WD Elements 3.0 not working on Xbox

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

I have bought my son a WD elements 2TB 3.0 external hard drive so he can save footage from his xbox one to this device.

When he has plugged it in the xbox screen says that xbox is compatible with 3.0 or faster and this device is too slow. But the device is 3.0. I have doubled checked and I wonder if there is something I need to do to format or other before the xbox will save gaming footage to it.

Can anyone advise?

2

I’m a PlayStation 4 owner but i googled how hard drives work with the Xbox One and they are practically the same.

There’s 2 Ways you can use an External Hard drive with the Xbox One/PS4

Option 1. For Media Playback / Storage

ie. transferring files from the internal hard drive to the external hardrive eg. Game footage, Screenshots, Save files etc.

Typically the hard drive should be formatted exFAT (done on your PC) … Both Xbox One and PS4 support exFAT.

The “Speed” of the drive is not important.

Option 2. For Game Installations

If you wish to use it for game installations … both consoles will run a check to see if the hard drive is supported and check if the device is fast enough.

If it is, then both consoles will prompt you to Format the hard drive … this will wipe everything on the drive and the drive can no longer be used on a PC.

Conclusion

If you are only going to be using the drive as Option 1 (Media Playback/Storage) then you can and should be able to ignore the “device is too slow” message. (make sure your drive is formatted exFAT to proceed. NTFS won’t work)

If i plug a brand new hard drive into my PS4 the first time it will ask me if i want to Format It … if i say “No” then the drive is treated as a Media/Storage hard drive by the PS4 … the Xbox One should be no different.

If you want Option 2 then try a different USB cable or buy a Hard drive specifically designed for Xbox One (example below)

https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/portable-drives/wd-my-passport-x-usb-3-0-hdd#WDBCRM0020BBK-NESN

3

Thanks Joey for the help and advice :slight_smile: