Hacking Best HDD for Wii Backups

[mrb1946]

I'm looking around to see what the best HDD is for loading wii backups. What HDDs are you guys using? What would you recommend?

What do you guys think about this one? I can get a pretty good deal on it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136405

Thanks

 

[The_Dragons_Mast]

The one you linked is fine & should work well with the wii.

 

[FIX94]

It got the sleep issue, you'll need to fix it if you buy it, see wii tutorial section.

 

[steveroo]

when i was around in wiihacks webpage, the community reccomended the westeren dital passport as you posted. my reccomendation is you buy matching color hard drive to your wii.

 

[mrb1946]

Great. Thanks guys. I'll go with this passport then. And steveroo, I have a black wii so this should look pretty good with it.

 

[Pyrate02]

I am not sure about this passport, but from my experience if it has built in smartware it will not work with the wii. You cannot fully disable it. What will definetly work is the WD Portable Elements SE USB 2.0 drive. I use them and do not have any problems. They work great and do not have any crapware built in. Just make sure you buy only the USB 2.0 version.

 

[jalaneme]

portable drives have no source of power from a mains so it may struggle a bit on games and will load slower, a desktop external hard drive are a much better choice and offer more drive space for your buck compared to portables, it's up to you.

 

[obcd]

The newer western digital passport drives are usb 3.0 compatible.
They have the same name as the older ones but don't work very well with the wii.
Disabling the spindown feature doesn't seem to work, and it's hard to tell if a program for the Western Digital Passport is actually written for your type of harddisk.

Just Google Western Digital Passport + linux to find out how that community feels about those drives.

 

[bm123456]

I have had good luck with the WD Elements 500 to 2TB work Great and no Crap hidden software on them ..my choice but would recommend you wait until the prices come back down after the factories get to running at full capacity again in Thialand

 

[dn_angel000]

I suppose it would all depend on how many games ur gonna put on the HDD and how much u wanna spend on it, I mean I use a WD 250GB My Book (Old Model) and have about 24 games on it that only cost $109.00!! lol

 

[mrb1946]

I am not sure about this passport, but from my experience if it has built in smartware it will not work with the wii. You cannot fully disable it. What will definetly work is the WD Portable Elements SE USB 2.0 drive. I use them and do not have any problems. They work great and do not have any crapware built in. Just make sure you buy only the USB 2.0 version.

I actually already placed my order. And on the sidebar of the link I posted, it says that they fixed an issue to where the smartware can now be disabled. Will this not fix my problem?

 

[Pyrate02]

The smartware cannot be disabled so as not to interefere with the Wii. Yes, you can "disable" it for purposes of using it with a computer, but not with the Wii. At least that has been my experience. I recommend canceling the order and ordering the Portable Elements SE 2.0 instead. That one works without any issues and does not have "smartware."

While some people recommend the regular desktop elements, I prefer the portable elements - no need for power adapter and its a lot smaller. I haven't experienced any power issues with them (and I have used a ton of them) like some people claim can occur.

 

[bm123456]

The smartware cannot be disabled so as not to interefere with the Wii. Yes, you can "disable" it for purposes of using it with a computer, but not with the Wii. At least that has been my experience. I recommend canceling the order and ordering the Portable Elements SE 2.0 instead. That one works without any issues and does not have "smartware."

mrb1946 I bought 2 new 1.5tb WD elements at target last week for 71.97 each in Houston ,, they do not show up on the website for this price , you have to go in to the stores and look ,, usually on the bottom shelf.. (hint)

 

[mrb1946]

Ok. I am unable to cancel my order at this time, but it appears that I'll be able to send it back to them and swap it out for this one. Does it look better? It's a WD Elements HDD.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136388

 

[DeadlyFoez]

I was able to disable smartware on many of WD drives. I've always have recommended only WD drives, and always the portable ones. I only had one drive that gave me a little bit of an issue with disabling the smartware, but I think in the end it was a low level format that removed it completely, otherwise I've never had any issues with WD drive, desktop or portable.

 

[mrb1946]

I was able to disable smartware on many of WD drives. I've always have recommended only WD drives, and always the portable ones. I only had one drive that gave me a little bit of an issue with disabling the smartware, but I think in the end it was a low level format that removed it completely, otherwise I've never had any issues with WD drive, desktop or portable.

Do you have any experience with the one I posted originally?

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Well, I don't take notes of the exact model numbers that I've played with and such, but I'm pretty certain I've come across that one a few times by now... or at the very least one extremely similar. I've probably modded over 100 wii's for people (no exaggeration there) and I always tell them to buy WD drives.

And come to think of it, that one time that I had an issue with removing the preinstalled shitware could have possibly been a seagate drive because it is rare that someone can't find a WD drive at best buy or walmart, but it does happen.

About people telling you to worry about the auto sleep function, that was fixed all the way back at like cIOS v9 or earlier. Spanky Wanky (waninkoko) had put in code that would make the cIOS try to read the drive every couple of seconds to prevent the drives from going to sleep due to inactivity.

Trust me, you'll be fine.

And I personally prefer a portable drive because it is only powered by USB, so that means less wires and less electrical sockets being taken up. And for whoever said that the portables may perform slower... I say so me proof of it, and show me that it is a difference that is big enough to warrant that being a deciding factor. No matter what USB loading is WAY faster than loading from a retail disc, and from just my experience with computers and hard drives I think that the portable drives would be faster, especially since that have a faster spin up time.

No matter what, the hard drives themselves are capable of transfering data at much higher speeds, but the drive's bandwidth becomes limited by the USB interface. Just take a glance at SATA2 speeds verses USB2 speeds. I don't even think that USB2 can fully saturate a SATA1 drives interface.... but that I may be wrong about... but I doubt it. I'd have to look at the specs to know for sure... but it doesn't matter anyways.

 

[tueidj]

Spanky Wanky (waninkoko) had put in code that would make the cIOS try to read the drive every couple of seconds to prevent the drives from going to sleep due to inactivity.

Actually Hermes did it first... wanky just "adopted" it (like pretty much everything else he ever "wrote").

 

[obcd]

Maybe the cios solution fixes the issue during gameplay, but when the wii is sitting in it's system menu, the disk can still spindown, resulting in the need to reboot your wii to get things working again. uneek and uneek2o aren't having such features either,
and homebrew programs normally don't use a cios either.
I explained my experience with the newer western digital passports (usb 3.0 compatible) Soon, this will be the only ones still available.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Spanky Wanky (waninkoko) had put in code that would make the cIOS try to read the drive every couple of seconds to prevent the drives from going to sleep due to inactivity.

Actually Hermes did it first... wanky just "adopted" it (like pretty much everything else he ever "wrote").

LOL. I knew with everything I said that there was something that you could correct me on, but I thought it would have been about the SATA1 verses USB2 speeds.


Yeah wanky was always known for stealing other peoples code and ideas. My favorite moment of his was when he went to do the live video stream interview bullshit thing and he wore a mask to hide his face and accidentally dropped it near the end so everyone got to see his ugly mug.