Hardware Recommended hard-drive options

[GeekyGuy]

I successfully softmodded my back-up Wii, and I have been fooling around with various things and acquainting myself with the homebrew scene in general. I would now like to purchase a hard drive for use with Uloader, but I want to make sure I purchase something with a good track record of working with the Wii and homebrew. Please recommend some devices within a reasonable price range -- nothing too extravagant.

Thanks

 

[Mesiskope]

Western Digital?
2 TB for around $200

 

[Moonkeeper]

I second Western Digital. I've never had a problem with them.

 

[Haloman800]

Whatever you do, make sure you get one that doesn't also require being plugged into an electrical outlet.. I made that horrible mistake.

Check the box for a little symbol, if it needs one it'll have a symbol with it.

1TB western digital.

p.s. everyone's recommended Western Digital, which I also second. They also make some that don't require a plug in outlet, if you get one, make sure you get that kind.

 

[Deleted User]

If You don't need a 1tb Hard Drive for wii games, check this out.

Western Digital 120 GB External, 30 Dollars with Free shipping from newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136606

Since my 500 gb broke I bought one of these, and it holds all my games just fine with no problems, you can also read the things people on newegg say about it with wii backup loading.

 

[Bladexdsl]

2 TB is just a complete waste of $ for a wii you are NEVER going to have that many games installed i got 10 on mine there aren't really that many games worth keeping on the wii most of it is kiddy crap SW a wii game takes most of the time only 2gb space installed. i got a wd mypassport 320gb never had 1 problem with it, works on all loaders and even with emulation. and it just plugs into the usb port no extra power supply needed.

 

[GeekyGuy]

If You don't need a 1tb Hard Drive for wii games, check this out.

Western Digital 120 GB External, 30 Dollars with Free shipping from newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136606

Since my 500 gb broke I bought one of these, and it holds all my games just fine with no problems, you can also read the things people on newegg say about it with wii backup loading.

Thanks, guys, but yeah, I think you're speaking my language. I definitely don't need a friggin' TB of HDD space.

And great minds must think alike, because I actually checked that one out. I was mainly wanting to make sure that whatever I got was compatible with the Wii when using uLoader. I also saw a Seagate (250 GB) for a little more.

So, there's no real issues, though, in terms with compatibility?

 

[Bladexdsl]

i've never experienced 1 bit of incompatibility with my WD drive

 

[Am0s]

Whatever you do, make sure you get one that doesn't also require being plugged into an electrical outlet.. I made that horrible mistake.

Check the box for a little symbol, if it needs one it'll have a symbol with it.

1TB western digital.

p.s. everyone's recommended Western Digital, which I also second. They also make some that don't require a plug in outlet, if you get one, make sure you get that kind.

why would you say a one powered by the mains is worse is it because of electrical interference?

the 2.5"hdd will be powered by the wii (usb) but I worry about that mainly because the hdd is taking power from the wii which could cause damage to the wii and or hdd or both if there isn't enough power to go round.

 

[koji2009]

Whoever invented that silly story was either on drugs or had no idea how things work... You can cause absolutely no damage to your wii using a drive powered by the USB... Unless of course you have a faulty wired drive, in which case it could still break your wii or drive even if it's not power by the USB (crossing wires is always a bad thing, but incredibly uncommon)


TLDR: You can't break your wii from a USB powered drive.

(edit) Slightly longer read... The Wii's USB ports meet USB 2.0 specifications, that includes the power requirements. Worrying about a USB powered device breaking your wii would be the same as worrying if a USB powered device would break your PC... Both meet the same standards and both function exactly as they should... If nintendo wasn't even going to bother with standards, it would have just developed it's own proprietary port for accessories to plug into instead of opting for standard USB.

 

[Am0s]

Whoever invented that silly story was either on drugs or had no idea how things work... You can cause absolutely no damage to your wii using a drive powered by the USB... Unless of course you have a faulty wired drive, in which case it could still break your wii or drive even if it's not power by the USB (crossing wires is always a bad thing, but incredibly uncommon)


TLDR: You can't break your wii from a USB powered drive.

