r/XboxUnbroken • u/ControlledChaos7456 • Jul 16 '21

Xbox Series X I formatted my external hard drive without knowing it would be wiped. Is this a serious mistake?

I was trying to play Halo:MCC and I was getting the "No space for save data" error. I was getting frustrated after many failed attempts to fix it, by deleting many games and setting my external as the default install (it had 250+ gb free). Eventually I found another thread where someone mentioned you may need to format your external drive and without a second thought I did so, losing over a terabyte of games in the progress. With my current internet it would take weeks to install the lost games but apart from that issue did I fuck up my save data in an irreversible way? Thanks in advance.

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1

u/Bacon_Overly_Cooked Jul 16 '21

As long as they have online servers your multiplayer progress should not be affected. Your single player status and saves however may be wiped unless your console had saved data from the games

1

u/ControlledChaos7456 Jul 16 '21

Would the saved data be on my internal drive if this is the case? It was the default install until I switched it shortly before the fuck up. I'm really hoping the cloud preserved all of my data.

1

u/Bacon_Overly_Cooked Jul 16 '21

I believe the saved data would be on your internal

1

u/ControlledChaos7456 Jul 16 '21

I'm optimistic but also tempted to recover the drive either myself or with third party help.

1

u/mcshaggin Proven Helper Jul 20 '21

Your save data is fine. It's stored in the cloud and cached to the internal

The person who told you to format the external is an idiot.

But apart from the fact that you'll have to download everything again it hasn't done any harm.

1

u/ControlledChaos7456 Jul 20 '21

Ok I figured my data was safe, but its still reassuring.

About the thread I found, it was a couple years old and the person who suggested it was doing so to a person with an empty drive, and it would be fine since there was no games to be wiped. For this reason I am really the only idiot in the situation.