Subject : 2TB hard drive for xbox 360

I've updated my Xbox 360 and want to use a 2 Tb external hdd but the system won't format the drive. I've tried formating it on my lap of no problem. I've tried formating it on my Xbox one no problem. I try on my 360 and it says error unable to format. It
is a sea gate expansion 2tb usb3 drive. The same one I use on my Xbox one

please help

jon

gamertag

:)

 

Message received on my Xbox Live Gold announcement screen.

You can now purchase and add an external hard drive up to 2 TB in size to your 360 console.

majornelson.com/.../xbox-360-system-update-now-available-adds-support-for-2tb-hard-drives

 

Hard drive options?

Hi there, from major nelson's blog 'Larger external USB hard drives – Plug in any external USB hard drive up to 2 TB to store your Xbox 360 downloads, profile, saved games, and other data'

majornelson.com/.../xbox-360-system-update-now-available-adds-support-for-2tb-hard-drives

It basically says any hard drive up to 2tb so I'd plug in just about any, just be aware that it will format that drive and you will lose any data on there so make sure you don't want anything on there.

Also it will work the same as the 'internal' storage on the machine, so games, saves, profiles, music etc.

 

Currently there is not a list of specific hard drives that are compatible with the 360, but it seems as though Seagate hard drives are known to have issues.

 

I'm getting the same issue. It will only recognise the hard drive if it's only formatted up to 128GB. If I try to allocate any more storage space on my 2TB hard drive, the 360 states it's unformatted.

 

Solved it. Use a Western Digital 2TB hard drive. The 360 seems to recognise and format this. Looks like I'll have to use the Seagate for backing up the PS4.

 

I bought a Seagate expansion 2tb usb3 drive and I have same issues. It doesn't want to format on the 360. When I format to Fat32 on the PC, it works. When I replug that hard drive on the 360, it shows up in the storage section with the appropriate amount
of free space. However, if I download or transfer any game to it and try to run it, the game refuses to launch. I do think that the 360 does need to format the hard drive in its own special format, perhaps FATX. However, when you format with that type of Seagate
drive, it doesn't work.

 

No the xbox formats it to FAT32 and stores the xbox files in a hidden folder. Means you can also use it on pc and other devices as well.

Its just the certain drives particulary seagate drive are not compatible.

 

Great! I was so happy to know that I can use my Seagate 2tb.... now I can't! Does anyone know anything about formatting partitions into your hard drive? I use my hard drive for other storage so I partitioned one into NTFS for my personal use and one in FAT32
for the xboxv 360, but the xbox doesn't tell me the difference in the partition it will format. Any ideas?

 

I dont know if you can use partitions. The xbox will format the whole drive to fat32 and you can still use the drive with your pc because the xbox files are in a hidden content folder. only problem is fat32 only allows files up to 4GB in size which means
you couldnt put files on it if over that size.

main problem is getting the seagate to work with xbox in the first place

 

I was able to use partitions before the change but my Xbox would only recognize one partition so I formatted the first 32GB partition of my old WD 120GB HDD as FAT32 and used it for my Xbox and formatted the rest as NTFS and just used it to backup whatever.
Haven't tried it since they upped the cap though because there's no reason to since I can now use the whole drive.

Smokey:

It's most likely getting held up on your NTFS partition. I've had no trouble using personally formatted FAT32 devices since the change and actually got it to use NTFS without asking to reformat (DO NOT use NTFS. If your Xbox accepts it then it will be able
to use it for storage but it will render the drive unreadable in Windows. It can be reformatted but anything you had on it will be lost.)

Which partition are you formatting as FAT32? I found in the past that it will only recognize the first partition.

This all sounds more like a problem with Seagate though (just one of many reasons why I only buy Western Digital). It may be something Microsoft is able to work out or it may just be a fundamental problem on Seagate's end. It's probably best to avoid Seagate
for the time being.

 

Well I have at least 500-800GB used in my NTFS partition, and I don't have anything big enough to do some trial and error. Both the NTFS and the FAT32 Are both set as primary. I can set the NTFS as logical but I'm still leery about formatting it without
being able to know exactly which one I am formatting.

I had a 320gb seagate in the past and I made multiple partitions of FAT32 and had a NTFS on it as well and whatever was set to primary was the drive that the xbox read. But I no longer have that drive and the constant having to go and change one from logical
to primary and visa versa was a pain.

 

Using a 2TB Western Digital Passport Ultra with no issues formatting to be used as storage. However, I did notice one caveat about this System update with regard to the newly allowed large USB storage: These devices cannot be formatted as "System Storage"
which means they cannot hold "System Updates", smaller (system cache) title updates, etc. Basically, these larger USB storage devices cannot be used without a 360 Hard Drive, the 4GB Internal Storage, or some other 32GB USB device to act as the "System Storage".
So using a 2TB USB Drive instead of a 360 Hard Drive isn't going to work too well.

I guess they are limited to simply holding the game files and saves, which is great of course, but I was hoping that they would be able to act as "System Storage" as well, similar to the way the 32GB Flash Drives can.

 

@IronmanSS

Yeah I noticed that too. I tried removing my internal drive while troubleshooting a problem and even though I got the option to use my external drive as a system drive, it said I can only use 32GB.

 

Is there 2TB drives for Internal use or can you make your own from a shell and a WD 2TB drive or will these 2TB drives not be useable inside the consoles, 2tb only useable externally?

Thanks for any clarification