The storage capacity of Microsoft’s Xbox One console can be easily upgraded with an external hard drive. However, if you no longer need the extra storage, you can’t just plug that drive into your computer and start using it.
In fact, your PC won’t even recognize that the drive is connected. Lucky for you, this article will walk you through how to format your Xbox One external hard drive so it can be used on a PC.
Why can’t a drive used for Xbox One be used simultaneously? with a PC?
One would think that since Microsoft develops both Windows and Xbox One, it would be able to swap the drive between machines. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Once you have formatted a hard drive as external storage for your Xbox One, it will no longer be recognized by a Windows PC.
Although Xbox One uses the exFAT format, which is also recognized by Windows (and was actually created by Microsoft), connecting it to your Windows PC just doesn’t work out of the box.
All games, whether on disc or downloaded, are written to the Xbox One drive. Because modern games are so large, installing parts or all of the game to the hard drive helps with load times. Since most game data is stored on the hard drive, Microsoft doesn’t want anyone to be able to access that data on a PC. So the reason why Windows doesn’t recognize formatted Xbox One drives boils down to hacking.
What to do before you unplug your external drive from your Xbox One
Unless you plan to sell your Xbox One console, you probably want to save all your game data to your external hard drive. Whether you want to upgrade to a larger external hard drive or simply want to migrate your game data to your Xbox One’s internal hard drive, you should harden your data before disconnecting your external drive from your Xbox One.
To migrate your data, press the Xbox button in the center of the controller. This will open the guide menu. Use the left/right bumper buttons to scroll to “Profile & System”. Next, highlight “Settings” and press the A button. This will take you to the Settings menu. Here, highlight “System” and select the option labeled “Storage.” On the next screen, you’ll see your Xbox One’s internal drive, as well as your external drive. Select your external drive and press the A button. From the pop-up menu that appears, select “Transfer”.
At this point, you can manually select which game data you want to transfer to your Xbox One’s internal drive. However, if you want to transfer everything, choose “Select All”. Finally, choose “Move Selected” to start the transfer process. Depending on how many games are stored on your external drive, this process can take a while.
How to Format Your Xbox One External Hard Drive
With all your game data off the external drive, you will now need to connect it to a Windows PC. You will notice that the external drive does not appear at all within the Windows file explorer. Don’t worry, this is to be expected. Remember that Microsoft deliberately disabled Windows’ ability to communicate with a drive formatted for Xbox One. That said, it’s easy to reformat the drive back to NTFS so Windows can see and use it.
Start Disk Management
To format your Xbox One external hard drive, we’ll do the following: You need to use a utility called Disk Management.
To run it, simply click the Windows button on the taskbar to open the Start menu. Instead of clicking on any of the apps listed, just start typing “disk management”. When you do this, an option called “Create and format hard drive partitions” should be displayed. Go ahead and click that to open the Disk Management window.
Initialize the external hard drive
With Disk Management open, you’ll see two subsections. The top half simply lists all the hard drives connected to your PC. There’s not much you can do here, so turn your attention to the bottom half of the Disk Management windows.
This is also where you’ll see all the hard drives connected to your PC. Find the external hard drive you were using with your Xbox One. It will show up as an unrecognized drive with unallocated space within the Disk Management tool. Right-click on the hard drive name and select “Initialize Disk” from the menu that appears.
Next, a pop-up window will appear asking if you want to use the Master Boot Record (MBR) or the GUID Partition Table (GPT). On Windows 10 and Windows 11, GPT will be the default. Most people will want to stick with GPT, as it has significant advantages.
Create a volume and format the drive
With your external hard drive initialized, you will now need to create a volume that Windows can read. Right-click on the area labeled “Unassigned.” In the menu that appears, select “New Simple Volume”. This will launch the New Simple Volume wizard.
At this point, you can allocate the amount of space you want to allocate to the new partition.If you want to split your hard drive between an Xbox One partition and a Windows partition, enter the volume size (in MB) you want to assign to the Xbox partition, select the “exFAT” file system, and then proceed to format . .
Once this is done, create a simple volume for the remaining “Unallocated” space, choose your volume size, then the format/file system of the partition you want to use for Windows (we recommend NTFS ).
such as assigning a drive letter or formatting it to a non-NTFS file system, you can. Finally, complete the formatting operation by clicking the “Finish” button. You will now have an external hard drive recognized by Windows.
If you think your Xbox One or Xbox Series needs an update, check out our guide on how to factory reset your console.
Image credit: External drive connected to computer by DepositPhotos
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