My Wii U's external Hard Drive stopped working

Around 10 days ago I bought a 500 GB external hard drive made by Toshiba from Wal-Mart. The device worked fine for around a week, but today when booting up New Super Mario Bros. U it flashes to a screen that says, "There is a problem with the USB storage device" giving me an error code of 160-0105. What the heck does this error code mean? My system recognizes the USB storage device and has my game save on it, but it wouldn't allow me to copy my save data to my internal memory or allow me to use it while playing games. Does this mean I have to reformat my external hard drive again?

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Your youtube link has been blocked from playing in the evil depths of Canada.

Unfortunately I have never encountered that error (as I don't have a Wii U), have you tried contacting Nintendo support?

@Ducksworth said:

Your youtube link has been blocked from playing in the evil depths of Canada.

Unfortunately I have never encountered that error (as I don't have a Wii U), have you tried contacting Nintendo support?

I haven't contacted Nintendo yet, but have tried searching for the error code on their support site. Couldn't find anything in regards to what I was looking for.

Try the other USB ports and blow in it like old school Nintendo requires.

@Seppli: @Ducksworth: Here you go. So everyone can see it.

As for the OP, when you plug it into a PC can you copy things to it and play stuff from it like a video or music? If so then you know there's nothing wrong with the hard drive/cables at least and it is in fact a Wii U problem. Not much help but it at least can narrow down your troubleshooting. Best of luck.

having the same problem

@starman904: From what I've found out it has something to do with a direct power source. The external hard drive won't work unless it has more power either by having it's own power source (plug into outlet), or a USB y-cable like this that plugs into both USB ports.