Hacking HDD Isnt Recognized

[Daak]

Hello,

Okay to this is really weird and complicated so I'll try to explain as clearly as I can.
Lets call "Seagate" a 2.5'' 320gb Seagate
"WD" will be a 2.5'' 250gb WD

I've been using a Seagate in a powered enclosure and it works fine. However, I want the power to come from the WII-U so I dont have to turn a drive on and off each time. So, I bought a 3.0 enclosure with a 3.0 Y cable and plugged it all into the Wii-u. Now my Wii-U wont recognize the Seagate drive in the new enclosure ("searching for usb device" forever). I tried the WD in the new enclosure and it is recognized but I want the extra storage of the Seagate. So, just to see if it was a power issue, and using the Seagate in the new enclosure, I plugged in 1 of the Y cables into a USB charger and it STILL wouldn't be recognized.

So my questions are:
-Do seagate drives require more power than WD?
-Do I need to format Seagate on my PC first? (WD never had Wii-U data on it, Seagate has has wii-u data on it the whole time)
-When people talk about using Y cables, they are powering entirely from the WII-U, correct?

I'd rather not format Seagate if I dont need to. I tend to think this is a pure power issue for seagate drives.

 

[Daak]

Update:

I just tried a Seagate 500gb in the new enclosure and it works. So the issue all lies with that Seagate 320GB. Either that drive needs to be formatted in advance on a PC or its some weird power issue with that specific HDD. Weird thing is, the 500gb drive says it requires more power than the 320gb.. (.45a vs .70a). I'm going to try formatting the 320GB on the PC first and see what happens.

 

[Daak]

Update:

Its definitely some strange power incompatibility with that drive. I tried formatting the drive on my PC. I tried unformated and exfat and the WII-U didnt see it. I guess the takeaway here is that the wii-u is finicky and it wont accept the same drive in a different enclosure. Hope this helps someone..

 

[EmulateLife]

Yes y cable both cables can go in the Wii U. It's the reason there's two ports in the front and two ports in the back in case you needed to transfer games. So try one in the back the other in the front. Don't believe it's possible to have two in the front if that's what you were doing.

 

[Daak]

I tried both front and back ports and switched the Y cables many times. I'm using the Y cable on wii-U power now so its solved and I guess I have some more storage to work with now. The only reason I didnt start with the 500gb seagate is I had a ton of windows games installed from discs on it so that represented a lot of work disc swapping for an entire day.