Serious problems with External Hard Drive

Good morning everyone,

like the title says I have a big problem with an external drive (WD MyBook 3.0 2TB). I want to use this external hard drive to install games because all my game are digital downloaded.

The first time I attached the drive the Xbox didn't recognized it. I rebooted the Xbox and the drive several time and finally Xbox recognized the external drive.

Once the Xbox recognized it, I was not able to install any games. The console didn't ask me if I want to install game on external drive, but she allow me only to use it for multimedia purpose.

I have done a format in FAT32 with a special program, then I connected the drive to the Xbox. This time the console asked me if i want to wipe out all the data to ba able to install games on the drive. Once the drive was ready, I tried to install or move
some games on it but I had no luck, nothing changed.

Now I'm stuck at the point that every PC (or Mac) recognize the drive but the xbox does not. I changed the USB cable (a SuperSpeed USB Type B - USB Type A cable) and nothing changed.

The fact is if I use a standard USB Type B 2.0 cable (the cable of my old Lumia 630), the console quickly detect the drive but also this time (obviously) only for multimedia purpose.

The External Drive has only one partition from what I see from Disk Management on Win 10 and Mac OSX.

I can't understand why my drive doesn't work even if it's supposed to work. At this point someone can suggest that I have to try another external drive but if it doesn't work?

Please don't tell me to hard reset my xbox because it takes me a month to re-install all my games, and I don't understand why I have to spend 5 hours to do something that is supposed to be done in 5 minutes... I need help guys, I seriously need help because
I'm loosing my mind. Sorry for my bad English skills, I hope you can understand what I wrote above.

:)

 

Unplayable

The Xbox hard drive is garbage, load everything on an external hard drive and your problems solved. I had my hard drive 50% full then it wouldn't do anything. Now with every single thing on an external is actually works correctly the way it should work.

 

Western digital external hard drives

Anybody else having problems with their xbox one not recognizing their external WD hard drive?

 

Hey there, gipobbe!

Your English is very clear on what you are running into, no need to be embarrassed!

If you can, we generally suggest trying the hard drive on another console, not just another PC/Mac. This will help determine if the hard drive simply won't read properly on all consoles, or if it's just yours. This will also help determine if your console
needs to be factory reset or not. Doing a factory reset is part of troubleshooting for this particular issue; we do understand this is something that users in some countries cannot do, though, because of bandwidth limitations.

If you haven't already, I also suggest trying another USB port on your console after formatting it to NSTF instead of FAT32.

If none of this works (including a
factory reset of your console if the drive works fine on another console), then we suggest purchasing another brand of external hard drive.

Let me know how it goes! Always happy to see updates from customers on their situation.

--------------------------------------



Xbox Forums Staff



Be sure to check out the Xbox Forum Guidelines for the Do's and Don'ts as well as the Xbox Insider
Program Forums for help with Xbox Insider Program troubleshooting.

 

Hello gipobbe,

No need to worry about your "English skills". Just as I hope you and others will continue to be patient with my typing skills ;-) .

Thanks for your post. It's clear that you have a good technical understand about storage, interfaces and operating systems. So, I want to let you know that I have been following these issues with using external USB 3.0 drives on Xbox One and One S for a
while. I regret to say it seems to be a continuing problem. Though, I have never had these external drive issues with my own Xbox One and One S. I have tried to help others with the standard recommendations; Preform a "How
to restart or power cycle your Xbox One console" . Deleting and "re-add" their account/profile back to their Xbox. Double-check
the steps outlined in "Troubleshoot external storage detection on Xbox One" . And, even removing the Media Player app from the Xbox "unable
to format external drive as games/apps drive" . However, the limited feedback that I have gotten has shown no clear fix for the problems. This is one reason why I wanted to follow up with your post.

First, let me pass on what seems to have worked for me. I have used WD 1TB My Passport USB 3.0 (WDBYNN0010B) drives with both my Xbox One and One S. With maybe some performance issues, all worked fine. I even formatted and reformatted the drives a they had
no problems working with the Xboxes. Next, in an attempt to figure out what's going on here, I repurposed an old 500GB HD and a new aftermarket USB 3.0 enclosure, and using my Windows 10 PC and the Disk Management utility, I deleted and re-created the disk
partition and reformatted (quick NTFS) the drive to build a new external USB drive for my Xbox. This current configuration of the repurposed 500GB HD with new USB 3.0 enclosure was able to be recognized and formatted for games on my Xbox One S, and seems to
be working with no problems. Note, the 500GB HD is a 3.5 inch Hitachi HDS721050CLA362 and the USB 3.0 enclosure is an inexpensive Vantec NexStar TX.

But, if this was me...., and I knew that WD MyBook 3.0 used 3.5 SATA drives, I would remove the drive from the WD enclosure and install it directly into a desk top PC and use Disk Management to deleted and re-created the disk partition and do a full NTFS
format (be warned that will take a very long time). Then, I would re-install the drive back into the WD enclosure and test to see if the Xbox would recognize the drive for game storage. If that didn't work, then I would see if I could get and try a different
USB 3.0 enclosure with the same WD drive on the Xbox. At which point, if the problem continues the remaining options are limited and would seem to be on the Xbox side of things.

What ever decide to do, please let us know what happens.

support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/console/power-cycle-console

support.xbox.com/en-US/my-account/manage-gamertag-and-profile/add-remove-account-xbox-one

support.xbox.com/en-US/games/troubleshooting/console-doesnt-detect-external-storage

forums.xbox.com/en-US/thread/78d975fb-4df0-4d62-a82c-6a90136d02ee

SA