Is my external hard drive broken?

[unwashed potato!]

I know this is for a hardware device, but figured it might be software related.

I have a 2tb WD passport which used to work on my xbox one for recording my game footage, that I'd plug directly into the xbox, and then plug directly into my pc to copy the files once full, empty, and back into xbox.

It's now stopped working on both devices. The pc recognises it by making a noise when plugged and unplugged, but it doesn't show anything.

My xbox series x did recognise it and said it needed formatting, but it didn't seem to do anything.

Anything I can try to get it back to life?

 

[montymint]

In windows, plug in the drive and go to Disk Management.

If the drive exists and you can see partitions / unused space, you could try to delete all it's partitions and create a single, clean FAT32 partition.

 

[unwashed potato!]

In windows, plug in the drive and go to Disk Management.

If the drive exists and you can see partitions / unused space, you could try to delete all it's partitions and create a single, clean FAT32 partition.

doesn't show anything for this drive, tried unplugging and plugging in again. makes all the right noises but nothing. shows a light on the drive too.

 

[montymint]

what's in disk manager, just a blank drive with nothing?

Have your tried:
1. Swapping from USB 2 to 3 or vice versa
2. Trying another cable

 

[unwashed potato!]

I will try option 2. Option 1 I have tried.

It doesn't show it at all, just my main hard drive not this external

I should correct its not a passport as I thought but an official xbox external har drive

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

Yeah always try a different cable
And different usb ports/other pc etc
Failing those try to remove the hard drive from the enclosure
And then test it to rule out the enclosure not the drive is faulty
Though Google it first to make sure it's got a standard SATA drive in there
Somewhere like instructables website will probably show
How to dismantle it