What is the actual biggest HDD you can actually fill on a Wii U?

Franciscop98 · Mar 20, 2023

I know the question might seem dumb and really off-topic. However, my question comes from 3 pieces of info on the Wii U. First, a Wii U recognizes up to 2TB of extra data via an HDD. You can use an HDD that has more space, but it will only recognize the first 2TB. Secondly, the entire Wii U catalogue is less than 1.5TB in total (Around 1.2TB - 1.3TB from what I could find on the internet). And third, and perhaps most importantly, the Wii U has a 300 title limit that, at least last I was active on the forum, couldn't be circumvented. That means you literally can't use even a good portion of that 1.3TB of data on a Wii U, let alone 2TB.

My question is, what is the most amount of Data you could realistically fill on an external HDD on a Wii U system? In the future, I might want to have the entire library of Wii U Games on a dedicated HDD, but for actually using it, even if it's a hassle, I prefer to just install/uninstall games as I play them off a single sepparate, dedicated HDD, instead of having like 10 of them with 300 titles each.

(Since last paragraph is a bit confusing, I would have a 1.5TB HDD with all the games in an installable format, and a dedicated Wii U formated HDD to actually play the games, if that makes sense)

godreborn · Mar 20, 2023

you seem to know already. 2TB is the limit for the wiiu hdd. you can use a vwii with up to at least 8TBs, which should be enough for every wii and gamecube game combined if that's your intention.

Franciscop98 · Mar 20, 2023

godreborn said:
you seem to know already. 2TB is the limit for the wiiu hdd. you can use a vwii with up to at least 8TBs, which should be enough for every wii and gamecube game combined if that's your intention.

Thanks for the answer, but I'm not asking about the limit set by Nintendo of 2TB. If I were to load up the 300 most data-heavy titles, with all of its DLC or whatever, what is the maximum amount of data I could have on a single HDD on my Wii U? Disposable income is not as easy to come by for me (I'm not from the US, but a Third World Countr), and buying just a single 1.5TB HDD is kind of a big investment. I want to save on the usage HDD. So let's say you could realistically only use 500GB maximum on an HDD before running into the 300 titles limit, the I would just buy a 512GB HDD for use on the Wii U itself.

It's also just a fun thing to think about. On any given Wii U system, what would be the biggest HDD you could use before you're left with redundant/unusable space? Jirard, for example, could only use 130GB of space before going to a second HDD, but I'm sure he did not optimize the usage of data to get all of the biggest games on a single Wii U.

godreborn · Mar 20, 2023

I couldn't tell you. it would be over a TB, that's for sure. 1.5TBs, maybe, but it's hard to say in this context. the largest wiiu game iirc is 27GBs.

Franciscop98 · Mar 20, 2023

godreborn said:
I couldn't tell you. it would be over a TB, that's for sure. 1.5TBs, maybe, but it's hard to say in this context. the largest wiiu game iirc is 27GBs.

It couldn't possibly be 1.5TB because, and this is important, there isn't 1,5TB worth of Wii U games and DLC. Like I stated above, the total amount of data of the entire Wii U library has been calculated in a couple of places to be around 1.2TB to 1.3TB. I don't know if anyone has the answer, but I would guess it's more on the realm of 400 - 600GB on a single Wii U with 300 titles, but I could be way off.

Hayato213 · Mar 20, 2023

Franciscop98 said:
Thanks for the answer, but I'm not asking about the limit set by Nintendo of 2TB. If I were to load up the 300 most data-heavy titles, with all of its DLC or whatever, what is the maximum amount of data I could have on a single HDD on my Wii U? Disposable income is not as easy to come by for me (I'm not from the US, but a Third World Countr), and buying just a single 1.5TB HDD is kind of a big investment. I want to save on the usage HDD. So let's say you could realistically only use 500GB maximum on an HDD before running into the 300 titles limit, the I would just buy a 512GB HDD for use on the Wii U itself.

It's also just a fun thing to think about. On any given Wii U system, what would be the biggest HDD you could use before you're left with redundant/unusable space? Jirard, for example, could only use 130GB of space before going to a second HDD, but I'm sure he did not optimize the usage of data to get all of the biggest games on a single Wii U.

I believe the wii u library is 1.38TB.

godreborn · Mar 20, 2023

believe me, it's not 1.2 or 1.3TBs. I have over 1TBs with less than 300 games. and, only two of those are virtual console injects. whatever told you it was that small is not true.

Franciscop98 · Mar 20, 2023

godreborn said:
believe me, it's not 1.2 or 1.3TBs. I have over 1TBs with less than 300 games. and, only two of those are virtual console injects. whatever told you it was that small is not true.

No offense, but I rather believe multiple sources that also give a rundown of the data used (as in, X in physical games, X in digital, etc) than a single anecdotal account. I highly doubt you have 1TB of data used exclusively on Wii U games and updates/DLC's.

godreborn · Mar 20, 2023

well, then fuck you too. I'll just put you on my ignore list and forget about you. you have no idea what you're even talking about.

Sphaa · Mar 20, 2023

I doubt anyone know the answer to your question. To know that you need a complete list of all games,DLC and updates. Then you need to group every game with it's DLC and update, and then sort it by size.
But honestly, do you really need to always have 300 titles installed? If you buy a 500Gb HDD you will at least get 100-200 games into it and that should keep out busy for a while.
Having 300 titles installed just makes it difficult to find one speciffic game. I've had MAME with 4-500 games and I found it to be too much to go through looking for a spesiffic title

Hayato213 · Mar 20, 2023

Franciscop98 said:
No offense, but I rather believe multiple sources that also give a rundown of the data used (as in, X in physical games, X in digital, etc) than a single anecdotal account. I highly doubt you have 1TB of data used exclusively on Wii U games and updates/DLC's.

