External hard drive is recognized but won't let me play any games

GoJordanYT · Aug 2, 2021

My Xbox won't play games that are saved to a USB external hard drive. It recognizes it and games and apps show up in my games and apps page. but it won't let me play any of these games. it says "the game needs to finish installing or show ready to start before you can launch it". but weirdest of all. there's one specific game I tried deleting that I didn't play anymore that I thought was updating. But every time I turn on the Xbox. It reappears and tries to update or download or whatever it's trying to do.

:)

SammyVS

Thanks for contacting us my name is Samy, I am an Independent Advisor and I will be helping you today.

How are you, mate?

Clear your console's cache, remove the external hard drive and after the console restarts connect the external hard drive and try again.

Turn off the Xbox console by pressing the Xbox button on the front of the console until it shuts down completely.

Unplug the console's power cable, wait 10 seconds. Be sure to wait 10 seconds, this step resets the power supply.  Plug the console power cable back in, turn on your Xbox.

If the problem persists try step 2>

Reset the console to factory defaults, you won't lose anything but you will need to log in with your account again. Email and password are required. Do not reset the console without knowing your login information (email and password)

Follow this path and select reset keeping games and app.

In 5 to 10 minutes you will finish reconfiguring your console

To reset the console>

Settings> System> Console Info> Reset Console

ShoweryAirplane

the xbox one won't let me transfer games to external hard drive?

andersonpassos

Game Pass games use protected folders, and if format Windows, it no longer recognizes any game even if it is on another external hard drive or hard drive. If you install it on a Windows or PC you don't recognize any of the games.

RogMiCa

My external hard drive has been having issues since the new dashboard update. Now I have to turn on the Xbox two to three times to get it to recognize it. Also, yesterday, it wouldn't let me download a game to the external hard drive. I was able to download
it to the internal hard drive but only when the external wasn't recognized. For some strange reason, now when the external hard drive is working, I can't reset the console, I have to turn it completely off. Pressing the reboot option causes the Xbox to sit
with a black screen and never reboots.

bunger43

So I purchased a 1 TB Toshiba drive. System formatted it and recognized it just fine. I went to re-download the F1 game today, but it will only let me download it to the internal hard drive. So when downloading free/purchased games, do you first have
to download them to the internal drive (or a 32 GB flash drive) and then move it to the external hard drive? And then once you've done that, can you play the games directly off the external hard drive?

External hard drive is recognized but won't let me play any games