Hacking New to Wii U hacking, looking for any recommended portable hard drives

[kumikochan]

But by drawing 2 much power from a usb port causes it 2 burn out after a while wich it sometimes does in some cases. It's always better to use a powered case

 

[MichiS97]

I've been using a Western Digital My Passport Essential ever since I got my Wii in 2009, has never disappointed me

 

[ImmortalShadow]

Oooor. Have a hard drive laying around, buy a $10 USB dock for it. Buying a nice expensive USB 3.0 HDD is useless. Just use a normal HDD in a USB 2.0 reader.

It is useless because the wii u is usb 2.0, but if your computer is 3.0 games will transfer pretty fast.

 

[Quicksilver88]

I have actually been using USB3 thumbdrives for a while. I used a 128GB until recently and then got a 256gb for $40 around black Friday. This works pretty well as I use a 64gb card in the SD slot for some loadiine content as well as devolution and a dozen or so GC games, and then have a 400GB portable drive I use for my Wii content. I like the thumb drives because they add nothing the footprint and only require one usb port to power. I have done plenty of speed testing and a fast thumb drive produces the same type of load times as an SSD. Essentially on WiiU the bottleneck is the USB2 interface. You aren't going to get more than about 30mbit/sec no matter what you use.

 

[Wiifannewbie]

I know this is such as old topic to even write, but I do need answer for these questions. First of all, is there matter of a type, I mean powered or "original" type of hdd, and It's size. I have western digital's 500gb hdd, this hdd is purpose to use with modding my Wii U. And it has own source of power, but I do believe It's not matter, but I need to confirm this.

I read that ssd is not recommended, is that true? And I apologize for my bad english because I'm a native finnish.

 

[Deleted member 388531]

I know this is such as old topic to even write, but I do need answer for these questions. First of all, is there matter of a type, I mean powered or "original" type of hdd, and It's size. I have western digital's 500gb hdd, this hdd is purpose to use with modding my Wii U. And it has own source of power, but I do believe It's not matter, but I need to confirm this.

I read that ssd is not recommended, is that true? And I apologize for my bad english because I'm a native finnish.

Could use one, but the price increase isn't worth the slightly increased R/W speeds over an HDD.

 

[RHOPKINS13]

It's a bit of a pain to set up, but I highly recommend sticking with external "Desktop" hard drives instead of portables. You can get two, one for Wii U content and one for vWii content. If you use desktop drives that have their own power supply, you won't need to use Y cables. If you use UStealth on your vWii drive, you can actually leave both drives plugged in simultaneously. Use the ports in the back, and you'll still have the two ports in the front to use with the Wii U GC Adapter.

 

[Wiifannewbie]

Also just thinking, using an external hard drive that uses own power should be thanked by the console itself because then it does not stress the motherboard. Is there anything more I should know before modding my console? Anything? Thanks for answers this far!

 

[DaBronze9774]

Could use one, but the price increase isn't worth the slightly increased R/W speeds over an HDD.

Another option is a hybrid drive. You can by a platter-type hard disk that has SSD for cache. The drive will automatically take your most used files and access them quicker as your develop habits using it.

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It's a bit of a pain to set up, but I highly recommend sticking with external "Desktop" hard drives instead of portables. You can get two, one for Wii U content and one for vWii content. If you use desktop drives that have their own power supply, you won't need to use Y cables. If you use UStealth on your vWii drive, you can actually leave both drives plugged in simultaneously. Use the ports in the back, and you'll still have the two ports in the front to use with the Wii U GC Adapter.

Reading this thread I still am not sure why I can't use a portable usb hard drive that doesn't have a separate power cable. I modded my wii and had no issues using a hdd with no additional power. I assume it's because it has to be on as soon as the wiiu turns on - is that accurate?

Thanks to everyone's help on this thread and the entire forum!!!!