seagate 2tb external usb 3.0 hdd won't reformat properly

I bought a 2tb external HDD a year ago, works flawlessly, issue is I originally had it formatted straight out of the box for my Xbox One. I consider myself to be rather techy but this one I cant seem to solve. The issue started when I helped a friend that
had a very horrific windows 10 pc install and on his laptop and I did not have a large enough thumb drive handy for the fix, I ended up reformatting the external via my pc to do a full reinstall of windows to his pc with it. Windows 10 totally ruined all system
recovery options by the time he got it to me plus a hidden virus he did not know he had helped it along. Long story short, after I fixed his desktop, I reformatted my external again and now the Xbox one only sees it as a media storage device instead of for
games.Every time I tried the console format, it always either continued seeing It as a media storage or would say it was ready for games then install some games on it, but only the games from the internal were visible and playable....I have since gotten fed
up and bought a 5tb for myself as I out grew the 2tb, but would like to use it on one of the other 2 Xbox ones in the house that belongs to the kids, which it did the same on those 2 consoles as well.

:)

 

Please recommend a good 3.0 USB hard drive

I personally use, and recommend an USB 3.0 Seagate 2TB Expansion HDD for Xbox One, as external drive is powered by mains plug pack.

Laptop External HDDs powered by USB port, are thinner; but, are also slower than Desktop HDDs used in mains powered external drives.

People recommend Western Digital (WD) external HDDs: But, they tend to use Green drives that don't perform well, and tend to fail sooner etc.

 

Hard Drive Error

The HDD should be usb 3 and larger than 250gb, I use a 2TB SEAGATE 3.0 usb, you can use larger than that I think 2tb is enough, hope this helps.

 

If I understand correctly, the new 5TB is working on the Xbox with no problems. Then, it would seems that the Xbox is still seeing something on the 2TB HDD it doesn't like (embedded virus etc.) even after the formatting. This maybe a situation where you
have to completely reinitialize and repartition the HDD. It's something that can be done, but it will take some work and access to a PC to reestablish the integrity of the HDD. In short, most drive manufacturers provide software utilities to wipe, repartition
and test their HDD. Check online at the manufacturer support page. You will most likely have to download an ISO and burn a CD, as this software need to run as a stand alone program. Then boot from the CD and follow the instruction to completely erase and reinitialize
the HDD. However, to my knowledge none of these HDD software utilities support USB. So, you will have to remove the HDD from the external case and install it directly into the PC.

Warning, so that you don't accidentally erase your PC's system HDD make sure it is disconnected before booting from the CD.

Disclaimer: 1) Removing the HDD from its external case and performing these steps will most likely void any warranty 2) Because Microsoft is extremely careful about DRM, these is still a possibility that even after doing all this your 2TB HDD may not work
with your Xbox again. But, if you can do it, it's worth a try. At a minimum, you should still be able to use your 2TB HDD as a backup device for your PC.

Good Luck