Flash drive for expanded storage?

[depaul]

Good. Yes some HDDs can last that much (9-15 years), but they begin to degrade earlier, working slow, sometimes crashing, at least that's what I remember when I was still using HDD in my laptop.

 

[Razor83]

First I just want to say i'm not looking to cause an arguement, but to answer some of the points you raised:

You answered your own question:

I was just replying to Sypherone's "Really???" response.

I was genuinely unclear how the Wii U would be more likely to wear out an endurance microSD card over its intended use in a dash cam.

SD = Flash drive. Yes, a really, really good one might work for a few years, still I wouldn't recommend it.

I'm aware that at the end of the day they all use NAND flash memory, but there are many different types of NAND cells and some types are much more durable than others.

eMMC? Please go into detail some more: It's a MLC... Cached by an SLC chip (yes, you read that correctly: There's another flash storage just to keep wear off the main flash) which itself is cached by a RAMdisc (storage inception just to not wear out the MLC too fast) + doing other tricks to higher the lifetime... Also it is not recommended to install anything to NAND: Keep it as free as possible, so you have a ton of cold cells, for a longer lifetime!

It is an eMMC chip though? MLC just stands for "Multi-Level Cell" - referring to the type of NAND technology used inside the eMMC chip.

If it helps I have attached Samsung's 'eMMC Product Overview pdf' to this post, which shows the architecture of the eMMC chip technology used in some Wii U consoles on page 2.

I'm aware the Wii U has a secondary SLC chip where most of the internal system software/OS is stored, but the games/DLC etc are all stored on the eMMC(MLC).

As others stated, Hynix MLC chips are dying like crazy lately. In other words: There are already a lot of bricked Wii Us cause the MLC died.

I am acutely aware - I wrote a whole post about Samsung MLC chips having a firmware bug which could be one of the potential causes of the 160-0103 error on some Wii U consoles:-
https://gbatemp.net/threads/possibl...rror-code-160-0103.460359/page-3#post-7269430

At the end of the day what to use is complely up to you. We are just telling you what we see from interpreting forum posts, bug reports, Discord discussions and stuff.

I appreciate that, and I understand why people should be wary of using flash drives, but I just think its become too generalised a concern. Technology has moved on since Nintendo's original recommendation in 2012 to only use HDD's and not flash drives with the Wii U. Its true that some flash drives will be made using the cheapest type of NAND cell and wont withstand being written thousands of times, but some NAND is designed for exactly that purpose, and I personally cant see the harm in using a quality microSD card in a USB reader, whilst keeping in mind that there is a potential risk of it failing.

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As an aside, has anyone performed any analysis of how much the Wii U read/writes to external storage in general? I'm assuming the encryption Nintendo used in the filesystem is the reason for so much read/write access? If so is there any way we could disable the filesystem encryption module in the Wii U OS? I haven't been able to find much information about this online.

 

[Blythe93]

eMMC? Please go into detail some more: It's a MLC... Cached by an SLC chip (yes, you read that correctly: There's another flash storage just to keep wear off the main flash) which itself is cached by a RAMdisc (storage inception just to not wear out the MLC too fast) + doing other tricks to higher the lifetime... Also it is not recommended to install anything to NAND: Keep it as free as possible, so you have a ton of cold cells, for a longer lifetime!

As others stated, Hynix MLC chips are dying like crazy lately. In other words: There are already a lot of bricked Wii Us cause the MLC died.

Thanks for the detailed info on Wii U's internal storage, I didn't know it worked like that. I installed a few games to the NAND, just because some games couldn't fit on my Wii U HDD. Speaking of which, I use 240GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD in enclosure for my Wii U games and another SSD, much, much smaller, for vWii side (without enclosure), running both at same time so that I don't have to switch between external HDDs all the time.

 

[Sypherone]

If so is there any way we could disable the filesystem encryption module in the Wii U OS? I

If would be possible, it had done already. If iam right they working still on it. There exists only the CFW mocha fat32 for use with fat32 drives.

A typical HDD lasts 3 to 5 years, some even die earlier because of mechanical failure.

This information is from statistics from a Server farm where are the drives 24/7/365 are under heavy load. Blazeblade provide such public information.

Before the flashdrives comes up, you hadnt to worry about this lifetime problem. And there is this big bunch on flashdrives, that you need to be informed to buy a quality one with specific features and used cell typ. Also microSDCards doesnt that provide the same features as a SSD to expand lifetime. So it need to be checked for not sitting on a faulty drive with corrupted data on it.
As i stated already multiple times, cheap flashdrive (=cheap cell typ) and high write amount (e.g. nfts/ext3/4) or lack of use of wear leveling features is worst case.

 

[V10lator]

There exists only the CFW mocha fat32

Which is buggy as hell as FAT doesn't offer everything the Wii U needs. AFAIK somebody is working on NTFS support through. NTFS sounds like a good replacement for the Wii U file system.

