Used external hard drive on xbox and now it won't work!

augusta24

Hi everyone,

I've a big problem I'm hoping somebody might be able to help with!

I bought an external harddrive and transferred loads of stuff to it and deleted from my computer (I know big mistake as now I'm really worried that I won't be able to get the stuff back!!).

Anyway all was fine until I wanted to watch a movie and decided to plug it into my xbox because I figured it would be the same as using a USB in it. The xbox didn't seem to recognise the hard drive so I didn't think it did anything to it.

Anyway now the hard drive won't work on my computer, it keeps saying Windows won't recognise the device!

Can anyone offer any advice how to get it back working? And also is there any hope of saving the data on it??

Cheers

chin_grin

When you plugged it in to the xbox did you get a notification to "format this to use with xbox" or a message like that?

augusta24

No no message came up at all, it just seemed to not recognise the hard drive at all. Usually portable device option is highlighted when a USB is plugged in but not this time.

duffman85

What happens when you plug it into the computer? do you get the sound that it's detected(like you do when you plug in a usb drive)?

If you right-click on "My computer"->Manage - have a look at disk management - is the disk showing up there.

Re: data loss - it's more than likely just the usb connection on the drive rather than the disk itself.(fingerscrossed)

augusta24

duffman85 wrote: »

What happens when you plug it into the computer? do you get the sound that it's detected(like you do when you plug in a usb drive)?

If you right-click on "My computer"->Manage - have a look at disk management - is the disk showing up there.

Re: data loss - it's more than likely just the usb connection on the drive rather than the disk itself.(fingerscrossed)

Thanks so much for the help! There was a little sound when plugged in but it doesnt seem to be showing up in disk management!

Damian Duffy

Your hard drive is more than likely formatted as NTFS which is the standard. To use a hard drive (note, not a USB stick) on a PS3 or XBOX360, the hard drive needs to be formatted as FAT32. Typically what I do is divide the hard drive into different partitions to allow me to use it on different systems. PS3, windows, Mac etc.

When you plugged it in to your xbox, it could not be read and so didn't show up. Something happened to the hard drive while it was connected, probably nothing serious but enough for your PC to not recognise it anymore.

I would try finding the hard drive under disk management on your PC and see if you can get it responding. I don't think you have lost any data yet but if you have to reformat it to get it working again then I'm afraid you will.

augusta24

Damian Duffy wrote: »

Your hard drive is more than likely formatted as NTFS which is the standard. To use a hard drive (note, not a USB stick) on a PS3 or XBOX360, the hard drive needs to be formatted as FAT32. Typically what I do is divide the hard drive into different partitions to allow me to use it on different systems. PS3, windows, Mac etc.

When you plugged it in to your xbox, it could not be read and so didn't show up. Something happened to the hard drive while it was connected, probably nothing serious but enough for your PC to not recognise it anymore.

I would try finding the hard drive under disk management on your PC and see if you can get it responding. I don't think you have lost any data yet but if you have to reformat it to get it working again then I'm afraid you will.

Thanks so much for your reply. The hard drive was originally formatted on a mac so that it could be used on both a mac and pc. I don't have the mac here to try it on yet do I'm half hoping it will work on the mac!
But until then in trying my best to get it working on the pc.

It's not showing up in disk management (have tried 2 laptops)! Any ideas about how to get around this?

yoyo

augusta24 wrote: »

Thanks so much for your reply. The hard drive was originally formatted on a mac so that it could be used on both a mac and pc. I don't have the mac here to try it on yet do I'm half hoping it will work on the mac!
But until then in trying my best to get it working on the pc.

It's not showing up in disk management (have tried 2 laptops)! Any ideas about how to get around this?

It's likely using FAT32 then which the Xbox should read. Sounds to me like the hard disk enclosure got damaged somehow, try the drive in another machine and see if it works, if not and data is important crack the casing and mount the drive in a pc to see if its picked up then

Nick

mull13

hi can i ask did you sort out this problem you had with your hdrive i have just done the samething . my harddrive not recognised on my netbook can you let me know if you sorted it out please

augusta24

mull13 wrote: »

hi can i ask did you sort out this problem you had with your hdrive i have just done the samething . my harddrive not recognised on my netbook can you let me know if you sorted it out please

Unfortunately I wasn't able to sort it but it was still under warranty so I just brought it back.