Xbox One system freezing after using external hard drive.

Guankalo · Dec 15, 2019

Please excuse my awful grammar.

So I’ve been using a seagate 2tb external hard drive since around December of 2017 and around February of 2019 my Xbox would experience errors saying “there’s a problem with my saved games” which I found very odd but wasn’t too concerning as I would
normally clear the cache and restart the console as normal. Then it starts to happen more frequently and on multiple games so I start to get annoyed and went to check online for reasons why and people said it was either an external hard drive or internal.
So I removed my external hard drive and my Xbox worked as normal for a few days until I got the same error but this time after resetting the Xbox I would get stuck in the green startup screen. Forcing me to factory reset my Xbox while keeping my games and
apps. This lasted for at least 4 months with it happening at least twice a week and on top of this my Xbox 80% of the time will fail to update freezing at different points once again requiring reset. Then finally the save game error goes away but the Xbox
system freezing does not, with it occurring every other week to sometimes once a week forcing me to reset the console. My external hdd never coming close to touching my Xbox. Skip ahead to December I decided to plug my external hard drive in because I have
a lot of games on there and don’t feel like waiting for a full download and soon after I do this my Xbox’s system freezes, can’t open the guide nothing loading at all no icons etc and then it just freezes to the point I can’t do anything but reset it. But
this time keep games and apps fails and requires a full factory reset.

What is wrong with my Xbox? Is it my external? The Xbox itself? I purchased the Xbox 2 months after release so It is a base model 500gb console.

Edit: Change of dates

:)

XBF Brad A

Hi Guankalo,

Thanks for coming to the Xbox forums. This could most likely be the external hard drive. We recommend just installing them to the internal drive and see if it continues to do this. Also, try a soft factory reset on the console. An update may be corrupt causing
the issues.

Thanks,

Brad

Guankalo

I haven’t used my external for months until recently and I would still get the errors.

I also have reset my console multiple times requiring me to boot into safe mode and reset with games and apps. This did not fix the issue as my Xbox continued to lock up and freeze with nothing loading until it recognizes 0 Input once again requiring
to boot safe mode and reset. I and almost every update would get stuck around 80% for hours forcing another reset of the console with the cycle repeating.

Only 2 days ago I plugged in my external and today it froze and while trying to reset it I got the error code E102 forcing me to factory reset my console.

DrifterX22

If the console is having issues without the drive attached then it is likely something with the console. you can try submitting for a repair however its obviously out of warranty. have you tried a full offline reset of the console that resets it back
to factory defaults? You may have to download all the games again but that is better than purchasing a new console.

Guankalo

I just now did the factory reset which wipes the console and plugged in my external hard drive again. If i get the freezing error again which i suspect will happen i will try the offline usb reset.

Obsessive Power

Hi,

Not sure what you wanted to do here, could you elaborate?

As for external hard drives, you can't partition them for use as both external storage for games and for use with your Mac or PC. You can use an external hard drive on the Xbox One as a media drive, though.

If you format an external hard drive for Xbox One games storage, the whole drive is formatted and the file system is changed.

Xbox One system freezing after using external hard drive.