Why is my Xbox saving some x/s games to external harddrive when I have the location marked...

This could happen if you haven't got enough storage space. Games always need some more space than shown on the download screen.

Try to download the game while you have disconnected the external HDD. Maybe you'll get a message then.

Btw if you've changed the install location it's always good to restart the console before you start the download.

Thank you for the quick reply. Any plans on when it can be configurable ?

I'm afraid it won't ever be 'configurable'. The real reason why your games can't be downloaded to the external drive is because you can't actually run Series X|S games from an external drive.

External hard drives are far too slow to run Series X|S games. They need to be run either from the internal drive - which is a fast NVME SSD - or the optional memory expansion cards for the Series X|S consoles. Not even SATA based external SSD's are considered fast enough for X|S games.

You can move Series X|S games for archive purposes to copy back to these faster storage locations to play, but you can't run Series X|S games from external storage.

Games that have not been optimised for Series X|S have no such limitations.

Not sure why the 'Independent Advisor' doesn't know this well known fact.

Hello,

All the items stored on the external hard drive will be accessible when you insert the external harddrive in to the Xbox One S.

Also when you have downloaded your profile all the save files and DLC's will be available trough the cloud.

Kind Regards,

XxJoinrProXx NL

I finally figured this out!

Whenever I tried to sign in to X-Box Games Pass for PC, I got a white screen and then back to the main screen. I was never able to sign in.

I have multiple external harddrives connected to my PC. One was corrupt. Once I formatted the corrupt drive, I was suddenly able to login (it actually automatically logged me in). For some reason, X-Box Game Pass for PC must have been getting confused by the external harddrive. It was the harddrive where I used to keep my games.

You're welcome, Mark!

Based on what you've reported, you bought the external hard drive with the intention of saving game saves there, which unfortunately isn't possible. But you can use that drive to install games on, which can be handy in most cases. Regarding the game saves, if you are using the same account on both the Series S and the Series X, you will be sharing the saves across both consoles, meaning that this could create some sort of conflict between both, and cause issues with game progressing. It is recommended that you only keep your account on your main console, avoiding any sort of syncing issue.

I would like to be sure that we have the same understanding of the terminology. I have a friend who says she does what I wish to do, on her X series. I don't want to "save" to the external drive. I want to "copy" the saved game files to the external drive, like you would copy a file(s) from your computer's hard drive to an external one. So that I can replace any saved game files on my X series that are lost or damaged. Using the external drive as 2nd "backup device" per say, along with the Xbox cloud, but independent of it.