PS1/2 How to get a hard drive working on the PS2?

[supernintendo128]

My brother found an IDE hard drive. We tried putting it in the PS2 but it's not detecting it. It clearly sees something as putting it in increases the boot time to a notable degree but it doesn't show up in the browser. What am I doing wrong? It's not an official drive by the way.

 

[Dave_Chad]

Do you have freemc boot on the memory card? Or have you installed a freehd boot image to the hdd? They don't just work after plugging them in.

 

[supernintendo128]

Do you have freemc boot on the memory card? Or have you installed a freehd boot image to the hdd? They don't just work after plugging them in.

Nothing on the system is modded.

 

[Snomannen_kalle]

Nothing on the system is modded.

Without any modifications to the hardware, it isn't going to show up in the browser. How I see it, there are two things you can do:

1) You can buy an FMCB memory card online, so that you can enter wLaunchElf, and that way install FHDB on the unit, and thus be able to boot homebrew, load games, etc. from the HDD;

or 2), which is probably the best option: Download an HDD image pre-flashed with FHDB already set up (you can use google to find this), and flash it to your HDD with your computer to gain access to wLaunchElf and FHDB.

Be careful to turn the PS2 completely off before you remove the HDD from the PS2, as you might blow a small fuse inside the PS2 otherwise, which is supposed to be a real pain to replace. Also, I've found that the drive needs to be in Cable Select mode when you use it in the PS2, but I don't know if that is true for all HDDs.

Edit: If you go for option number two, it might be a good idea to first create a bootable FMCB memory card and store it somewhere safe, and then reformatting the drive with wLaunchElf before reinstalling FHDB.

 

[supernintendo128]

Without any modifications to the hardware, it isn't going to show up in the browser. How I see it, there are two things you can do:

1) You can buy an FMCB memory card online, so that you can enter wLaunchElf, and that way install FHDB on the unit, and thus be able to boot homebrew, load games, etc. from the HDD;

or 2), which is probably the best option: Download an HDD image pre-flashed with FHDB already set up (you can use google to find this), and flash it to your HDD with your computer to gain access to wLaunchElf and FHDB.

Be careful to turn the PS2 completely off before you remove the HDD from the PS2, as you might blow a small fuse inside the PS2 otherwise, which is supposed to be a real pain to replace. Also, I've found that the drive needs to be in Cable Select mode when you use it in the PS2, but I don't know if that is true for all HDDs.

Edit: If you go for option number two, it might be a good idea to first create a bootable FMCB memory card and store it somewhere safe, and then reformatting the drive with wLaunchElf before reinstalling FHDB.

Thanks!

 

[zfreeman]

http://www.ps2-home.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7132

 

[tech3475]

BTW, if you want the drive to appear in the Browser, AFAIK you'll need either a modchip or a hacked OSD image on the drive.

Personally though I don't think it's really worth it.

 

[Alexander1970]

My brother found an IDE hard drive. We tried putting it in the PS2 but it's not detecting it. It clearly sees something as putting it in increases the boot time to a notable degree but it doesn't show up in the browser. What am I doing wrong? It's not an official drive by the way.

Hello.

I am pretty sure you have plugged your IDE HDD into this important Thing.

Thank you.

 

[supernintendo128]

Hello.

I am pretty sure you have plugged your IDE HDD into this important Thing.


View attachment 182457

Thank you.

We did.

 

[Alexander1970]

We did.

Excellent.

Do you already know where to get your FreeMCBoot Memory Card? Or how do you get the needed files on it ?

Thank you.

 

[supernintendo128]

Excellent.

Do you already know where to get your FreeMCBoot Memory Card? Or how do you get the needed files on it ?

Thank you.

Yes. It looks like I can get one on Amazon or eBay.

 

[rs1n]

My brother found an IDE hard drive. We tried putting it in the PS2 but it's not detecting it. It clearly sees something as putting it in increases the boot time to a notable degree but it doesn't show up in the browser. What am I doing wrong? It's not an official drive by the way.

You don't need to buy a Free MC Boot card -- you can make your own using just your PS2, IDE HDD, and Network Adapter, your own memory card, and a way to connect your IDE HDD to your PC. https://gbatemp.net/threads/softmodding-a-fat-ps2-in-2017.476953/