External Drive Help

Mental Man487 · Aug 21, 2014

So I plugged in my external HDD to watch some movies on my XBox One, and it asked me to format, I take it all my previous information on there is unrecoverable

:)

bloosuga · Aug 21, 2014

u think they will eventually add 3rd party HDD internal support

Saw some arguing about it, so figured I'd help people understand.

External HDDs that are a 2.5mm drive will not have an external power source.
External HDDs that are a 3.5mm drive will have an external power source. These drives also tend to be bigger.

But to go back on-topic, being able to plug in an external is a much better option than having to replace your hdd and reinstall everything. Would it be nice to have both? Sure, but the box wasn't made that way so it's not going to happen.

Internet Expert · Aug 21, 2014

External Drive Help

There is a chance that the data on the drive has gone corrupt somehow.

Try a power cycle, in case this is strange system behavior that's making the Xbox fail to read the hard drive: Restart or Power Cycle Xbox One Console

If the drive is still detected the same, then you will have to reformat it. I would never worry about the games though, since you could always reinstall them with a disc or redownload. If you're concerned about game saves, they are automatically saved to
the cloud (so as long as you've kept your console connected online).

Bhutankam Pema · Aug 22, 2014

Yes when you Format all your data are lost.. You Need to press Abort, for using the HDD as a Media-drive.

But:

Actually Media Player is only available for PreviewUpdate Members.

iNeedAmmo68

Thanks so much. You have put my mind at ease and give me links to follow. I greatly appreciate your help.

Smoof15

I have the same exact issue, spin up, spin down, non-stop about 5 seconds apart. Only resolution was to turn standby off. I wish this would get resolved as it's been an issue since the July update.

Flamebait

I'm having the same problem, and in searching for the problem found other reports of the same thing. There is no chance it is updates or some legitimate reason for waking. It spins up the drive for maybe 5 seconds, then shuts it off. Five seconds later it
spins it up for another 5 seconds. It does this endlessly as long as the Xbox is in standby. Like the original poster's concern, this really can't be good for the drive, plus it's noisy enough that the only solution is to have the Xbox shutdown fully. That
of course means a slow start-up and no background updates. Each time this problem is reported in the forums I see a few casual responses but nothing pointing to an acknowledgement of what is a bug that has been around since at least July according to older
posts. Have people actually raised support tickets over this, and if so what is the response?

Bhutankam Pema

Yes when you Format all your data are lost.. You Need to press Abort, for using the HDD as a Media-drive.

But:

Actually Media Player is only available for PreviewUpdate Members.

Bazajaytee

This could be updates and cloud sync work happening when you put your console into standby. Do you have auto-update enabled on your console, also games and apps remain active while the console is in standby for quick access when you start the console up?

Does it do it every time? For example. Turn on your console then put it into standby without loading any game or app, does the HDD still spin?

Also, if you play a game, press the Xbox button, then press the Menu button (START) and select QUIT. Do this on any App tile you previously used in that session too. THEN put your console to sleep, does it still spin up when you go into stand by?

How long does it spin up for when it is in standby is it seconds, minutes, hours? HDD's are designed well enough now that it is unlikely to cause any issues with the external HDD by having this happening.

External Drive Help