Copy and Extract content from an Xbox One USB Formatted Drive on a Windows PC

[InsaneNutter]

How to copy files to and from an Xbox One USB Formatted hard drive using a Windows PC​

Background:

USB drives configured for the Xbox One use the same NTFS file system your Windows based PC uses, however you need to change the MBR (Master Boot Record) on the USB drive to enable a Windows PC to read the drive once it has been configured for use in your Xbox One console. Once you have copied files to / from the drive you then need to change the MBR back so the Xbox One can read the drive again.

Thankfully this is easy enough to do with an app called Xbox One External Storage Device Converter, this tutorial will show you how to do this.

To start with we will presume you already have an Xbox One formatted USB drive with some content installed on it you wish to access on your PC.

How to access Xbox One USB drives on the PC:

First download and run Xbox One External Storage Device Converter 1.1
You must run this app with admin rights, this is simply done by right clicking and selecting run as administrator

Now select File > Scan

Take note here, if you have multiple hard drive inside your PC remember which one is in Xbox mode as you will need to change this drive back to Xbox mode.
As you can see in the screenshot below PhysicalDrive3 is in Xbox Mode

Right click on the drive in Xbox Mode and select "Enable PC Mode"

After enabling PC mode select File > Scan and the Xbox One usb formatted drive should now be in PC mode

Safely remove this drive as you would any other USB drive connected to your computer, then disconnect the usb drive from your computer

Now reconnect the USB drive, and go to My Computer / This PC (depending on your version of Windows), you will see Windows has now mounted the hard drive your Xbox One console formatted. The Xbox One formats the drives as NTFS.

You can now copy content to and from the hard drive just as you would any other internal hard drive

More importantly you can extract Xbox One apps and games, like we could do on the Xbox 360.
Below i have copied the Project Spark Beta and my installed Trials Fusion game to the Xbox One formatted USB drive, i can now simply copy these files to my PC.

As you can see i can copy files to and from the usb drive with no problems at all.

Remember before putting the drive back in your Xbox One to run the Xbox One External Device Converter app again and put the drive back in Xbox One mode, if you dont do this the Xbox will want to format the drive again and you will loose any content stored on it.

Thanks to Angerwound for this great little app, hopefully this is the start of Xbox One content sharing

Note: This does not enable piracy on the Xbox One, you can simply share content as you can with the Xbox 360, you still require a licence or disc on the console to play any content with DRM.

 

[angerwound]

Very cool! Thanks for putting together the tutorial. Quick question. The other drive listed there? Is that also an XBOX One external drive? My code should filter out PC drives. Just want to make sure thats working.

 

[InsaneNutter]

Never expected the creator of the app to register here, cheers for the app! I'm very interested in seeing if content such as Demos (which i can only guess have no DRM as per the 360) can be shared with others.

The other drive is an internal drive, i have two so i'm not totally sure which drive it is.

Disk 0 (GPT) is a 1TB drive just used for storing data
Disk 1 (MBR) is a 256gb SSD partitioned for Windows 8 and OSX



Hopefully that's of some help to you, if you need me to provide any more info let me know.

 

[angerwound]

Never expected the creator of the app to register here, cheers for the app! I'm very interested in seeing if content such as Demos (which i can only guess have no DRM as per the 360) can be shared with others.

The other drive is an internal drive, i have two so i'm not totally sure which drive it is.

Disk 0 (GPT) is a 1TB drive just used for storing data
Disk 1 (MBR) is a 256gb SSD partitioned for Windows 8 and OSX

View attachment 13753

Hopefully that's of some help to you, if you need me to provide any more info let me know.

okay then yes this concens me. My filtering out of internal PC drives isn't filtering that drive oddly enough. I will PM you with my contact information so I can get more data from you to fix this.

thanks!

 

[Rick]

Nice program. Too bad that demos and other games(like killer instinct) can't be played without xbox live.

 

[angerwound]

New release available: Version 1.1
Changes

• Ability for creation of new storage devices allowing people without the June System Preview update to make use of external storage!
• Ability for USB 2.0 drives to be used with the console.
• Capability to create multiple partitions on a single drive for use with the XBOX One.

https://mega.co.nz/#!RkI3iZzC!smAnkD7VnZEoHlJcL07UYk46Cn-8qVw1UNGq4avr_Xg

 

[Rick]

I tried using it on a usb 2.0 500gb drive. It created the drive fine. But when i change it to pc mode, the drive has to be created again for xbox one use. It does recognize the extra space though. Im not in the update preview either.

 

[pedrovay2003]

Does anyone know if there's any way to copy your save data and profiles from the Xbox One to a USB drive, the way we could with the 360? I was awaiting the update, but I heard you can't do that, and it really sucks that we now have this awesome program and I still wouldn't be able to back my own progress up if I got an Xbox One.

 

[InsaneNutter]

Unfortunately it appears we cant do that (i was hoping for that too!).

Maybe if you manage to totally fill your internal drive, it will force the content to save on the external drive. I need to purchase a lot more games before i'm anywhere near doing that to test the theory.

