Homebrew Roms on a HDD

[rapol]

I have the emulators stored on my SD card, as well as some ROMs, but I was wondering if there is a way I can store them on my HDD instead, since my SD card is not to large.

 

[PsyBlade]

yes, some of them can
create a fat32 partition and put them in the same location as on the card to try

 

[lucor001]

I was interested in the same thing and opened a similar thread not too long ago:

http://gbatemp.net/t...ut-usb-support/

I can tell you the ones I personally have tried to use on USB HDD and had success with (this should be a pretty recent list as I don't think things have changed too much recently):
Wii2600
WiiMednafen
WiiColEm
UAEWii
frodo
VectrexWii
O2em
blueMSX
FCEUltraGX
Snes9xGX
Wii64
Genesis Plus
Wii7800 (after my very slight modifications - in the thread above)
JzintvWii (ditto)

This is not a complete list as I didn't try every emulator out there, only the ones I had interest in.
As PsyBlade mentions, a lot of emulators work just fine if you put the files in the same directory on the HDD as SD card. Here is the directory structure for test roms I used on the HDD, some because it needed it, others because it was convenient (and the emulator supported browsing for files):

/genplus/roms/
/MSX/Games/MSX1/
/MSX/Games/MSX2/
/snes9xgx/roms/
/vec/
/wii64/roms/
/wii2600/roms/
/wiicolem/roms/
/wiimednafen/roms/Game Boy/
/wiimednafen/roms/Game Gear/
/wiimednafen/roms/Lynx/
/wiimednafen/roms/Master System/
/wiimednafen/roms/Neo Geo Pocket/
/wiimednafen/roms/NES/
/wiimednafen/roms/PC Engine/
/wiimednafen/roms/VIrtual Boy/
/wiimednafen/roms/WonderSwan
/roms/romsodd/
/frodo/images/
/uae/floppies/Games/
/uae/roms/
/wii7800/roms/
/jzintvWii/roms/
/apps/
Note, I also put all of my apps on the HDD as well (/apps folder of course).

 

[the_randomizer]

Just be aware that Snes9x doesn't work well on Western Digital HDDs (random lockups), other emulators work just fine.

 

[ShinyLatios]

Just be aware that Snes9x doesn't work well on Western Digital HDDs (random lockups), other emulators work just fine.

I disagree, my WD HDD works just fine with Snes9x

 

[the_randomizer]

Weird, as I've asked dborth (and numerous others) about the random code dumps, but to no avail, and he has he same HDD (fat32) as me. Funky indeed.

 

[lucor001]

I have a 500GB WD Passport (Elements, I think) formatted FAT32 and it seems to work fine in Snes9X without any problems (or any other emulator for that matter). Did you have issues consistently? Maybe I haven't used Snes9X enough? Although, I've probably logged a couple hundred hours on this drive using Snes9X... I've never done anything funny with timing or whatnot. The only issue I have is that sometimes (very rarely) it doesn't read the drive at all when the Wii is turned on, so I don't even see anything in the Homebrew Channel (all apps on USB) - but a reboot fixes it every time.

One thing I have noted, that may or may not be related, is that it seems like on some PCs I have trouble with the drive powering up. It is completely reproducible with the same Port (and maybe cable, not sure) but a different port on the same PC will allow the drive to spin up properly. The only theory I've got is that the +5V on the USB port gets pulled down due to the spin-up (maybe the caps on the board are too small?) and thus the inrush current causes the motor controller to flag a low supply fault and the drive shuts down, only to retry over and over. I've never seen this on my Wii (it's noticeable as there's a "click" when the arm parks after failing to load) so I don't think its necessarily related.

Have you ever taken a look at the S.M.A.R.T. logs on the drive after you've had issues? There's a ton of great data collected for S.M.A.R.T. that might reveal a clue to your issues. It would tell you if there's anything wrong with the drive worth noting - now only having issues in 1 emulator likely doesn't indicate a drive problem, but you never know.

 

[the_randomizer]

I do have the SMART utility but that's the only thing I never considered testing out. Does it matter if the boot file has the .dol or .elf extension or whether or not I boot from the HBC or a channel forwarder? Heck, I've even gone as far as backing necessary data up, reformatting the HDD, putting it back on with a fresh .xml (yes, the no_ios_reload line was deleted) but it still crashes randomly, whether right as a ROM loads, in the middle of a game, or in the emulator menu. Why? I don't know. Everything else runs just fine, even dborth's other emulators. Should I create a thread with more details?

 

[lucor001]

I can tell you that I load a .dol from the /apps directory to load Snes9x via the HomeBrew Browser. Based on your description, I think it would not be a HDD issue. This is mostly because you describe crashes in the middle of a game - maybe I'm wrong, but I thought the emulator loaded the entire ROM into memory right away, and should not need anything else from the HDD after that. Without looking a lot more, my only thought is that maybe the emulator does periodically store data onto the drive - but I'm betting Snes9X uses the same file handling libraries as most others. You can create a new thread if you like, I'm not sure I can tell you much more though. If you've got info out of the SMART tools you need help interpreting, feel free to PM me.

 

[the_randomizer]

To my understanding, yes, ROMs do either partially or fully load into Mem2 (at least with Wii64), so you're right about that. What strikes me as weird is that this is the only program I have that has this instability. Will create a new thread.

Edit 12:11PM

I had the firmware installed with WD Smartware, is there a way to get/find the diagnostics log (if that's what you were talking about)?

 

[Hielkenator]

Using WD Elements 500GB and 1TB to store all roms for the emu's never had a single problem..
Where did you get that info?

I think WD Elements are the most compatible drives with Wii.

 

[snkjulz]

I recently got back into wii gaming, bought a new wii and a 500gig WD portable and it works fine with snes, n64, genesis but not wiisx
it refuses to work with wiisx its really annoying me that it works fine with all emulators and backup loaders but not wiisx
thinking of buying a SDHC cause its annoying me that bad >

 

[stomp_442]

I recently got back into wii gaming, bought a new wii and a 500gig WD portable and it works fine with snes, n64, genesis but not wiisx
it refuses to work with wiisx its really annoying me that it works fine with all emulators and backup loaders but not wiisx
thinking of buying a SDHC cause its annoying me that bad ><

Have you tried using the usb port 1 for WiiSX backups, of course launching WiiSX from HBC 1.0.8 or a forwarder with IOS58 and AHBPROT support.

 

[snkjulz]

would that be the other port further away from the edge
anyway thanks for the reply i just bought a cheap SDHC 8gig $9