USB Loading is slow as hell. And you need to use USBUtil to put the games on your FAT32 formatted HDD. Since it's a slim, i recommend looking into network loading as that's faster than USB Loading. Oh and yes you could use your portable HDD for that too, but just any HDD, no matter what filesystem you are using will work(for network loading!).
PS: When loading via network, the games need to be in the USBUtil format as well. In the latest betas, there's .iso support for network loading, but you need to compile that yourself...
Just got the USBUtil 2.1. When I have the ISOs on the FAT32 formatted drive, can I load them with Open Loader?
Also, how does the network loading work? I thought that you need a network adapter for PS2 (which I don't have, and never will probably).
Didn't you say you have the latest ps2 model? Only the V# numbers tell me something. If your ps2 has a network port, you can use the network loading. You need to create a share with the name PS2SMB, and allow the Guest access to it(or in case of WinXp, just as usual). Then in Open PS2, you give your ps2 an IP adress that's free, put in the IP address of your router(or the PC if the ps2 is directly connected to the PC), the IP address of your PC and it should work. In the PS2SMB share, you need the .isos is the USBUtil format when you use the 0.7 version.
PS: You might need the latest beta or else your modchip messes everything up. Alternatively, you can disable your modchip when loading Open PS2 Loader
If you're into some coding, compile the latest OPL (rev444) by Crazyc you can find the source
here. Compile it with VMC activated.
Just a notice: the compiled versions (betas) may not be distributed freely, they are only for your own testing purposes.
There's a very simple an easy method to compile OPL beta's by yoshi314 but you have to do some reading
here and you have to use some Linux commands.
I prefer Yoshi's method because it's a very small package about
82MB packed
(7zip) and it runs on the latest
virtualbox.
You can do 2 important things with CrazyC's version of OPL:
1. Run games in .iso format from your shared network-drive.
2. Use a virtual memory card on your shared network-drive.
And the compatibility rate of this build is very high
QUOTE
Setting a Sharename:
1. Select the Folder or Drive letter (if using a whole drive) where your installed PS2 games are located on your PC.
2. Right-click it and choose "Sharing and Security". (sharing a drive will prompt a warning first about the risks of sharing it over a network)
3. In Network Sharing and Security, place a mark in the box for "Share this folder on the network", then give the "Share Name" the name PS2SMB (default name) or any name you want, but must also match the OPS2LD network configuration.
Now your PC is setup to share your games with your console, click the Settings Icon above, then the Network Icon in its submenu to configure OPL to your network's IP/share settings.
(Windows: choose Start - run - cmd - ipconfig /all - use the ipadress that shows up here.)
Games:
Games installed as ISO files need a correct filename, after which you store them in the subfolder "CD" or "DVD" depending on the disc type of the original game.
You need to have the game's product code as a prefix, example
SLPS_250.88.FFX.ISO (look at the bold part which ends with a dot!)
Now you can play your games from the networkdrive!