New Xbox One Experience update causing hard drive troubles for some users

By Gabe Carey Published October 22, 2015

don mattrick and xbox one — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Xbox One owners enrolled in the Preview program might want to hold off on updating to the Windows 10-inspired “New Xbox One Experience” dashboard for the time being. That’s because, as a number of Reddit users, including myself, have reported, consoles with NXOE installed are failing to format newly connected hard drives

“I was one of the lucky ones that was able to get 2TB My Passport Ultra external hard drive for $29.99 this past weekend,” one user wrote. “But now, when I am trying to set it up to format it for Games and apps, I come to the part where I can name the hard drive, briefly see the keyboard and current title ‘External’ before it quickly goes away and replaces it with the blue spinning circle. I’ll wait but nothing will ever happen.”

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I had a similar experience this morning after purchasing a Seagate Game Drive and attempting to format it specifically for games and apps. As I noted in my own Reddit post, the Xbox recognized my drive as a media device, but when I’d attempt to format it, a loading screen would appear on infinite loop. I even tried replacing the drive partition and formatting to different file systems, including NTFS, exFAT, and FAT32 to no success.

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When I took the issue to the official Xbox Support Twitter account, the rep suggested power cycling, which of course I’d already tried, again to no success. They then advised that I remove my account from the system and repeat the power cycle process. While this did inspire a number of on-screen messages reminding me that I’d run out of space on my hard drive, it did nothing to resolve the issue.

@thegabecarey Oh no! Lets try power cycling your console with these steps https://t.co/QENEhDs7tB a couple times. Able to format then? ^CH

— Xbox Support (1-5) (@XboxSupport) October 22, 2015

@thegabecarey Alright, lets remove your profile https://t.co/zJxn1F3PZB then power cycling again & sign back in. Any change then? ^CH

— Xbox Support (1-5) (@XboxSupport) October 22, 2015

It seems the only way to format and use an external hard drive on the New Xbox One Experience is by reverting back to the old one. While you can accomplish this using Microsoft’s Offline System Update Diagnostic Tool, it’s recommended that you try other troubleshooting issues first. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any that work.

Has anyone else run into similar issues with the NXOE? What did you do to solve them? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

A freelancer for Digital Trends, Gabe Carey has been covering the intersection of video games and technology since he was 16…

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