Not being able to play games on external hard drive

First what console are you using

If next gen then only xbox one or older can be played on external

Next gen needs nvme storage cards speeds which is 12 x faster then any hdd you can get

And the way the games are designed is to take advantage of skipping the hdd direct to the cpu.memory and gpu

Hdds can't as you are using 20 year old tech based on the bus system

In order to play backwards compatible games the console will need an official Xbox 360 hard drive. If you have a 3rd party drive or an external hard drive connected you will not be able to play these games.

I know there are a lot of posts but let me re-summarize.

Hard drive was working with everything.

Xbox updated.

External Hard Drive allows Apps to install no issue, but games will not install or be moved to the External Hard Drive.

Games that were on the external drive still work but are no longer able to update and as such error out when attempting to play.

Given hardware did not change and is still in working order as evidenced by being read and installing Apps (small sized files compared to games), the only thing that changed was software (the update).

Some users report certain external hard drive enclosures work still ($7.99 on Amazon) but previous ones stopped. This tells me there is a driver incompatibility or a soft block on certain external device enclosures.

If the game is already downloaded on the external hard drive. You should be able to just plug it in, buy the game and start playing.

Will any external hard drive be able to run x/s optimised games ? HARD DRIVE not expansion card