Chosen Solution

Do the games actually run on the hardware or the HDD? I purchased a formatted 2TB drive from iFixit and am wondering if I can just swap it out and any games I have on an external drive will still run, or is the more I need to do? Update (12/01/2017) I’m pretty sure I’m over thinking this but if I just switched out the HDD in the Xbox with the formatted drive I got would it behave just like an Xbox without any additional formatting? Would I be able to load a new game on it? Thanks

The games should still run as long as the same Xbox account is used. As far as I know, the point of removable storage is so you can bring games with you, so you should be fine. Hope that helped!