Hardware Can the Wii power a HD through the USB port?

[CyborgLizard]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but if I have an external usb harddrive that has two usb cords (1 for the usb and 1 to power the drive), would plugging them both into the wii power it and let it run? Or should I just buy an AC adaptered external hard drive? Thanks.

 

[Justin121994]

Yes it would. You could of just tried you know?

 

[tj_cool]

Well, I think it does
Just be sure to put the right cable in the right USB slot

 

[Justin121994]

Put the data cable on the bottom usb slot..
And the power usb cable on top..
Remember when marcan or bushing forgot..
Made there own usbloader to show they could.
He was using an hd with two usb cords.

 

[Supercool330]

It can easily power a 2.5" drive through the USB cable, bigger hard drives will need wall power, or two usb cables (some 2.5 drives need two usb cables, but most should be fine with just one).

 

[Drag0nflamez]

Or get a WD Elements Portable, they aren't expensive and are powered by only one usb cord. So you can connect rockband stuff if you need it.

 

[CyborgLizard]

Yes it would. You could of just tried you know?

well i am planning on buying one, since i don't have one and wanted to know if it would work.


thanks guys, so plug and play right?

 

[strict9gs]

i even use a 4 port usb hub, for programs like wiimc, i have 2 hdd's for that, and i have my WD ,1cord hdd for wiiflow,and gx

 

[pepxl]

Yes it would. You could of just tried you know?

well i am planning on buying one, since i don't have one and wanted to know if it would work.


thanks guys, so plug and play right?

why dont you get one with either 1 USB for data+power or a mains powered one instead of a dual USB corded HDD

 

[CyborgLizard]

why dont you get one with either 1 USB for data+power or a mains powered one instead of a dual USB corded HDD

Hm, I guess I could do that. I was thinking of getting something small and portable though, like 250gb

 

[Burton]

Hm, I guess I could do that. I was thinking of getting something small and portable though, like 250gb

I have a seagate 2.5, 250gb like you are describing and I use a Y usb cable, one for data and the other for power. If I connect only one cable in this case the data my games freezes etc so I use both ports.

 

[Supercool330]

I would recommend buying an internal drive and an enclosure as they usually have fewer problems with the drives going to sleep and such. A quick search on newegg found a 7200RPM, 500GB, 32MB cache 2.5" drive that comes with a free enclosure. The fact that it runs at 7200RPM and has a 32MB cache means that the average read latency should be a lot lower than a normal 2.5 drive (which usually run at 5000RPM and have a 16MB cache). Here is the link if you are interested http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148591

Edit:
Oh ya, I forgot to mention that one is also a hybrid SSD/Platter drive, so it should be lightning fast. I used to have a 5000RPM 2.5" drive, and every now an then I would get a few graphical glitches or the sound would stop, so getting a really fast drive is definitely a good idea.

Edit2:
If you want your drive to be powered by a single USB cable, you want to make sure that its power requirement is 5 volts or less.

 

[some1ne]

Yes, it can. I have one like yours (with 2 usb cables). I plug it in the Wii and it works fine running games through the usb loader.

 

[wiiuser2]

I am using Seagate Freeagent Go 500 Gb drives myself as well as 4 of my friends.
Simply powered through USB with just one single cable/port.

Also, when connected to the PC, never had any issue.
Bundled software let you disable the sleep feature of the drive which is essential when connected to the Wii (you don't want your drive to be switched off after 5 minutes of gameplay)

Had less luck with the small WD drives. Ok with one cable on the Wii, but needed two ports (data/power) on some laptop's.
Unfortunately the WD drives comes with a single port cable only.......

But these are just my personal experience of course......

 

[Deleted-247497]

i use a 500gb seagate freeagent go (very small kind) doesn't need any extra power, just single port and it works GREAT but sometimes it goes to sleep while not using it( doing something else on wii) but then i just restart wii and its fine

 

[Supercool330]

If it needed two ports on a laptop, then it was a problem with the laptop. All the WD portable drives are 5V (some are even 4.5V), which is the power specification for USB2, so if the ports on the laptop were functioning up to spec, there shouldn't have been a problem.

 

[OSW]

If you wanna save your other USB port, you can make a GC-to-USB adaptor. It's pretty nifty and I even managed to make it myself

hehehe http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=148030

 

[wiiuser2]

i use a 500gb seagate freeagent go (very small kind) doesn't need any extra power, just single port and it works GREAT but sometimes it goes to sleep while not using it( doing something else on wii) but then i just restart wii and its fine

You can use the Seagate Backup software on your PC to disable the sleep mode of the Free Agent Go drive.
After that you can remove the backup software from your PC.

 

[CyborgLizard]

Well I ended up getting a 1TB powered HD.

So far I have just been using "another wad manager" to put wads on the wii, but how can I make it so they install onto my HD? Is there some other program?

Also, what would be a good format for my HD (it is a western digital my book)? When I go to format it gives me exFAT and NTFS as options.

 

[Parablank]

Well I ended up getting a 1TB powered HD.

So far I have just been using "another wad manager" to put wads on the wii, but how can I make it so they install onto my HD? Is there some other program?

Also, what would be a good format for my HD (it is a western digital my book)? When I go to format it gives me exFAT and NTFS as options.

Use this.