Hardware How to reboot when Wii U freezes during gameplay without risk to external HDD

[Nynrah]

While playing some Wii games on my Wii U (vWii; through USB Loader GX2) it sometimes happens that a game freezes. When this happens, nothing short of removing the power plug works. I don't want to reboot my Wii U like that, especially not when my external HDD remains very active as it could seriously damage the HDD. The notion of every game freeze putting my HDD at risk doesn't sit well with me. Does anyone know a way to reboot after a game freeze that does't put my HDD at risk?

 

[godreborn]

the only way that might work that I can think of is holding the power button for four seconds.

 

[MikaDubbz]

If you're worried about what a pulling of the power cord does to the hard drive and holding the power button wont work, your best bet might be to unplug the hard drive first and then unplug the power cable.

 

[Ryu Kenshin]

Nowaday, most ext hdd has built-in capacitor that holds enough power to retrack the reader when unplug, so just unplug the usb cord

 

[godreborn]

There may be something with the hdd if it is freezing.

 

[elk1007]

Nowaday, most ext hdd has built-in capacitor that holds enough power to retrack the reader when unplug, so just unplug the usb cord

This is the right answer!

Additionally, no data damage should occur since the Wii U is reading data and not writing it.