Flash drive for expanded storage?

[Sypherone]

Ya, thats why they give TBW (Total writes written) values. Depended on your periodical write amount can be the lifetime calculated. If the drive supports saving the "Bytes Written" amount, the "Llifetime Remaining" value in hours of a SSD can calculated by using SSD-Z and be will shown by hovering over the POH value. Also the used cell type and additional info of the drive are shown.

EDIT: There is very low information about the WiiU filsystem, i find always the basic one that says its decryted (and need SEEPROM and OTP to be encrypted) and once its decryted its totally proprietary filesystem. But i dont find any information about write amount like overhead (which it seems to have) by using a journaling filesystems.

 

[RAHelllord]

Neat!, got a link to more info about the Wii U's writing process?

Nope, I just looked up what the max writing speed is for USB 2 and divided the rated write amount of the smallest Samsung 980 by that to get my number.
It's also just common sense, even if it were an HDD constant writing at max speed would wear out the mechanical parts rather quickly and serve no actual purpose, so that just doesn't happen.

 

[V10lator]

You might want to disconnect it occasionally and run trim on a PC

TRIM needs filesystem support (filesystem needs to tell which blocks are free), so you can't do that. For the SSDs firmware the filesystem of the Wii U should be just a binary blob it can't interpret, so garbage collection most likely also won't work, reducing the effectiveness of wear leveling algos.

So your calculation is most likely flawed as the 150 TB are under best cirumstances (FAT filesystem with TRIM).

even if it were an HDD constant writing at max speed would wear out the mechanical parts rather quickly

HDDs don't wear out that fast. Most give you a guarantee to work 5+ years under heavy load.

//EDIT: And the Wii Us filesystem zeroing out empty blocks is also highly unlikely as this would reduce the effectiveness of the decryption + make filesystem operations slower. So wear leveling algos can't even detect that.

 

[Sypherone]

HDDs don't wear out that fast. Most give you a guarantee to work 5+ years under heavy load.

Ya, the most critical part of a hdd is the arm when it goes into start positon and then back into the zylinder for read access. So if a drive is maybe started 50 times a day, its better for the drive to keep is spinning 24/7 (e.g. NAS drive). So if the hdd is used maybe 2 or 3 times a day for a few hours you can get a very long lifetime between 5-10 years, dependend also e.g on temperatur and extern damage.

For the SSDs firmware the filesystem of the Wii U should be just a binary blob it can't interpret, so garbage collection most likely also won't work, reducing the effectiveness of wear leveling algos.

So If i am correct, beacuse it cant interpret the filesystem, the data is always written to the same sectors and this make them malfunction if there where out.

 

[V10lator]

So If i am correct, beacuse it cant interpret the filesystem, the data is always written to the same sectors and this make them malfunction if there where out.

Not correct. The SSD should still do wear leveling by moving the content of hot cells to cold ones and stuff, trying to spread the wear evenly over all cells. Still it normally does more for wear leveling, like garbage collection (finding unused cells and marking them as so) and other stuff. These extended algos most likely won't work with the Wii Us filesystem and as a result reduce the lifetime.

 

[Razor83]

What about using an endurance microSD card in a USB reader?

I remember reading some years ago that there was a project to replace the Wii U's proprietary file system with FAT32/NTFS support instead - was that project ever completed?

 

[Sypherone]

What about using an endurance microSD card in a USB reader?

Really???

I remember reading some years ago that there was a project to replace the Wii U's proprietary file system with FAT32/NTFS support instead - was that project ever completed?

Thats mocha fat32 in the WiiU homebrew store. Dont know the actual state, as i know it should be very slow.

 

[depaul]

Any brand SD card will work just fine, no need for endurance... It's that simple!

 

[Sypherone]

Until it dies and all data is gone, then open a thread on gbatemp and ask for solution.
And end up like this how to solve flash drive no longer works.

 

[depaul]

Take it easy bro, I've been using my Sandisk SD card as my main Wii U storage for 5+ years:

"The current technology along with normal usage typically gives the card a lifespan of 10 years or more, allowing consumers to upgrade their devices for many years..."
Source : https://www.sdcard.org/consumers/faq/

I wouldn't have recommended that solution if it wasn't working flawlessly for me.

 

[Hayato213]

I just got a Wii U (as a gift), and am realizing that the internal storage is rather lacking. To expand the storage, I am considering getting a 128GB Samsung Fit Plus drive, but I keep seeing mixed things about using flash drives for expanded storage. I don;t have the space for a self powered HDD, and my only other options are either a portable HDD or get a laptop HDD, an enclosure, and a Y cable which I can't afford.