Maybe if the internal drive is taken out the console its possible to access the saves from a PC, however i don't really fancy voiding my warranty at this point to find out.

 

[pedrovay2003]

Unfortunately it appears we cant do that (i was hoping for that too!).

Maybe if you manage to totally fill your internal drive, it will force the content to save on the external drive. I need to purchase a lot more games before i'm anywhere near doing that to test the theory.

Maybe if the internal drive is taken out the console its possible to access the saves from a PC, however i don't really fancy voiding my warranty at this point to find out.

I remember watching a video of someone removing their hard drive and plugging it into a PC, when they were showing how to do an internal upgrade on your own (which did void the warranty, yes). It looked like he COULD see everything on the drive on the PC, but when I asked if that was the case, I never got a response back.

If an external drive is just formatted like a regular Windows NTFS drive, I can't imagine the internal one would be any different. I'm really curious now.

 

[InsaneNutter]

The Xbox One basically runs a cut down version of Windows 8, so i would be really amazed if the drive wasn't NTFS formatted. I'm curious too, unfortunately the drive is internal so even if its possible it's not going to appeal to a lot of people due to the effort required to actually get the drive out the Xbox One.

 

[ckfball13]

Maybe you guys can help me. I had my WD my passport 1TB drive formatted by my xbox one. When I unplugged it and attached it to my laptop and tried to use the converter to set the drive to PC mode, my laptop freezes and gives me a blue screen restart. So now my drive is unusable since every time I attach it to my laptop, i get the same blue screen... any idea how to fix this?

 

[Rick]

Maybe you guys can help me. I had my WD my passport 1TB drive formatted by my xbox one. When I unplugged it and attached it to my laptop and tried to use the converter to set the drive to PC mode, my laptop freezes and gives me a blue screen restart. So now my drive is unusable since every time I attach it to my laptop, i get the same blue screen... any idea how to fix this?

Same problem here after changing to pc mode. The drive will read fine on linux but won't work on windows(blue screen) and xbox one(requires re-format).

 

[InsaneNutter]

Do you guys have an antivirus that might be blocking the app from doing what it needs to do?

Just thinking some can be really strict that's all, all I use is Windows Defender on Windows 8 (Security Essentials on Windows 7).

 

[Rick]

After playing around with various scenarios, it works. I'm unsure why it does this, maybe it's the os (windows 7), usb 2.0 on the computer, the enclosure, or the hard drive.

Blue Screen Issue (Doesn't happen to everyone)
-Format drive with xbox one > change to pc mode with xbox one drive program > disconnect drive > anti-virus disabled or even uninstalled > connect drive > results in blue screen

If you receive blue screen after converting to pc mode.

Saving the data. (If you need to.)
-Download a linux live iso like ubuntu or linux mint (burn to disc or transfer to a usb flash drive, hdd) and transfer the data from the pc mode xbox one drive to another hdd.
-If you have a linux distro installed, you can boot into that.

Reformat external drive so you won't receive blue screen on windows.
-Use the same linux distro and find a "disks" or "gparted" programs to reformat the hdd. Make sure to select the external drive.
Edit: you may have to recreate the partition table which will delete all partitions.

Converting to pc mode without blue screen.
1.Format drive with xbox one drive converter v1.1
2.Connect to xbox one fine.
3.Transfer games / apps fine
4.Change to pc mode.
5.Disconnect / reconnect drive.
6.Drive won't show in xbox converter as pc mode.
7.Drive will pop up with a drive letter and all of the contents will be visible.
8.Data can be transfered.
9."create" the drive again using xbox one drive converter v1.1
10.Drive will show up in xbox one without requiring formatting and all apps / games will show on the external drive.

 

[BrandonWalsh]

Hi, My WD MyPassport is not reconized by the tool please help i just bought it.

 

[jeffmyers2]

Even after booting into GParted Live and reformatting the external HDD, I'm still getting the blue screen crash every time I connect my 2TB external drive. This is by far the worst program I've put on my computer in 10 years. Haven't even had a virus do this much damage or require this much repair.

 

[Rick]

Even after booting into GParted Live and reformatting the external HDD, I'm still getting the blue screen crash every time I connect my 2TB external drive. This is by far the worst program I've put on my computer in 10 years. Haven't even had a virus do this much damage or require this much repair.

Try recreating the partition table using gparted. (Make sure to change to the external drive)
1. Choose: Device → Create Partition Table
2. Optionally select a different partition table type from the list
3. Click Apply to create the new partition table. The application writes the new partition table to the disk device. The application refreshes the device partition layout in the gparted window.

Source: GParted -- GParted Manual

 

[DeanCoombes]

The tips

 

[avengingaxis3]

Although I appreciate the help and all the advice posted, Ive been also having trouble and the almighty blue screen, and despite following the instructions I have not been able to avoid it. At this point I would like to ask, shall I plug the drive to the xbox one, will I get the equivalent of a blue screen or will it ask me to reformat to xbox one and that would be the end of it? I could just plug it and see but I thought I could ask first.

Thanks!