Why doesn't Xbox let me use my external hard drive?

Thank you so much! This fixed the issue and now I'm just waiting for games to download, thanks for all the help!

Hello, I'm Felipe and I'm an independent Community Advisor, and I'll do my best to help you.

It seems like the issue is related to the sector size of your external hard drive. The Xbox requires that the external hard drive be formatted as NTFS with a maximum sector size of 4k.

Here are some steps you can take to resolve the issue:

Check the sector size: You can check the sector size of your external hard drive by right-clicking on the drive in File Explorer, selecting "Properties", and then clicking on the "Hardware" tab. Select the external hard drive and click the "Properties" button. Under the "Volumes" tab, you should see the "Bytes per sector" value. If it's not set to 4096, that may be causing the issue.

Reformat the drive: If the sector size is not set to 4096, you will need to reformat the drive to NTFS with a maximum sector size of 4k. This will erase all data on the drive, so make sure to back up any important files before proceeding.

To format the drive as NTFS with a 4k sector size, right-click on the external hard drive in File Explorer, select "Format", and then select "NTFS" as the file system. Click on the "Allocation unit size" dropdown and select "4096 bytes (Default)". Then, click "Start" to begin the formatting process.

Use a different hard drive: If you are unable to reformat the drive or if the drive still doesn't work after formatting, you may need to use a different external hard drive that meets the Xbox's requirements.

I hope this helps you resolve the issue and get your external hard drive working with your Xbox!

So I double checked the format and it is NTFS. And yes it is a seagate 2tb external xbox one hard drive, 3.0usb. So I am not sure why it will not let me use it for games. When the hard drive is a game drive.

I moved my games from the internal hard drive to the external hard drive to see if my games won't kick me to the dashboard I tried it yesterday with a external hard drive I had never used for my Xbox. My games were never on the external hard drive they
were in the internal hard drive. Also I downloaded trove and it kicks me to the dashboard as well.

The Xbox One comes with a 500 gig hard drive. And it's not interchangeable. And it doesn't support external hard drives. So why are you excited to have a 500 gig laptop hard drive you cannot use with the Xbox One? I am personally staying with disc based
games at least for a while.