PS1/2 PS2 using 2TB internal HDD

[slaphappygamer]

Oh man, I've got a 300gb drive with hdloader. There are maybe 30 games on there and it takes a good 5 minutes to boot hdloader. I can't imagine how long it would take if I had 1.5 tb of games.

 

[ShaolinAssassin]

@dokrobei : damn weird... lets try something at this step :

reboot to fmcb again
ule 4.43a <--- HERE
mass--fmcbinstaller.elf

Try to run FMCBInstaller.ELF with uLE 4.42d (http://psx-scene.com/forums/attachm...750-unofficial-launchelf-v4-42-ule-v4.42d.zip)

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Oh man, I've got a 300gb drive with hdloader. There are maybe 30 games on there and it takes a good 5 minutes to boot hdloader. I can't imagine how long it would take if I had 1.5 tb of games.

OPL doesn't load so slow if you want to try (https://github.com/ifcaro/Open-PS2-Loader/releases/download/0.9.3/OpenPS2Loader_0.9.3.zip)

 

[slaphappygamer]

I should really update my ps2. The last time I did, I believe the year was 2008.
Also, should I invest in a network adapter with sata? Mine is just ide, the original ps2 network adapter.

 

[mechagouki]

I've browsed through this thread, and I find myself asking "why would you need a 2TB drive in a PS2?". I have a 500GB PATA drive in mine, it works perfectly, it's fast (well under 1 minute to the game list in OPL or HDLoader) and I can't imagine how I'd ever fill it with games actually worth having. To put this in perspective, I have an original XBOX with a 320GB drive in it, and I've spent years collecting all the good XBOX games, plus I have SNES, Genesis, NES, PC Engine emulators and MAME all with full romsets, and there is still space on that drive.

In my mind, the cons of this procedure clearly outweigh the pros:

SATA 2TB = hardware PS2 was not designed for, slow loading, software incompatabilities, redundant space you'll never fill with anything worthwhile and considerably more expense.

PATA 500GB = plug and play hardware, decent load times, solid, tried and tested software support, enough room for every AAA through B- PS2 game and 500GB PATA drives are cheap!

Please understand, I appreciate your work and documentation of this process, but I think people should consider their options before starting down this road.

 

[ShaolinAssassin]

I should really update my ps2. The last time I did, I believe the year was 2008.
Also, should I invest in a network adapter with sata? Mine is just ide, the original ps2 network adapter.

A genuine SONY NA is far better than any clone you could find. Keep it and buy an adapter if you want to use a SATA HDD.

 

[slaphappygamer]

Ok. Well, I haven't filled up my maxtor hdd yet, but I was hoping to get a speed increase with a sata hdd. I'll stick with what I have and try OPL again. Thanks!

 

[dokrobei]

switched ule from the FMCBInstaller package with the one you linked, but still got the same result. :/

 

[morpheous]

................

 

[dokrobei]

hi morpeheous!
have you installed FHDB or just using FMCB? if yes could you tell me wich version of software have you used for your setup?


**UPDATE**

Finally i found the reason I couldn't run anything from the usb..
I remembered that Kingston usb thumbs gave problems. Mine weren't kingston, apperently, but i wanted to check for sure. So i recovered id of usb thumbs and ... they were kingston rebranded. Changed with a PNY and everything worked on first try.
Thanks anyway for your advices, shaolinassassin!

 

[Guilt]

Forget this guide, FMCB and uLE versions that you are using have NOW official 2Tb support...

What on earth is your problem with me?
And for the record, this guide is actually still the best way of doing things as far as I can tell, because wLaunchelf 4.43a doesn't even format the hard drive correctly. It only creates an _mbr partition instead of all the required ones. I don't get why you're so hung up on whether we use officially supported Unofficial Launch Elf or the Doubly Unofficial Launch Elf versus an unofficial branch of Unofficial Launch Elf. I thought I made it clear in the first post that all I intended to do was to explain a method that I've found to work reliably and with few problems, not that there's some perfect way of doing this and that I have it. At the very least I still haven't seen anyone else put together any guide on this subject.

</rant>

Oh man, I've got a 300gb drive with hdloader. There are maybe 30 games on there and it takes a good 5 minutes to boot hdloader. I can't imagine how long it would take if I had 1.5 tb of games.

I wonder if HDLoader is slower? To get from power on to OPL takes me about 60 seconds, maybe slightly more, after about 600 game installs. I think some of this actually has to do with my spin-up time, but the inner workings of all this is a mystery to me.



Now that I've been playing games on OPL long enough to fill my memory cards I find myself looking for a solution to backup memory card data to my PC. You can use FTP to backup folders to your PC but they are all named BASLUSXXXXX or the like to match their disc names, so you need to refer to something like OPL Manager to figure out what is what. There are a few programs that allow you to visualize these folders as they show up in the Ps2's browser but they're mostly designed around editing files for emulation.

I've found that when using Ps2Net in the Misc section of LaunchElf, the most useful FTP program to use is actually Total Commander. It is the only one I've had 100% success rate with so far. Flashfxp may have more nice features, but it seems to only connect to the Ps2 about 1/4 times I attempt to.

 

[Decoryah]

Anyone with near full 2TB of games in OPL have a problem launching HDDManager from "uLE 2TB edition"? Mine gets stuck and never opens up anymore. It worked just fine when I formatted and partitioned hdd the first time. I wonder if it because of too full hdd now. I would like to resize my OPL partition to make it bigger. Is there any other way?

