SO I was in the middle of a battle in Smash Bros a week or so ago and the TV screen went black. I waited a bit and tried to hard boot the machine but it wouldn't boot properly. Sometimes it would show screen output but it would never get as far as the Wii U home menu. I tried various things and realized when I unplugged my external HDD it booted up fine which was concerning as I have a lot saved on there. I tried plugging the HDD into my PC and my PC recognizes the drive. I did some research and found out that I needed a Y splitter for my HDD which I went and bought. I connected it and it still doesn't work.
On a whim I plugged the HDD into my PC formatted the remaining space on the drive (NTFS). Now my Wii U boots with the HDD in but it shows no data on it and asks me if I want to format the drive. I am at a loss at this point, I have a ton of save data on there and really don't want to format it unless I have to.
On a random note I also recently got a USB to ethernet adapter, around the same time I got smash. In my initial troubleshooting I disconnected it completely and the console did work with it plugged in and not the HDD.
Thoughts?
It is a Seagate 1TB btw.
Also I have had and been using this same Wii U and HDD since I got it on release day.
(There is an 80+ hour Xenoblade Chronicles save I moved to this HDD from my Wii)