 

[godreborn]

iirc, the fat32 thing with mocha required you to install the content on a wiiu formatted drive first, so that the game was indexed, then transfer over that content manually. a serious waste of time, since you needed a wiiu formatted drive anyway.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

You can use a USB to Sata adapter cable and connect a 2.5" SSD to that, the Wii U's USB port will provide enough power to power the SSD.

I'm using this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sabrent-2-...d-EC-SSHD-USB-3-0-SSD-SATA-2-5/dp/B011M8YACM/ with an old 128gb SSD, it's worked fine on my Wii U for years.

That is way overkill though. The Wii U won't take advantage of the fast speeds and a cheap Y-cable is a simple solution for 2.5" HDDs that works. Certainly wouldn't recommend going out and buying a SSD just for that, if you have one laying around and you have nothing else to use it on (even as a game drive for frequently played PC games) then sure.
Plus, SSDs have limited write cycles too. Won't wear out as quickly as a flash drive thanks to wear leveling, but it will potentially wear out quicker than a HDD would.

 

[depaul]

A typical HDD lasts 3 to 5 years...

...i see this is written on lot if sites, even on sites from data specialists...

 

[InsaneNutter]

That is way overkill though. The Wii U won't take advantage of the fast speeds and a cheap Y-cable is a simple solution for 2.5" HDDs that works. Certainly wouldn't recommend going out and buying a SSD just for that, if you have one laying around and you have nothing else to use it on (even as a game drive for frequently played PC games) then sure.
Plus, SSDs have limited write cycles too. Won't wear out as quickly as a flash drive thanks to wear leveling, but it will potentially wear out quicker than a HDD would.

It's not about the speeds, it's about the power usage which was the concern of the original poster.

For some additional context I have the GameCube controller adaptor connected to the two front USB ports, a USB ethernet adaptor in one of the back ports and my SSD in the other, meaning I didn't have enough USB ports free to power a hard drive.

Also SSD's don't degrade when reading data, only writing. How much data do you realistically think the Wii U is going to write to that SSD once it's been filled with games? Someone would have to spend all day installing Wii U games to the SSD, delete everything, then repeat the process again 1000's of times to cause any major detriment to an SSD. It would have to be a very poor SSD to not outlive a hard drive under normal use.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

It's not about the speeds, it's about the power usage which was the concern of the original poster.

For some additional context I have the GameCube controller adaptor connected to the two front USB ports, a USB ethernet adaptor in one of the back ports and my SSD in the other, meaning I didn't have enough USB ports free to power a hard drive.

Also SSD's don't degrade when reading data, only writing. How much data do you realistically think the Wii U is going to write to that SSD once it's been filled with games? Someone would have to spend all day installing Wii U games to the SSD, delete everything, then repeat the process again 1000's of times to cause any major detriment to an SSD. It would have to be a very poor SSD to not outlive a hard drive under normal use.

Which is cheaply solved with a Y-cable, as I said, no need for a SSD.

Apparently a lot, flash drives only degrade when writing data too, and yet there are all the reports of flash drives dying within hours.

 

[InsaneNutter]

Apparently a lot, flash drives only degrade when writing data too, and yet there are all the reports of flash drives dying within hours.

The average SSD can sustain 1000's more terabytes written than the average flash drive, you are trying to compare apples to oranges here.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

The average SSD can sustain 1000's more terabytes written than the average flash drive, you are trying to compare apples to oranges here.

Flash memory in general is rated for about 10000 write cycles, there's nothing special about the flash memory in SSDs, it's just the wear leveling of the controller helping to prevent certain flash cells wearing out before the others. As I already said a SSD won't wear out as quickly as a flash drive, but potentially quicker than a cheap external HDD would. The comparison was mainly to HDDs. Anyway, if a flash drive dies in hours, even if a SSD lasts 1000 times a long that's still a cause for concern, since the Wii U writes to the drive in standby mode too, not just when you're playing. Leave your Wii U unused for 6 months or a year and come back to a failed drive.

 

[Sypherone]

A typical HDD lasts 3 to 5 years, some even die earlier because of mechanical failure.

Good. Yes some HDDs can last that much (9-15 years), but they begin to degrade earlier, working slow, sometimes crashing, at least that's what I remember when I was still using HDD in my laptop.

This 3 to 5 year lifetime commes from a server farm statistic like Blazblade as Cloudservice where are 25.000 drives run 24/7/365 around the clock. They are permanent under heavy load like spinning up and down, reading and writting, high heat and worst for the machinal parts. Backblaze uses Consumer HDDs, not Enterprise HDDs that are especially created to run 24/7 and more reliable to run in such Server farms. So you can easy imagen, as home user that doesnt have that load like a Cloudservice. If you would run the drives daily between 8 and 12 hours, There is a theoretical 80% chance that the drive livetime take about 8-12 years.