Xbox – if i unplug and plug back in an xbox one external hardrive will the game downloads/save data be erased from it

First off, let me share who I am and what Xbox One I own. I live in Luxembourg, a country where Xbox Live has never been supported and most likely never will due to its small population. My Live profile is bound to the UK marketplace after I migrated it after long years of struggling with support from the German marketplace.

I bought a Day One Edition from Amazon.de, so, in essence, I own an imported Xbox One. All services on the one are tied to your profile. So if your profile is tied to the UK marketplace, you will see ads, movie recommendations, application recommendations, etc, for the UK marketplace. If you are tied to the Norwegian marketplace than the worst thing that could happen is that the feed supplying this information is not available. Should you have your profile tied to a different region, like me, than everything is just fine except for the occasional content that is region locked (although no Xbox One content is to date to my knowledge, speaking from experience with the 360) and you may need to go through a VPN to get it.

So all in all, I see no problem with importing an Xbox One. The console should work just fine and if it is officially launched in Norway, I am pretty sure it will just start loading all the content from the Norwegian marketplace if your account is tied to it. The reason why the console was not released was market focus and console saturation, not some technical issues. They simply wanted to flood their major markets with consoles.

I say, go for it. You will anyway have a warranty and right to return the goods if you purchase online, will you not? I am a bit fishy about the Norwegian law. I think that things are looking pretty good and that if you want it, you should get it.

Update Since I have posted this, I have run into some problems. It seems that payment methods are subjected to more scrutiny than before the One was released. Even purchasing on the 360 has become less forgiving. For example, using PayPal to make a purchase on a UK account while residing in Luxembourg has resulted in a payment block after three failed attempts. I had to contact the advocacy team to get it unlocked. Furthermore, they seem not very understanding of the problem and just scold you for trying to make purchases out of region.

However, using a gift card to charge money onto my account seemed to work just fine. It seems like that is the method I will have to use. Unfortunately, this might mean that I can't benefit from several services such as video streaming as they, to my knowledge, require an active payment method on your account.

While writing out a more detailed description of the behavior, I stumbled upon the solution myself.

When you try to install the game over the internet, just let it start, and then cancel it. This will both remove the installation and download from the queue, but apparently also remove the knowledge of the installation from the Xbox One.

So:

1. Start the online install
2. Cancel it
3. Return to the home screen
4. Notice that the disc tile has now changed to "Install disc"
5. Activate the disc tile to start the installation from the disc.

This worked, the game now installs from the disc. Obviously any downloaded DLC's will still need to be downloaded, but for the purpose of this question this is not relevant.

Now, what do you do when you get back home and want to plug in the external drive?

Here's what I did. I first uninstalled the game using the storage management.

This makes my Xbox One forget that I had the game installed. Make sure you don't delete any savegames you have on the console.

Then, you turn off the Xbox One, plug in the external drive, and turn it back on.

Once you do that, the disc tile still says "Install disc". Ignore that. Instead either use your pinned link to the game, the tile for the game (if it shows up on the home screen), or navigate to your games and apps list and activate it. You should get a message saying not to unplug the external drive, and that your game will be ready soon.

A few seconds later you can try again and the game should now start.