Hacking Portable hard drive VS flash drive

[brandon916]

Currently I have my wii u titles (and all the other inject games like GC/Wii) on my portable hard drive. Has anyone swap that out with a 1tb USB flash drive? Since they are getting so cheap, is it easy to simply plug in a 1tb flash drive, format, n copy them over? Will a flash drive work the same and what speed should I get? Thanks.

 

[MikaDubbz]

i'm curious as to what the answer to this is. My understanding is that flash drives will be quicker to die, especially as they can exist by being plugged into just one USB port, instead of needing a Y-cable to draw power from 2 ports. But I'm not sure how true that is, I feel like I've only seen people be positive about such a setup with the Wii U, and if it does indeed work that well I too might consider making the change, as I really could use that extra port opened for my Guitar Hero Live controller dongle since my front 2 ports are utilized by the Gamecube controllers adapter. Would be great to have everything plugged in at once without ever having to swap out what's in specific USB ports.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Currently I have my wii u titles (and all the other inject games like GC/Wii) on my portable hard drive. Has anyone swap that out with a 1tb USB flash drive? Since they are getting so cheap, is it easy to simply plug in a 1tb flash drive, format, n copy them over? Will a flash drive work the same and what speed should I get? Thanks.

I have heard that the Wii U will kill flash drives quickly if you leave them plugged in as it's accessing them all the time even in sleep mode. Might be FUD though, not sure.

 

[AmandaRose]

I have heard that the Wii U will kill flash drives quickly if you leave them plugged in as it's accessing them all the time even in sleep mode. Might be FUD though, not sure.

Its true that is why when BOTW came out nintendo issued a statement not to use flash drives if you downloaded the game from the eshop. Botw is constantly writing to the storage as you play the game. All ither wiiu games do this as well just not as constant as botw.

A flash drive is designed to be constantly read from but not constantly written to. Whereas a HDD is designed to be constantly read and written from.

Constantly writing to a flash drive will massively reduce its life span.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Its true that is why when BOTW came out nintendo issued a statement not to use flash drives if you downloaded the game from the eshop. Botw is constantly writing to the storage as you play the game. All ither wiiu games do this as well just not as constant as botw.

A flash drive is designed to be constantly read from but not constantly written to. Whereas a HDD is designed to be constantly read and written from.

Constantly writing to a flash drive will massively reduce its life span.

Makes me wonder though what the hell it's writing when it's in sleep mode. It's just game data, so there should be no need for it to write to the flash drive except when you're downloading games, or you save in game.

 

[CMDreamer]

USB flash drives are not you option if you want your games to last longer. A portable HDD is way more reliable.

 

[brandon916]

USB flash drives are not you option if you want your games to last longer. A portable HDD is way more reliable.

Thank you for this info. Was about to buy a 1tb flash drive for black Friday but not anymore. I'll look into buying another hard drive to back up my current one in case it dies. Thanks again.

 

[RHOPKINS13]

I prefer to use a full-size external hard drive. I have two 2TB Western Digital EasyShare hard drives plugged into mine, one for Wii U games, and one for Wii games and homebrew. It works great, the drives have their own separate power connection, and my front ports are still free for the gamecube adapter and/or other accessories.