(edit) Slightly longer read... The Wii's USB ports meet USB 2.0 specifications, that includes the power requirements. Worrying about a USB powered device breaking your wii would be the same as worrying if a USB powered device would break your PC... Both meet the same standards and both function exactly as they should... If nintendo wasn't even going to bother with standards, it would have just developed it's own proprietary port for accessories to plug into instead of opting for standard USB.

Its not a story from someone who is on drugs or does it come from who knows nothing how things work, The fact of the issue is, it is not the USB ports I am worried about, it is the wii PSU and how much the 2.5 hdd is drawing from that PSU.

While you say USB devices cant hurt a pc well your wrong there, mainly because each device draws power from the PSU and if amount of power being used from the PSU is greater of what the PSU can handle you will get instability, shutdowns and startups of the device which CAN cause damage to the PC or device.

As far as I can see nintendo don't sell hard drives for the wii so that brings my attention to that the wii is not designed to use an usb powered external hdd, so there for if the PSU is enough to power itself but you add more amps to the equation you might experience crash dumps, hdd spin up and down or you may also experience hardware failure.

I am using my experiences as a PC engineer and a tech support agent where I have come across this issue once or twice, as the wii has a PSU and has USB ports and in that way is similar to PCs and MAC's with connecting devices I would assume that the same argument applies here.

Maybe someone else who knows the inner workings of the wii can shed any light here as the above poster doesn't help any, I know what the quick fix for this would be and that would a be a mains powered USB hub, So if anyone else can shed any light here would be a help.

 

[chop]

So are mains powered HDD a Problem then?

 

[koji2009]

Again... Nintendo designed the hardware to be USB 2.0 compliant, or else they wouldn't put the USB 2.0 ports on the device... They could just as easily have made a proprietary connection, and yes the worry about it is completely non-sensicle and stupid. USB ports are designed for 5 volts and a set amperage (forget what off the top of my head). The fact that there are 2 there means nintendo (if it didn't have anything concrete planned) had at least something in mind when it put them on.

To say a hardware engineer sat there and went "Let's put USB ports on the device, but not enough power to run them" would not only be stupid, but essentially retarded. It would be on the most basic of the Wii's power diagrams. The fact that there hasn't been a single (valid and confirmed) case of a USB powered drive breaking the Wii is proof enough of that.

Your arguement is that this happens in PCs, and indeed in the rare cases that someone buys a power supply that can run a full system but can't handle 1-2 USB devices extra does happen... but the Wii isn't some run of the mill computer put together with junk parts (IE a Dell), it's a very proprietary and set system... The electrical engineers would not have okayed a design where the power supply would be over drawn by systems that meet USB 2.0 compliance.

 

[Am0s]

To say a hardware engineer sat there and went "Let's put USB ports on the device, but not enough power to run them" would not only be stupid, but essentially retarded. It would be on the most basic of the Wii's power diagrams.

atm usb keyboards camera and a few other devices connect to the wii officially from nintendo but nothing about hdd, and hdd use alot more power than a keyboards or cameras.

QUOTEYour arguement is that this happens in PCs, and indeed in the rare cases that someone buys a power supply that can run a full system but can't handle 1-2 USB devices extra does happen... but the Wii isn't some run of the mill computer put together with junk parts (IE a Dell), it's a very proprietary and set system... The electrical engineers would not have okayed a design where the power supply would be over drawn by systems that meet USB 2.0 compliance.

yes I have seen a few examples of this where the overload has caused damage to the device and or computer, and its purely down to mA, if you plug a devices into the wii and its powered by the wii then your taking power away from it as the same as a pc or any other system that has USB.

Who's to say that these people switch on their wii and get the "system file is corrupted message" or their disc drive stops reading discs, or I have read about people have to switch their wii on and off 10 - 20 times to get it to work, these could be because of power issues corrupting the nand files for example.

the other example was a power conflict on a where the hdd was on the same power lead as a hdd and there wasn't enough power to go round, basically you could hear both devices powering up and powering down and eventually the cdrom drive failed to work after that, so that to contribute to people's wii not reading dvd's anymore, the problem is these devices have moving parts and if there isn't enough power then damage will occur, I am no electrical engineer and I don't know how much the wii takes from the PSU to keep running and how much is spare and I don't think nintendo calculated for USB powered hdd they would of sold them surely.