You can check out this, but I do think it is around 1.38TB. But you don't have to be rude here, be an asshole get treated like an asshole.

Ettino · Mar 20, 2023

Franciscop98 said:
I highly doubt you have 1TB of data used exclusively on Wii U games and updates/DLC's.

What to highly doubt about? My 1tb HDD is filled to the brim with just Wii U stuff. My SSD is also have some other WII U, GC, Wii and whatever else. And yeah, I'm still way under 300 limit.

Sphaa · Mar 20, 2023

According to this project the total size for WiiU is 1.2Tb, not sure if it include all update. He said it in the beginning of the video (10-20 sec in)
https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-dif...owcased-in-latest-completionist-video.628855/

godreborn · Mar 20, 2023

fuck you!

Franciscop98 · Mar 20, 2023

Hayato213 said:
You can check out this, but I do think it is around 1.38TB. But you don't have to be rude here, be an asshole get treated like an asshole.

I absolutely wasn't trying to be rude. I thought I wasn't? But my apologies then, if it came accross that way.

Sphaa said:
I doubt anyone know the answer to your question. To know that you need a complete list of all games,DLC and updates. Then you need to group every game with it's DLC and update, and then sort it by size.
But honestly, do you really need to always have 300 titles installed? If you buy a 500Gb HDD you will at least get 100-200 games into it and that should keep out busy for a while.
Having 300 titles installed just makes it difficult to find one speciffic game. I've had MAME with 4-500 games and I found it to be too much to go through looking for a spesiffic title

I mean... Yeah, you're absolutely right. That's the best answer, I guess, thank you!

Ettino said:
What to highly doubt about? My 1tb HDD is filled to the brim with just Wii U stuff. My SSD is also have some other WII U, GC, Wii and whatever else. And yeah, I'm still way under 300 limit.

I mean, I wouldn't think the Wii U library was so lopsided in terms of data usage. roughly 20%-30% of the library constitutes 90% of the total data used? I wouldn't have thought about it that way. My first guess would be that it'd be more spread out, like a normalized curve. But I guess I'm wrong, so thank you for the reply.

godreborn said:
well, then fuck you too. I'll just put you on my ignore list and forget about you. you have no idea what you're even talking about.

Hey, like I said above, it wasn't my intention to be rude, seriously. I felt you were dimissing my question altogether. I'm sorry. Hope you don't get a bad impression just from that bad message, I appreciate you taking the time to reply to my post.

V10lator · Mar 20, 2023

Sphaa said:
do you really need to always have 300 titles installed? If you buy a 500Gb HDD you will at least get 100-200 games into it and that should keep out busy for a while.

^- This. When you add some injects you'll probably be at around 600 to 700 GB, so a 1TB HDD should suit your needs.

This is highly hypothetical through. In case you want to go as small as possible do this and just install a small selections at the same time. A 32 GB HDD might be enough for this.
In case you want to have as much as possible installed in parallel go for a 2TB HDD and see how much you'll be able to fill it up. Size of Wii Us catalogue is completely irrelevant when you add Wii, GameCube and so on injects.

Tl;dr either you want to save as much money as possible by buying the smallest HDD possible or you want to have as much content installed as possible. This is up to you and no one is able to answer this.

Franciscop98 · Mar 20, 2023

godreborn said:
View attachment 360294

fuck you!

Hey man, said I'm sorry! Guess that bridge is burned.

V10lator said:
^- This. When you add some injects you'll probably be at around 600 to 700 GB, so a 1TB HDD should suit your needs.

This is highly hypothetical through. In case you want to go as small as possible do this and just install a small selections at the same time. A 32 GB HDD might be enough for this.
In case you want to have as much as possible installed in parallel go for a 2TB HDD and see how much you'll be able to fill it up. Size of Wii Us catalogue is completely irrelevant when you add Wii, GameCube and so on injects.

Tl;dr either you want to save as much money as possible by buying the smallest HDD possible or you want to have as much content installed as possible. This is up to you and no one is able to answer this.

I see. Thank you for the rundown! Seeing how lopsided the Wii U catalogue is (see above), I'm guessing it's better to just go for the smaller HDD for this setup, and play a few games at a time. Might go for a bit bigger HDD, though, like 128. Those are still dirt cheap, and do the investment on the 1.5TB to have the entire catalogue on .wup format.

Anyway, thanks everyone for the reply! And again, apologies if I was rude, wasn't my intention and I do appreciate this community a lot.

RetroGen · Mar 21, 2023

The Wii U has a lot of eshop titles that don't take up a lot of HDD space (some perhaps a few MB, but count against the 300 title limit), while most of the big franchise games should total under 1TB. I have a 1.5TB drive on mine with Wii U/Wii/GC games and it is roughly half full. Didn't think it was worth putting the whole set on there because I would never play most of them and it is a pain to scroll through pages and pages to find the game you want. Using folders helps.

ber71 · Mar 21, 2023

Take into account that wiiu is not region free, by default. Therefore you will want a collection for your region (usa/eur/jap) only.
That said, an entire, regional romset of all retail games, plus updates and dlc, will reach 1.2TB. About 175 titles.
Add eshop-only games, excluding VC, to raise 250GB more, surpassing the 300 titles barrier which is an annoyance.

Alternatively, you can install to the internal memory just the game that you really want to play, so no hdd needed. Unless it's a hynix chip.

r1vver · Mar 21, 2023

WII U is able to can (use) 4K native drives?

What is the actual biggest HDD you can actually fill on a Wii U?

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