PS1/2 Ideal setup for Hacked Ps2 In terms of Compatibility and Loading Speeds?

[nastys]

I am going to request a mod close this thread now.

That's probably unnecessary.

 

[Mamothstard]

Hey folks. I'm unearthing this thread for asking a few questions.

I just got my hands on an official PPH and have managed to put an old IDE hdd in my fat PS2. I finally could play my NTSC imports games on legit hardware at last. I will definitely upgrade to a SATA drive since those drives are more available, reliable and have more capacity in general. The conversion board is on its way.

But I'm wondering what kind of drive to take.

Are there any advantages to buying an SSD for loading games via OPL besides less heat? Is heat even a problem to begin with? Either way, I've read some conflicting things about putting SSDs in PS2s. Some claim it improves the load times while others say it's not possible (due to the interface bandwith being already saturated at HDD read speeds) and that not supporting trim is a really big issue in terms life time. I'm also considering the fact that some games encounter problems due to load times being "too fast". Also @Ryccardo talked about APA having issues with larger disks. I was planning to get a 1 or 2TB drive in there. Would that be a problem? Should I partition it in some specific way? For now I only have my old Seagate 120GB that I formatted using the HDD manager in launchelf.

Lastly, if I'm settling for hdd, should I settle for 5400 rpm or a 7200 model? Also, would choosing a 2.5 drive with a 3.5 enclosure improve airflow and reduce heat?

 

[Ryccardo]

Also @Ryccardo talked about APA having issues with larger disks

You see, a logical partition (don't confuse this definition with the one used in MBR partition tables - in APA it means "the partitions you see in wLaunchELF's HddManager") can be made of multiple physical partitions (which you can see in WinHiiip - pretty much the only good reason to use it nowadays ), and the APA driver has to access all the 128MB-spaced blocks to find out what each of them contains - not only this is ridiculous due to seek times*, but when you have too many used partitions (approximately 80-150 GB) the list doesn't fit anymore in memory (2 MB - all loaded drivers - their working area), so the search has to be repeated for every partition mounting!

* go SSD if you want the most practical workaround - the fact UDMA 4 is slower than even SATA 1 doesn't mean you can't save on seek times

Apart from that, all official HDD-compatible software and older homebrews only support 28-bit addressing (limited to 137 GB) - do not use them on the same disk as 48-bit compatible software as there is a corruption risk if they try to use a partition that even partially exceeds that limit; and there may be issues with software that uses signed sector numbers after 1 TB, but I don't know much about that issue

Always use HddManager of (a reasonably recent version of) wLaunchElf to format a disk to APA, it's the tool that best balances conformity to standards with 48-bit support

 

[Mamothstard]

I'm not familiar with hardware technicalities but if I read you correctly I should settle for an SSD that does not exceed 1TB in size.

What about the issue of TRIM not being supported by the PS2? That means that in order to circumvent write amplification issues, I should transfer files only by plugging the SSD to my PC and avoid doing heavy write operations on the PS2. That means not dumping legit games (which is the point I started this whole thing in the first place). I mean I could dump them in my PC and back to the SSD afterwards.

I really like the idea of having an SSD in that a PS2 (especially for avoiding noise and heat). But I would like to have a long time, reliable solution if possible.

 

[Ryccardo]

What about the issue of TRIM not being supported by the PS2?

Using a PC to manage it won't solve anything (hdl-dump, winhiip, etc don't generate trim commands for deleted partitions)

Don't bother too much, it's not a system like your PC or a modern console that assumes the HDD is always available and free for indiscriminate usage (and actually many such systems, like the Wii, are still going fine)

 

[Mamothstard]

All right, thank you very much. I'll go with an SSD then.
Are there anything preventing me from going over 1TB like you mentioned?

there may be issues with software that uses signed sector numbers after 1 TB, but I don't know much about that issue

 

[Sakitoshi]

All right, thank you very much. I'll go with an SSD then.
Are there anything preventing me from going over 1TB like you mentioned?

FYI, there are ssd's that handle trim and all that by themselves or have its own means to keep itself fast and reliable.
which ones? that I don't know.

 

[rs1n]

In my humble opinion, SSD drives are just overkill. You also don't need to have any sort of network adapter upgrade kit, either. Just use an original Sony Network Adapter, and any IDE-SATA converter board along with a 2.5" SATA drive.

You can also just create a tiny NAS using a Raspberry Pi as others have suggested. If money is no limitation, just get a really nice commercial NAS. The benefit of this is that all your games can be stored in a "normal" filesystem (e.g. NTFS) along with artwork/covers/etc. that your PC can update. You will never ever have to deal with APA partitioning, 24 vs 48 bits, or any of the other PS2-only tools insofar as drive formatting and installing games are concerned.