Hardware Looking for a 500GB harddrive that will work with my my Wii's USB ports

[Cyber Akuma]

So, I recently performed several updates to the homebrew and hacks on my outdated Wii. And I want to upgrade my harddrive setup for it as well.

Currently, I have a 250GB USB 2.0 drive formatted in a 1GB FAT32 partition to store my loader and some of my homebrew, and the rest as a WBFS partition for my Wii disk images. Back when I set this up, pretty much the only options were FAT32 (which I did not want to do due to it's 4GB filesize limit) or WBFS. Nowadays though just about every loader appears to support NTFS just fine. So I am planning to replace it with a 500GB drive, keep the small FAT32 partition for homebrew, and make the rest NTFS for my Wii disk images. I also plan to reformat the old 250GB harddrive to FAT32 for GC loading through Nintendon't.

I have two issues about this though:

1. Are there any 500GB USB drives out there which can get enough power from a single USB 2.0 port? Almost all the drives are USB 3.0 nowadays, which I know can carry more power than USB 2.0 did. How can I be sure I can find a 500GB USB drive (preferably 2.5 inches or smaller) that the Wii will be able to power on it's own from a single port? (I don't want to have to take up multiple USB ports with a Y-cable) Do you have any recommendations for a drive to use?

2. I used WBFS manager to extract the images I had backed up to my WBFS partition into .wbfs files. Would I just be able to toss these onto the NTFS partition and they would work, or would I need to use some other kind of disk format? I don't want to use .iso since this would balloon the size of many of the games due to the garbage data. I use USBLoaderGX to load my Wii titles.

 

[Baccabechoppin]

So, I recently performed several updates to the homebrew and hacks on my outdated Wii. And I want to upgrade my harddrive setup for it as well.

Currently, I have a 250GB USB 2.0 drive formatted in a 1GB FAT32 partition to store my loader and some of my homebrew, and the rest as a WBFS partition for my Wii disk images. Back when I set this up, pretty much the only options were FAT32 (which I did not want to do due to it's 4GB filesize limit) or WBFS. Nowadays though just about every loader appears to support NTFS just fine. So I am planning to replace it with a 500GB drive, keep the small FAT32 partition for homebrew, and make the rest NTFS for my Wii disk images. I also plan to reformat the old 250GB harddrive to FAT32 for GC loading through Nintendon't.

I have two issues about this though:

1. Are there any 500GB USB drives out there which can get enough power from a single USB 2.0 port? Almost all the drives are USB 3.0 nowadays, which I know can carry more power than USB 2.0 did. How can I be sure I can find a 500GB USB drive (preferably 2.5 inches or smaller) that the Wii will be able to power on it's own from a single port? (I don't want to have to take up multiple USB ports with a Y-cable) Do you have any recommendations for a drive to use?

2. I used WBFS manager to extract the images I had backed up to my WBFS partition into .wbfs files. Would I just be able to toss these onto the NTFS partition and they would work, or would I need to use some other kind of disk format? I don't want to use .iso since this would balloon the size of many of the games due to the garbage data. I use USBLoaderGX to load my Wii titles.

I personally use a Verbatim 500GB hard drive for backup loading. It is powered by a singular USB port (It uses USB 3.0 but it still works well).
To my knowledge you should be able to move the wbfs folder from one drive to another without any issues (I did with no issues at least)

 

[Cyber Akuma]

To my knowledge you should be able to move the wbfs folder from one drive to another without any issues (I did with no issues at least)

It's not a folder, right now the 250GB drive is formatted as a WBFS partition, I had to use an app on my PC to even be able to read the drive and extract the games from it as .wbfs files

 

[Baccabechoppin]

It's not a folder, right now the 250GB drive is formatted as a WBFS partition, I had to use an app on my PC to even be able to read the drive and extract the games from it as .wbfs files

Why not just use it as a FAT32 partition and use WiiBackupManager to create .wbfs files of you're games? (Won't have to create .wbfs files if they already exist)

 

[Cyber Akuma]

Why not just use it as a FAT32 partition and use WiiBackupManager to create .wbfs files of you're games? (Won't have to create .wbfs files if they already exist)

I already created .wbfs files with WBFS Manager.

As for FAT32, I won't be using that for Wii games due to the 4GB filesize limit, for GC that limit won't be an issue.

Hmm.... come to think of it, would both Nintendon't and USBLoaderGX work on a drive that had both a FAT32 partition for GC disk images and a NTFS partition for Wii disk images?

 

[Baccabechoppin]

I already created .wbfs files with WBFS Manager.

As for FAT32, I won't be using that for Wii games due to the 4GB filesize limit, for GC that limit won't be an issue.

Hmm.... come to think of it, would both Nintendon't and USBLoaderGX work on a drive that had both a FAT32 partition for GC disk images and a NTFS partition for Wii disk images?

Nintendont only works with a fat 32 drive. You could either use WiiBackupManager and tell it to split the game iso's into multiple.wbfs files. Or you can use the 500GB drive in one USB port and put the drive you want to use for GC loading in the other port

 

[Cyber Akuma]

Nintendont only works with a fat 32 drive. You could either use WiiBackupManager and tell it to split the game iso's into multiple.wbfs files. Or you can use the 500GB drive in one USB port and put the drive you want to use for GC loading in the other port

I know, I said I would be using the FAT32 partition for Nintendon't and the GameCube disk images, and the NTFS partition for USBLoaderGX for Wii disk images.

 

[Baccabechoppin]

I know, I said I would be using the FAT32 partition for Nintendon't and the GameCube disk images, and the NTFS partition for USBLoaderGX for Wii disk images.

Mines just all formatted to FAT32, got no confirmation if it'll work with multiple partitions but couldn't hurt to try!

 

[JoostinOnline]

Why would you ask this on two forums?

 

[Cyber Akuma]

Hmm, by the way, is there any tool that can batch-scrub the data from GC discs? All the ones I can find can only do one at a time.

Why would you ask this on two forums?

To increase the chance I would get answers, a lot of forums have different members.

 

[gburgue]

...
1. Are there any 500GB USB drives out there which can get enough power from a single USB 2.0 port? Almost all the drives are USB 3.0 nowadays, which I know can carry more power than USB 2.0 did. How can I be sure I can find a 500GB USB drive (preferably 2.5 inches or smaller) that the Wii will be able to power on it's own from a single port? (I don't want to have to take up multiple USB ports with a Y-cable) Do you have any recommendations for a drive to use?

2. I used WBFS manager to extract the images I had backed up to my WBFS partition into .wbfs files. Would I just be able to toss these onto the NTFS partition and they would work, or would I need to use some other kind of disk format? I don't want to use .iso since this would balloon the size of many of the games due to the garbage data. I use USBLoaderGX to load my Wii titles.

1. LG External HDD HXD7 500GB USB2.0
2. Just one partition formated to FAT32 cluster size 32K.

 

[Cyber Akuma]

1. LG External HDD HXD7 500GB USB2.0

Does any place still sell these? like I said, all the ones I can find nowadays are USB 3.0