Get a HDD

 

[Sypherone]

@depaul Ya, but we cant talk about it only because it works for me, you or us. Dunno how many threads out there because their flashdrive is dead, beside the new ones are more reliable. If that had that easy there wouldnt had been a question about using them.

 

[depaul]

You're right about the HDD storage there is nothing wrong about that.
About the SD card solution it's fine as well. You'll get a lifespan similar to that of a HDD, if not better.

Even the Switch uses an SD card !

 

[Sypherone]

Even the Switch uses an SD card !

You need to differ between the used filesystems. Fat32 and exfat is especially for flashdrives, there is no overhead like using ntfs or ext3/4 to prevent them against to much write. E.g. NTFS and ext are journaling systems which write to the drive at every access to a file to keep the filesystem stable, they are logging to be able to restore the data in case its corrupted. Fat32 and exfat doesnt provide such features, the data is there stored and thats it. If its corrupted you need manually to run a check or restore the data.

And you need to differ between the used Cell type, is it e.g. SLC, MLC, TLC or QLC. Every Cell type can take a different amount of writecycles. The cheaper a flashdrive is, the lower are the possible write cycles. WiiU Nand for example is a MLC where we are afraid when its gone. The black 32GB WiiU is known to have a very cheap MLC, so in worst case you buy a dead second hand WiiU.

And because of the different kind of flashcards quality i am not going to recommend a flash drive to use on WiiU`s file system.

 

[Razor83]

Really???

Not sure what you mean? I dont see why using an endurance SD card would be a problem, since they are specifically designed for constant read/write access. I am just looking for a small/unobtrusive storage expansion for the Wii U, and since flash drives are not recommended due to the limited number of read/writes available, an endurance microSD card with USB reader would seem to make sense.

Also, please remember that the Wii U itself uses an 8/32GB eMMC chip internally for storage, and eMMC chips are bascially SD cards in SMT chip form.

 

[Sypherone]

Ya, what i wrote one post one monent ago:
WiiU Nand for example is a MLC where we are afraid when its gone. The black 32GB WiiU is known to have a very cheap MLC, so in worst case you buy a dead second hand WiiU.

I dont know the endurance SD, but a flash card is a card with flash cells. Maybe its a quality one and may work a long time. But as already sayed previously, there are a lot of different kinds of flascards and the WiiU has its own filesystem and that makes the problem.

You can use what you want, i am only not going to recommend it.

 

[DeadOneWalking]

To be fair, I have also disabled the standby features. When the system is off, it's fully off. In addition, there is a good chance I'll just cut power to the system when it's not in regular use.

 

[V10lator]

I dont see why using an endurance SD card would be a problem

You answered your own question:

flash drives are not recommended

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

Also, please remember that the Wii U itself uses an 8/32GB eMMC chip internally for storage

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.

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.

//EDIT: To give another example, here you see self-reporting of an 8 year old SSD used in mostly read-only mode on a PC:

Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
202 Percent_Lifetime_Remain 0x0031   089   089   000    Pre-fail  Offline      -       11

Now think about how this SSD would look with excessive writes...

//EDIT²: In case you can't interpret that data, let me reorder it:
Percent_Lifetime_Remain: 11% (Pre-fail)

 

[depaul]

Ok thanks. Everyone agrees a flash memory has a limited lifespan.
A typical HDD lasts 3 to 5 years, some even die earlier because of mechanical failure.
If you buy a reliable flash memory brand, it'll last that long (Samsung/Sandisk even offer 5-10 years warranty).

USBs/SD cards also look more ergonomic on the Wii U. So overall, "it just depends on user preference".

 

[V10lator]

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

Never ever had a HDD dying that fast. I have one which is slowly dying at my hands right now, let's inspect:

# smartctl --all /dev/sdd | grep Power_On_Hours
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   001   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       78493

78493 hours are around 9 years. 9 years of power on time, so power off time is missing. With this added the HDD probably lasted more than 15 years (probably more than 20 but let's be super careful) before failing.

This HDD also doesn't die cause of mechanical failure but the magnetic platterns just demagnetize slowly. That said you must be doing something horribly wrong (like creating a head crash by shocking the HDD while beeing powered on) to see a HDD failing cause of mechanical wear after less than 3 years.

//EDIT: BTW: All that has been done by this failing HDD was marking bad sectors, so the HDD is still in use today (to be fair only for unimportant, temporary data) !