Xbox One External Hard Drive Issue *Updated with new issue!

Andybtsn · 13 Oct 2015 at 21:54

Hello,

I made a catastrophic mistake it appears tonight plugging my working external Toshiba 2TB drive into my PC, not knowing you couldn't have two partitions on it for the Xbox to read the data.
So I lost about 8 games I had on there which was bad enough but now i can't get the Xbox to access the drive at all, in particular format it for use.

It recognises it in storage as External but clicking on it I don't get the "format" option like you should, all I get is view contents which of course there is nothing on it.

I've tried formatting NTFS in Windows, deleting all partitions etc etc, everything I found on the net!

Any ideas?

EDIT: Above now resolved but I have a bigger issue, the hard drive is recognised but despite it being the default drive to install games/apps on the Xbox resorts the internal drive. I don't even have an option to Copy or Move the game or app to the External drive. I just get Uninstall. It seems to work on the other Xbox One, it did last night anyway as I copied games over to it so I wouldn't have to redownload them. I just put my Xbox back to factory setting wiping everything and still no joy, this is infuriating!! Is my Xbox broke?

neoglow · 13 Oct 2015 at 22:02

Does the drive need to be in RAW or FAT32 format to be recognised and formatted by the XB1?

Andybtsn · 13 Oct 2015 at 22:04

I tried FAT32 as well, I'm only using the disk management within Windows to do all this.

neoglow · 13 Oct 2015 at 22:25

Google searching says the XB1 does support NTFS for external drives, are you positive there is no hidden partitions on the drive (like some 'backup' drives have, eg the Passport drives). Ensure there is only 1 large unpartitioned space on the drive totaling 2TB or close enough and allocate the space in NTFS format. Then plug it into the console. Maybe try an alternative software to format the drive instead of Windows disk management?

Battery! · 14 Oct 2015 at 16:27

Plug it in to a PC and wipe it using diskpart, it WILL remove anything on it.

Open an admin command prompt
Type "diskpart"
Type "list disk"

This will show any devices currently attached, make a note of the number next to the drive you just plugged in.

Type "select disk number from above"
Type "clean"

This will remove any partitions on the drive, once its done plug it in to the XB1 and it will prompt to format.

Andybtsn · 14 Oct 2015 at 16:51

Thanks for the suggestion, in the end I tried it on our other Xbox One and that duly had the format option so I set it up on there and plugged it back into my Xbox. Weird

neoglow · 14 Oct 2015 at 18:44

Thats really odd, a special XB1 :eek:

Good that you sorted it though.

Andybtsn · 14 Oct 2015 at 19:25

Second issue I don't have the option to move games to my external drive...there's just an uninstall option.

Andybtsn · 14 Oct 2015 at 20:38

See my OP for updated issue, this is driving me mad

neoglow · 14 Oct 2015 at 20:45

So, the ext HDD works as it should on one XB1 but not the other?
System software up to date?

Battery! · 14 Oct 2015 at 20:47

Silly question but have you changed the port it's plugged in to and cable?

macuser · 14 Oct 2015 at 21:29

I had the same problem as the update. Cable change did the job.