I see where your coming from and yes there is not any such reported case, I dont even know if anyone has looked into this at all or associated their problems with power issues, although the wii does have 2 USB ports and are 2.0 compliant, the engineers would not of set the wii to handle any other devices to connect to the wii other than what they currently sell, because we all hacked our wii's and a few people managed to let us use usb hdd on the wii, whats to say that these usb powered hdd are actually overloading the wii's internal power system.

 

[azorpatch]

Get a western digital.

I have a 250GB laptop HDD inside an enclosure and it works perfectly.

 

[Deleted User]

If You don't need a 1tb Hard Drive for wii games, check this out.

Western Digital 120 GB External, 30 Dollars with Free shipping from newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136606

Since my 500 gb broke I bought one of these, and it holds all my games just fine with no problems, you can also read the things people on newegg say about it with wii backup loading.

Thanks, guys, but yeah, I think you're speaking my language. I definitely don't need a friggin' TB of HDD space.

And great minds must think alike, because I actually checked that one out. I was mainly wanting to make sure that whatever I got was compatible with the Wii when using uLoader. I also saw a Seagate (250 GB) for a little more.

So, there's no real issues, though, in terms with compatibility?

No problems what so ever with that drive, I even have a split partition for my PS3 movies, Its really sturdy too.

 

[Lacius]

I have a 2TB Western Digital I bought off Amazon for around $110, and it works perfectly. My Wii game backups take up an insignificant amount of space, but I also use it for movies and television shows. I have around 200GB left on it. I couldn't imagine going back to my old 1TB Western Digital, which also worked very well.

 

[smartybones]

Just to throw a cat among the pigeons....

I have lost count of the number of wiis I have set up for people with a hard drive and USB loader. I generaly get the hard drive that is best value for money, sometimes its a self powered drive and others it has its own PSU.. not a sigle drive has had any problems.

the machines get stressed tested, by copying the original games over to the hard drive one after the other.. running the hard drive and the DVD at the same time will top out the maximum power draw from the wii psu. I usually spend around 4 hours copying disks over to the HDD)

again, never had a problem.

My personal prefrence is western digital elements drives desktop drives. They have a low power setting that the drive goes into when it has not been accessed for a while. currently on sale in pcworld (uk) for £49.99 for a terrabyte drive.

and a final point, a hard drive powered via usb will draw less power than the internal wii DVD drive would while playing a game.

as for size of drive, I would go for a minimum of 320GB up to 1TB. Any less and you end up having to delete games to make room for more, also, you can use the space to watch downloaded movies on your TV via the wii....

 

[spotanjo3]

If You don't need a 1tb Hard Drive for wii games, check this out.

Western Digital 120 GB External, 30 Dollars with Free shipping from newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136606

Since my 500 gb broke I bought one of these, and it holds all my games just fine with no problems, you can also read the things people on newegg say about it with wii backup loading.

I have Western Digital 500 GB External for 50 dollars at Wal Mart. It was last one in the stock and no longer available. I was so fortunately to have it and now I have two. WD 320gb and 500gb.

 

[brausm08]

all this talk about getting the most GB for your money....

this is the season for savings....for example: on black friday i bought two WD750GB portable elements HDDs for $35 each and one Seagate 1TB FreeAgent Go portable for $55 (Staples)....on the day before thanksgiving, i bought a 1.5TB WD Elements (non portable) for $60 (equivalent) from NewEgg which is currenty selling for $75 on Dell SB (still a bargain)....

so...no more talk about 2TB for $200 or 120GB for $30.....just keep you eyes open, and keep these two websites in your back pocket:
dealnews.com and slickdeals.net....throw techbargains.com in there for good measure....

check them daily and before you know it, you'll more than enough HDD space for everything for cheaper than you thought possible....

BTW, 2TB is not too much space...you can format it FAT32 and use it for more than just the wii.... or you can also put movie files on them and watch them using WiiMC or MPlayerCE....some things to keep in mind.