Xbox Series S only recognizes external HDD as a Media Drive/ No Formatting Option

I'm Samy an independent advisor. Welcome to the Xbox community. How are you?

Press and hold your console's power button until the console turns off, remove everything connected to the console, and after a few minutes connect the HDMI cable, power cord and turn on the console.

After turning on the console, connect the external hard drive and see if that solves the problem.

If the problem persists reset the console to factory defaults, you won't lose anything but you will need to log in with your account again. Email and password are required.

Follow this path and select reset keeping games and app.

In 5 to 10 minutes you will finish reconfiguring your console

To reset the console>

Settings> System> Console Info> Reset Console

***Do not reset your console without having your account email and password.***

That hard drive must be designated as a media drive. Not formatted as Xbox drive. Because Xbox recognizes SSD it immediately recognizes it as a media drive. Here is troubleshot for external
hard drives. Have you tried to start movies from USB drive? Remember, in settings on your Xbox that drive must be designated as a media drive. You can try reformated it again on your PC and then plug it in again on Xbox. One other thing. If your HDD is
recognised as media drive on your Xbox, you can format again on your Xbox and set it as media drive again. System/storage - select your media drive and pres a. Then formate it as media drive again. And finally, the question that supposed to be first. Is your
HDD recognized as a media drive? Is it recognized at all?

Have you tried to change USB ports to plug it in? And last, try a power cycle console described here on the bottom of the page and try plug
back in your HDD.

What makes me think it’s a problem with the HDD is that I just plugged in another external drive that I use on a series s and the series x saw all the games stored on it. I may need to format the other hdd?

Hello Thomas C, I am an independent advisor and I will be happy to help you today. My name is Khaji

Error code 0xc00d11cd (0x8000000e) in the Xbox Series S Media Player app usually indicates a problem with authorization or access to media files.
Make sure you're signed in to your Xbox Series S account before opening the Media Player app. If you are not logged in, it may not allow you to access your media files.

Make sure your Xbox account privacy settings allow access to media files. You can do this by going to the privacy settings in the console and making sure that the option to allow other users to see your media is enabled.

Make sure the media files you want to play are compatible with the Xbox Media Player app. The Xbox Series S supports a variety of file formats, but some specific formats may not be supported. See the Xbox documentation for more information on supported file formats.

Also make sure the media files are located in the correct directory on your external hard drive. Media files must be placed in a folder called "Media Player" at the root of the external hard drive for the Media Player application to recognize them correctly.

Try a different storage device If you're still having problems, try connecting another storage device, such as a USB flash drive, to your Xbox Series S and check if the Media Player app can access the files on that device. This will help determine if the problem is related to the external hard drive or the console settings.

Update the Media Player app Make sure the Media Player app is updated to the latest available version. You can do this by going to the Xbox App Store and checking for updates for the app.

Thank you very much for your patience and understanding! If you need anything else, do not hesitate to contact us again.

upload to onedrive from the xbox and then download from onedrive on pc.

or use an external hdd formatted by the xbox as a media drive then transfer that way.