External hard drive recognising but not formatting

AmyGledstone · Mar 4, 2020

I bought an external hard drive for my sons xbox that is 2TB and claims to be USB 3.0. The xbox recognises it but when i hit format to format it for games and apps nothing happens. The HD makes a couple of noises then nothing. From what i have read it
should only take a few seconds to format but i have waited 2 hours and nothing comes up to say its done or that it can't be done and it does not show up under "storage". If it did not meet the specifications required would it say so or is this happening because
it does not meet requirements? I have tried formatting it on the PC to exFAT which it did fine

:)

MindOfTim

I would suggest formatting it on your PC to NTFS as I know for captures it needs it to be in that format

Try power cycling the console after you have clicked to format the drive for games and apps again and try a different USB port incase theres some sort of intermittent connection in the USB port you are using

HG ordaki

As previously stated it's probably going to need to be formatted on a computer also check the cable and make sure that it functions properly

Jayhab4real

Hi, presume this is for an xbox one (rather than a 360), the external drive would need to be formatted to NTFS rather than FAT.

Try reformatting it to NTFS on the PC, that may help with it getting recognised

EvanBruceAlmigh

Hi AmyGledstone

Try Jayhab4real method also you could try format it on apc and then try again on the xbox

SeizeTheFrog

Hey, I suggest you follow the steps on this support page.

https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/games/troubleshooting/console-doesnt-detect-external-storage

In particular formatting the hard drive to the fat32 format Is very important for the xbox to recognise it.

External hard drive recognising but not formatting