Hacking SSD vs Magnetic HDD for Wii U

[despicableme]

Do you guys think it makes sense to get a 1tb SSD with a dock for external storage on the WII U for a more reliable solution?


Its between a 1tb SSD for $100 and a 2tb 5400rpm HDD for $54.

I had my previous Wii homebrewed and the external disk died recently. That got me thinking an SSD might be worth it for reliability and marginally faster load times despite the USB 2.0 bottleneck. Although, I don't know how durable my used Wii U system is be to begin with, and I suppose I could clone the WII U external drive this time in case of failures?

Anybody have a recommendation out of personal experience?

Also, any thoughts between 128gb and 256gb SD card for emulators and anything else an SD card might be useful for?

Thanks for the help, still reading and learning.

 

[Deleted User]

My suggestion would be to split the difference, and go for a 7200RPM hard drive. A little more expensive than the 5400 drive, but still cheaper than the SSD.

Faster is better, but with a 2TB drive, you've got plenty of space for other things too.

 

[Wuigi]

The Wii U only support USB 2.0 so the speed you will get from an SSD would be the same as from an HDD.
It caps around 30 or 40 MB/s so it's better to take an HDD.

 

[despicableme]

Thanks, I'm aware that even a 5400rpm hard drive would be bottle necked by USB 2.0.

I'm more thinking about reliability. Since the Wii u has no moving parts beside the fan, I'm guessing it would outlast a Magnetic disk unless the game pad breaks....

If I went with a spinning hard disk and have all the games and injects on it, and setup the way I want; would cloning software work to backup an image of the drive? IE, would anything with the file structure be lost in translation?

I just don't want to have to set it all up again if the hard disk takes a crap. Like, with the Wii, I didn't even bother to set it up with a new drive. I just bought an $80 Wii U at gamestop.

 

[Wuigi]

@despicableme If you dump the seeprom and otp of your Wii U, you can dump all contents of the HDD to your PC.
The program is called wfs-extract for windows and if you use a linux distro you can even mount the HDD with wfs-fuse.
You can copy files to a Wii U encrypted drive as well with wfs-inject so you could make a backup drive in theory.
I haven't tried if this works though.

 

[despicableme]

Thanks Wuigi, Since I'm a noob, wfs-extract is currently over my head without a tutorial. Is it cloning software?

If so, would standard cloning software work to backup an image of the FAT32 Wii U drive, once I get it setup the way I want?

Just want to make sure there is a simple way to backup the whole Wii U drive in case it dies. Thanks

 

[Wuigi]

@despicableme wfs-extract only extracts normal decrypted files and directories from the Wii U HDD, so an image to restore can't be created from them.
You could make a raw dump of the Wii U HDD with dd on linux or similar 3rd party solutions on windows.
The resulting image would be way bigger and if anything of it would get corrupted, the whole file would be worthless.
The FAT32 mocha cfw support for HDDs is really rudimentary and unstable so rather stick to the official wii u encrypted drives.

 

[despicableme]

I get it now, it's a proprietary file system.

So, basically, if the drive dies you have to go through the process of using a tool like WUP installer GX2 to reload everything off an SD card or wfs_extracts to get files off the Wii U drive....

In that case. Do you know if the Teconmoon tool will let you save Wiivc games to a PC hard drive instead of an SD card.

That way, at least I could have all the Wii U and Wiivc games backed up to a folder on the PC hard drive, in case I need to rebuild the Wii U hard drive in the future. Thanks again.

 

[Feffe]

I get it now, it's a proprietary file system.

So, basically, if the drive dies you have to go through the process of using a tool like WUP installer GX2 to reload everything off an SD card or wfs_extracts to get files off the Wii U drive....

In that case. Do you know if the Teconmoon tool will let you save Wiivc games to a PC hard drive instead of an SD card.

That way, at least I could have all the Wii U and Wiivc games backed up to a folder on the PC hard drive, in case I need to rebuild the Wii U hard drive in the future. Thanks again.

Yes, you can save them on your PC HD.

 

[despicableme]

Thanks Feffe. That's good to know

 

[MrBerzerk]

Thanks, I'm aware that even a 5400rpm hard drive would be bottle necked by USB 2.0.

I'm more thinking about reliability. Since the Wii u has no moving parts beside the fan, I'm guessing it would outlast a Magnetic disk unless the game pad breaks....

If I went with a spinning hard disk and have all the games and injects on it, and setup the way I want; would cloning software work to backup an image of the drive? IE, would anything with the file structure be lost in translation?

I just don't want to have to set it all up again if the hard disk takes a crap. Like, with the Wii, I didn't even bother to set it up with a new drive. I just bought an $80 Wii U at gamestop.

I know you have already made your decision on this, but something else to consider (for others reading this) is that a SSD will only use 1 usb slot, as the power it uses is less. An HDD needs an external power source. An SSD does not. I've used a 500GB SSD for a few years now, and only just recently reached capacity. So even if you use a 1TB SSD, you shouldn't run into space issue. Unless you have a larger Wii U library than me, and I have a pretty large library...

 

[Tyson TH]

I know you have already made your decision on this, but something else to consider (for others reading this) is that a SSD will only use 1 usb slot, as the power it uses is less. An HDD needs an external power source. An SSD does not. I've used a 500GB SSD for a few years now, and only just recently reached capacity. So even if you use a 1TB SSD, you shouldn't run into space issue. Unless you have a larger Wii U library than me, and I have a pretty large library...

I think it might even depend on the SSD, I had to use a Y-Cable for mine personally and still had occasional issues where it didn't receive enough power but I will admit it could have been a faulty or incompatible Y-Cable. Eventually I switched to a high-capacity microSD card with a USB adapter and I think for anyone else reading this, if you want to avoid any sort of headaches, you're better off with a USB flash drive or SD card to avoid any power issues especially since the Wii U won't be able to take advantage of the extra speed from an SSD or HDD anyway.

 

[MrBerzerk]

I think it might even depend on the SSD, I had to use a Y-Cable for mine personally and still had occasional issues where it didn't receive enough power but I will admit it could have been a faulty or incompatible Y-Cable. Eventually I switched to a high-capacity microSD card with a USB adapter and I think for anyone else reading this, if you want to avoid any sort of headaches, you're better off with a USB flash drive or SD card to avoid any power issues especially since the Wii U won't be able to take advantage of the extra speed from an SSD or HDD anyway.

I started with a 256gb microSD, but after that, it became too expensive to get any bigger. I've tried Samsung, ADATA, and Kingston SSDs. I've used WD, Seagate, and China Nockoff. Never had an issue.
You may have a bad USB port, or too cheap of a usb cable.

 

[Tyson TH]

I started with a 256gb microSD, but after that, it became too expensive to get any bigger. I've tried Samsung, ADATA, and Kingston SSDs. I've used WD, Seagate, and China Nockoff. Never had an issue.
You may have a bad USB port, or too cheap of a usb cable.

It honestly could be that it has probably been worn down with the amount of hot swapping I used to do. I do think 512gb and lower SD card prices are comparable to SSDs now though.