 

[morpheous]

Resuming this project. I now own a Phat PS2 with a DMS4 pro modchip installed. I'm curious to find out if the Toxic OS will see 2TB worth of games on my 2TB hdd. I wonder what happened to the original poster's attempt at trying to make a iso batch feature for HDL_Dumb.

 

[morpheous]

..........

 

[Nonterraqueous]

@ GUILT

Hey mate - I registered on this site just to post this message of thanks for your work and guide - I was pulling my hair out for about three days trying to get my 2Tb 'ex-Sky box' hdd fitted and working and now I have, after thankfully coming across your guide which appeared on a Google search page. I know you're aware of some issues so I'll try not to repeat them through gnashing teeth lol. I'll just let you know how I am doing so far based on your guide and information!

So far I got the 2Tb fitted, formatted - I followed your advice on partitions/folders and FreeHDDBoot. The drive is a Hitachi, and the drive is connected using a cheapo Gamestar SATA non-network hdd adapter, although it's also tested and working exactly the same using a Gamestar IDE adapter with Sata converter (although you can't get it inside the machine with that haha)

I've got a large collection of around 570 PAL original titles all ripped using three separate PCs (at the same time) using three instances of IMGBURN - It took about 30 hours to do this lulz.

As I was transferring the iso files to the hdd using HDL Dump GUI Helper, I needed to transfer games over as I was ripping them so it was a pretty intense project as I was glued to my computer for about 3 hours each evening over the course of three weeks, and each evening I ran routine tests of the drive and OPL etc to make sure things were showing up. ****When I had used about 1.3Gb of the hdd, Hddmanager would no longer run.**** I didn't realise this was something that would cause an issue later on so I carried on filling up the drive for a few days - with other ISO files I've 'collected' over the years, I'm now on to about 1.8Gb in use with a total of 660 titles, and probably room for another 100-150.

From switch-on, with OPL autobooting using FHDB, it takes about 40 seconds each time to get to the actual OPL HDD games list up on the screen - not a bad wait unless you're a persistent 'game hopper'. Game loading times are as fast as they are with a smaller drive but IGR obviously then takes 40 or more seconds to return you to the game list.

My main issue now, is the folder size set for the OPL folder - 2Gb? ...it's not going to be big enough to be able to use ART fully AND VMC, if I were to go to the extreme of creating an 8Mb VMC for each game. Although the chances of me ever getting to play more than half of these games are slim to none (there was some rubbish released, we're all guilty of owning, lets face it ) and as HDDManager is no longer functioning there is now only one way to increase the size of the OPL folder as far as I can tell - that is to delete up to a Terabyte of my ISO files just to see if it gets HDDManager to start working. I'm extremely unlikely to do this unless a program allowing batch-selecting of files to transfer appears. HDL Dump GUI Helper is the best program I've found for copying files to and from the 2Tb drive, but seriously, without a batch-select option, selecting individual files to move one way or the other is just PAINFUL.

Here's hoping an update for HDL Dump is released in the future with the extra features, now 2Tb internals are becoming more well-known on the PS2 scene.

So, I'm fairly happy and thanks to GUILT!

Oh, and for the people who say there is no point having a drive this big as there are not enough good games to fill it - I have done this because I can, and it's FUN!

 

[Nonterraqueous]

Hi - for anyone interested, I’ve now come up with a piss easy way to create massive HDL Dump job lists automatically - this will be of great interest to everyone

 

[Alterator]

Hi everyone,
Just signed up, specifically to bring this thread back to life a bit I'm about to embark on this setup, I have all of the hardware ready. But the one thing that I have not found info about, is booting from a memory card vs. booting from the HDD. I have a memory card ready to go, and another tutorial (for a smaller size HDD) on Youtube said that booting from the card is much faster than from the HDD.

I'm planning on filling up the 2TB with games, my question is: has anyone tried using a card to boot everything up? Stick with FMCB on the card, set it to automatically load OPL from the card (I think you can do this?), and then see the games. Does it speed anything up, or slow down, or something else? I'm not worried about running out of memory card space - I have a second card available, and I won't end up with too many save games on there, I don't usually keep them for long after beating the game.

Any info would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

 

[slaphappygamer]

I wonder if HDLoader is slower? To get from power on to OPL takes me about 60 seconds, maybe slightly more, after about 600 game installs. I think some of this actually has to do with my spin-up time, but the inner workings of all this is a mystery to me.

I reformatted my drive and reinstalled everything. Hdloader loads great. Under a minute, for sure.

 

[XC-3730C]

Slightly off topic, but to anyone setting up a 2TB HDD for their PS2 - what games are you guys filling it up with?

 

[slaphappygamer]

Slightly off topic, but to anyone setting up a 2TB HDD for their PS2 - what games are you guys filling it up with?

I believe the aim is to have all games.

 

[Alterator]

Hi everyone,
Just signed up, specifically to bring this thread back to life a bit I'm about to embark on this setup, I have all of the hardware ready. But the one thing that I have not found info about, is booting from a memory card vs. booting from the HDD. I have a memory card ready to go, and another tutorial (for a smaller size HDD) on Youtube said that booting from the card is much faster than from the HDD.

I'm planning on filling up the 2TB with games, my question is: has anyone tried using a card to boot everything up? Stick with FMCB on the card, set it to automatically load OPL from the card (I think you can do this?), and then see the games. Does it speed anything up, or slow down, or something else? I'm not worried about running out of memory card space - I have a second card available, and I won't end up with too many save games on there, I don't usually keep them for long after beating the game.

Any info would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Just bumping my original question, as I am probably going to start on this in a week or so. Thank you!