PS1/2 Did something you shouldnt do on a HDD

notimp · Jun 13, 2021

Namely, I repaired the (internal PS2) HDD in WinHIIP and saved the structure to the HDD in WinHIIP as well. I think that the issue is, that there were more than 256 games on the drive - that now all are sporting WinHIIP/HDL names, when looking at them in HDDManager. WinHIIP itself prevents you from adding so many, but using other loaders allowed me to.

Long story short, WinHIIP now crashes upon load. All games are still launchable, and I can probably still delete them in OPL - but would anyone know, if simply renaming the partitions/folders in HDDManager would help or be possible? Also does anyone know if this could indeed be an interaction with too many entries on the HDD, that causes WinHIIP to crash on start? Or would it more likely be a partition issue/error? (Corrupt partition.)

And in case everything fails - is there a way to convent on disk folders/partitions to .isos, that is not WinHIIP - but preferably newer, and that doesnt rely on an ethernet connection to the PS2?

Thank you for trying to think this through with me.

notimp · Jun 14, 2021

A Programm called PS2 HD Handiness actually solved my issues. It can both delete and extract Games from a PS2 HDD connected to a PC (USB also works). hdl_dumx_rev47 then still is able to write games to the same HDD, and OPL is able to read it. So I'm good.

rs1n · Jun 15, 2021

notimp said:
Namely, I repaired the (internal PS2) HDD in WinHIIP and saved the structure to the HDD in WinHIIP as well. I think that the issue is, that there were more than 256 games on the drive - that now all are sporting WinHIIP/HDL names, when looking at them in HDDManager. WinHIIP itself prevents you from adding so many, but using other loaders allowed me to.

Long story short, WinHIIP now crashes upon load. All games are still launchable, and I can probably still delete them in OPL - but would anyone know, if simply renaming the partitions/folders in HDDManager would help or be possible? Also does anyone know if this could indeed be an interaction with too many entries on the HDD, that causes WinHIIP to crash on start? Or would it more likely be a partition issue/error? (Corrupt partition.)

And in case everything fails - is there a way to convent on disk folders/partitions to .isos, that is not WinHIIP - but preferably newer, and that doesnt rely on an ethernet connection to the PS2?

Thank you for trying to think this through with me.

The problem with Winhiip (especially its repair "features") is that it doesn't comply with the SDK's standards for partition names. Every game is contained in a collection of partitions (a parent partition along with children partitions). Partition names are limited in number of characters, which is also a reason why Winhiip will cause you headaches if you have games that have long, similar names. This problem is then compounded when it tries to "correct" your drive, and then ends up overwriting children partitions of those games with long, similar names. Your games might still be working because you're probably not playing the ones that had name collisions.

If it were me, I'd back up my VMCs (OPLBATCH can do this for you) and then start fresh with HDLBATCH.

notimp · Jun 15, 2021

As I started with Winhiip, it at least throws you warnings when you are in danger of having this happen. As such I had an eye on it, and it didnt happen for the first 256 games, as I altered the naming manually. There are another 30 or so on disk by now, I uploaded with hdl_dumx_rev47, where I didnt check for it, but the program also didnt throw warnings. So I'm not sure - if this is the case here. In any case - everything so far seems to be working (maybe because I havent touched upon any of the conflicting games yet (probably within 30 or so)), I could delete partitions after the fact, I could upload new games with hdl_dumx_rev47 and those worked... so I'm not that worried actually.

Starting over probably would take longer than living with it in this state.

(Especially since I dont have another spare 1TB lying arround...

), so I feel like sticking with it for the time. If I reach a game, that doesnt work - I might delete it, and thereby fix the issue over time.

At least there doesnt seem to be anything breaking catastrophically. So far.

But I'll keep your analysis in mind.

Also I'll try games, where this might be an issue.

Btw - as long as I see those partitions in other programs, I should be good?

PS2 HD Handiness is especially handy, as it reads file structure within a partition (including file sizes), if you deselect "multiple selection mode", so it should be fairly easy to check if one is empty, or the same as a similarly named one..

PS1/2 Did something you shouldnt do on a HDD

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