Hacking Guide: WD Passport Spindown Fix

[Shindig]

Has anyone had to do this on a WD 250Gb Passport Essential 2.5" drive.
I am looking at buying one of these today, but want to be on the safe side.

 

[User423]

Has anyone had to do this on a WD 250Gb Passport Essential 2.5" drive.
I am looking at buying one of these today, but want to be on the safe side.

I want to buy this drive too, please help!

 

[Cypherdias]

I tried to use hdparm with my IDE drive I put into an external enclosure (took it out of the enclosure and connected to my PC directly). Set Spindown to 251 and disabled AAC by setting it to the highest value.

Didn't help with my "HotD: Overkill" issues though, still have those "dancing" zom... mutants. Seems it's just a bad dump, but I don't have another one currently. But maybe I got rid of my random Okami and SMG freezes, will try that out later.

 

[hdhacker]

I tried to use hdparm with my IDE drive I put into an external enclosure (took it out of the enclosure and connected to my PC directly). Set Spindown to 251 and disabled AAC by setting it to the highest value.

Didn't help with my "HotD: Overkill" issues though, still have those "dancing" zom... mutants. Seems it's just a bad dump, but I don't have another one currently. But maybe I got rid of my random Okami and SMG freezes, will try that out later.

Some drives may require the "-K 1" to be added to make the change permanent.

 

[Shindig]

Has anyone had to do this on a WD 250Gb Passport Essential 2.5" drive.
I am looking at buying one of these today, but want to be on the safe side.

I want to buy this drive too, please help!

I went and got one.
It works a treat.
Paritioned the drive, half and half.
Command line wbfs.exe , init the drive.

plugged it into Wii, turned on and loaded USB V1.1. Found it first time and I have xfered 10 Wii games onto it.

Very pleased with my purchase.

 

[User423]

I went and got one.
It works a treat.
Paritioned the drive, half and half.
Command line wbfs.exe , init the drive.

plugged it into Wii, turned on and loaded USB V1.1. Found it first time and I have xfered 10 Wii games onto it.

Very pleased with my purchase.

Yeah, nice, how many GB you have? I think I would buy a 320GB for ~110$. (In germany it´s 85€)

 

[Shindig]

I got 250Gb for ₤54. More than enough for me and at the amount of cash I was willing to spend.

 

[Cypherdias]

I tried to use hdparm with my IDE drive I put into an external enclosure (took it out of the enclosure and connected to my PC directly). Set Spindown to 251 and disabled AAC by setting it to the highest value.

Didn't help with my "HotD: Overkill" issues though, still have those "dancing" zom... mutants. Seems it's just a bad dump, but I don't have another one currently. But maybe I got rid of my random Okami and SMG freezes, will try that out later.

Some drives may require the "-K 1" to be added to make the change permanent.

Just tried that. After that, played level 2 without any error, restarted the Wii, deleted the savegame, startet a new one and played through level 1 completely without errors too. Seems to be fixed for me though. So thank you (and you all) very much!

 

[Scoobyscoobydoo]

Has anyone had to do this on a WD 250Gb Passport Essential 2.5" drive.
I am looking at buying one of these today, but want to be on the safe side.

Got myself one of these on the £54 offer at the moment.

Tried the Mario Kart pause, left it for 20mins and it continued fine, no crashes at end of the level and continued playing fine.
I didnt format this drive with my PC, plugged it straight into the wii when i got it and did the format via the wii, havent partioned it for the PC at all.

 

[Moquedami]

I dont have SATA in my mobo. Am I screwed?
Wont this do any good?
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.as...=17&lang=en

 

[Shindig]

Has anyone had to do this on a WD 250Gb Passport Essential 2.5" drive.
I am looking at buying one of these today, but want to be on the safe side.

Got myself one of these on the £54 offer at the moment.

Tried the Mario Kart pause, left it for 20mins and it continued fine, no crashes at end of the level and continued playing fine.
I didnt format this drive with my PC, plugged it straight into the wii when i got it and did the format via the wii, havent partioned it for the PC at all.

I think we got ourselves a nice little HD then sir!

 

[sheridan2000]

did ya get em from PC world in the UK

 

[sheridan2000]

did ya get em from PC world in the UK

 

[Scoobyscoobydoo]

did ya get em from PC world in the UK

Yes, got it from there. My local was running out of stock though, i had one of the last ones.

 

[sheridan2000]

cheers...will have to pop down there over the weekend

 

[Cypherdias]

Okay, as a conclusion (for me): My primary Wii HDD is a Samsung SP2514N IDE drive I put in an external enclosure. Most games ran quite well from the start, but others had issues like "dancing (and kind of disappearing) mutants" in Overkill and random crashes in Okami, Super Mario Galaxy and a few other.

After applying the spindown-setting as shown in the first post and fixing it with the -K 1 option, all of these seem to be gone. Played five levels of Overkill and an hour of Okami without any problems, freezes or crashes at all.

I think this is a nice hint for everyone who suffers from these kinds of errors. It may not fix them for all of us, but it's some kind of a good try.

What confuses me a little is, that I tried at least Overkill with three different HDD devices (Samsung + Enclosure, old IBM with the same enclosure, old IBM with USB-IDE/SATA adapter-cable and a Sandisk flash stick), with always getting dancing mutants. But after this hdparm "fix", everything runs perfectly (using the Samsung drive)? Some kind of weird. But I'm not complaining about it, since I finally got rid of that errors.

Thanks again.

 

[KTroopA]

I went and got one.
It works a treat.
Paritioned the drive, half and half.
Command line wbfs.exe , init the drive.

plugged it into Wii, turned on and loaded USB V1.1. Found it first time and I have xfered 10 Wii games onto it.

Very pleased with my purchase.

Yeah, nice, how many GB you have? I think I would buy a 320GB for ~110$. (In germany it´s 85€)

i have this drive arrivinf today. great to read it works fine

what is the wbfs command to init the drive plz?

 

[hdhacker]

For the benefit of everyone who hasn't purchased an external drive for the Wii, can we confirm that the Seagate FreeAgent Go can have the spindown disabled without cracking the case?

http://freeagent.seagate.com/en-us/hard-dr...Free-Agent.html

It's about the same price as the WD, a hair smaller, and has a 5 year warranty vs. 3 year for the WD.

 

[jm9843]

For the benefit of everyone who hasn't purchased an external drive for the Wii, can we confirm that the Seagate FreeAgent Go can have the spindown disabled without cracking the case?

http://freeagent.seagate.com/en-us/hard-dr...Free-Agent.html

It's about the same price as the WD, a hair smaller, and has a 5 year warranty vs. 3 year for the WD.

I confirmed through the documentation on Seagate's site that, yes, spin-down can be disabled completely on the FreeAgent Go in software.

So if you haven't purchased an external drive for the Wii yet, go for the Seagate. As hdhacker said, the enclosure is smaller and it has a better warranty. It seems to be on average around $10 cheaper than the WD too. The only disadvantage that I can find is that it doesn't come in "Wii White."

 

[brucelaa]

So i just got a passport essential 250 gb today. and having problems with games freezing (mario kart, mario galaxy gh metallica) after about 1 min

I only use one usb for power, isnt that enough ?