My external hard drive disappeared.

Hi, I hope you're doing great out there. I am an Independent advisor and I am here to help you in regard to your concern.

This may mean that the hard drive is corrupted, the possible outcome will be reformatting the drive but in regards to your games that are stored on your hard drive, they're all linked to your Microsoft account so you can install them anywhere and whenever you want.

We can try resetting the console and keeping your games and apps. Don't worry because as long as you're connected to Xbox Live your saved progress, and games, will not be deleted, this will delete locally saved progress, and game clips that are stored locally as well. It will also remove all of your accounts but you can add all of them later on.

Press the Xbox button to open the guide.

Select Profile & system > Settings > System > Console info.

Select Reset console.

Reset and keep my games & apps.

Thank you! I reformatted the hard drive and it seems to of worked! I can install games again.

I didn’t know you could reformat the drive a second time 😆

Sorry for the trouble and I am happy that it's working now.

To clarify, the game install and download didn't finish installing it froze up everything. I had to hold to power button to restart it. Then the external hard drive disappeared and the issues started.

Sorry to hear it. Is your son using an official Xbox hard drive or an external flash drive? If it's a flash drive then perhaps the drive is failing. Be sure to check all storage devices for the game as the only other way a game would disappear after download
would be if it was deleted.