Hardware Is it safe to keep a USB hard drive on top of the Wii?

[f00had]

I have a 4 year old Wii, recently started using a USB loader on it. I keep my Wii lying down and have the USB hard drive on top however after long periods of use the hard drive gets a bit warm and I'm worried it might damage the Wii. Do you guys know if it's OK to keep it on top? I use an old laptop hard drive inside one of these cases: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150713549390

 

[philip11]

I would not recomend

 

[rip-it-up]

I Think it would be fine. Its only the dvd drive directly underneath the harddrive

 

[Lucif3r]

Well Im not sure. As long as the air exhausted from the fan isnt unusually warm it shouldnt be any danger in having it on top.
I find it hard to believe an HDD would actually be able to get warm enough to damage something... Unless the Wii is weird as hell and dont shut down when it reaches a critical temp (I dont know, never overheated mine, nor do I plan to lol)
Im having mine on top but... after 3 days non-stop running its still cool to the touch.

 

[f00had]

What I'm worried about is frying the GPU since I've heard that's happened to a fair amount of Wii owners.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

If it's a small USB powered one, I wouldn't see a problem with it.

 

[tbgtbg]

That's where I keep mine, a big AC powered 1TB thingy, and I haven't had an issue.

Lately I've had a small USB powered fan plugged into my 360 and pointed at whatever system I have running as a preventative measure, but I've had the drive for almost two years and only have been aiming the fan at the Wii & drive for a few months. Mainly the fan's for my 360 and PS3, but I figured I have it right there, might as well point it at the Wii, at worst it does no harm.

 

[JoostinOnline]

I say better safe than sorry. Why don't you just stand your Wii up?

 

[MelodieOctavia]

I say better safe than sorry. Why don't you just stand your Wii up?

That would make the Wii more susceptible to being knocked over than overheating due to a misplaced HDD. I know the Wii is originally meant to be stood on it's end, but it's much more stable laying on it's side.

 

[JoostinOnline]

That would make the Wii more susceptible to being knocked over than overheating due to a misplaced HDD.

The stand keeps it stable.

I know the Wii is originally meant to be stood on it's end, but it's much more stable laying on it's side.

I'm pretty sure you have that backwards.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

That would make the Wii more susceptible to being knocked over than overheating due to a misplaced HDD.

The stand keeps it stable.

I know the Wii is originally meant to be stood on it's end, but it's much more stable laying on it's side.

I'm pretty sure you have that backwards.

I'm pretty sure basic physics escapes you.

 

[Lucif3r]

I say better safe than sorry. Why don't you just stand your Wii up?

I have my Wii vertical, and I still have to have my HDD ontop of it ... Thats right, on top of it, covering the GC mem/controller ports...
The provided USB cable is about 2cm too short for me to be able to place the HDD next to the Wii, and all my other cables about 2m to long lol.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I'm pretty sure a lot of people do that. I used to do it myself until I got a WODE, then it wasn't really viable anymore since I can't have the Wii in the horizontal position.
What you should be careful about when it comes to the GPU is using the standby connection, it's what fries GPUs because there is no fan on in standby mode.
The Wii stays much cooler when the fan is on and it'll always be on when you're playing games anyway so you should have nothing to worry about as long as you don't use the standby connection.

I used the standby connection on mine for at least a couple of years and didn't get any artifacts but I often left it on instead of shutting it off so the fan would keep running. It was still on standby a lot of the time though, but I've stopped using the standby connection now (even though that disables several features)

I say better safe than sorry. Why don't you just stand your Wii up?

That would make the Wii more susceptible to being knocked over than overheating due to a misplaced HDD. I know the Wii is originally meant to be stood on it's end, but it's much more stable laying on it's side.

If you use the plastic disc that attaches to the base of the stand it's not very likely to be knocked over. Of course it depends on where you place it, if you place it right next to where people are likely to walk back and forth a lot it could get knocked over, otherwise it's not very likely to happen no matter if you use the plastic disc or not. But if you play GC games with a wired controller it would be easy to accidentally pull it over.

 

[Lucif3r]

Well, my 3 cats (2 of which weighs in just under 10kg) have been unsuccessful with knocking my Wii over, despite their desperate attempts
So imo, the stand makes it quite stable and it requires quite a lot of force to actually knock it over.

 

[shortz1994]

i don't use the stand, i have both my hd sitting on top of the wii.(lying down). never had any problems with them making wii hot or wii over heating for them sitting on it.

 

[JoostinOnline]

i don't use the stand, i have both my hd sitting on top of the wii.(lying down). never had any problems with them making wii hot or wii over heating for them sitting on it.

Well on thing to take into consideration is how old the Wii is (older Wii's have an overheating problem) and if he has WiiConnect24 turned on.

 

[obcd]

Just buy 4 adhesive rubber feet and glue those to the bottom site of the harddisk. They will reduce vibration and will create some space between the harddisk and the wii. That way, the harddisk won't be able to heat the wii (altough I doubt it will heat the inside of the wii a lot.) After all the top cover is plastic which is a heat isolator.
The space between the harddisk and the wii will cause a better air circulation around the harddisk, so that it cools better. Even if you don't place the harddisk on the wii, it's not a bad idea to do this. If the thing comes extremely warm (so that you hardly can touch it), you will need an enclosure with a blower in it, or the thing will fail real fast due to overheating. Since yours is a laptop harddrive, it shouldn't become extremely warm.

 

[f00had]

Thanks guys, I guess I'll leave my hard drive on there since I don't have WiiConnect24 on (yellow light). I don't stand my Wii up because I don't have the space for it on my shelf lol.