 'More Storage Settings'). Change the setting "New Apps will install to:" to the drive you want to use. Restart your computer after changing this.

Let me know how it goes, please.

Lucas Lauer

You are welcome! And I'm sorry about this, my friend.

If you need anything else, please let me know!

Asirex 274

I tried to convert it and it says that the "convert" command can only be used with fat32 but it's okay, I might buy another hard drive because the one I have now is almost full anyway. But thanks a lot for the kind replies

Can't downlaod games on external hard drive