Hacking USB hard drive power consumption

idklol

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I'm looking to buy a USB hard drive because my jump drive has only eight billion bytes and I want to use it for storing documents, spreadsheets, and the like.

The problem is, I've heard a horror story of a Wii breaking because of the large amounts of power a USB hard drive consumed.

Is the horror story implausible? Can you name a compatible, non-power-hungry external hard drive?
 

BiPoLaR

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I don't know if there's any truth to that, but you could get a HDD with a 120V power source. that way it's not drawing power from the wii. hope that helps
 

dsfanatic5

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I haven't heard any of these stories about Wii systems breaking due to USB hard drives drawing power. I use a Seagate Freeagent Go 500gb, which is powered by the Wii, and have no problems whatsoever. Look at it this way; do you think it's stopping the majority of gbatempers from using USB loaders? No, no it's not (it's worth the risk).
 

wiistarter

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The problem with these type of drives is that because they draw power from the USB then they COULD damage the port but more probably the drive. this is because some can actually draw more than recommended power when they get older but most motherboards have a built in power surge warning for this and dont know if the wii has.

This could also result in a reduced performance or the drive becoming corrupt or unreadable especially when transferring lots of data. This seems to be an extremely hard problem to diagnose as it may show up on the PC as some will supply more power to the device before they give up and therefore still recognise it but im unsure if the wii could do this. And if it does it would mean the wii was operating outside its powering maxes and could damage things.

If you search around google you will see these sort of problems with USB powered drives and PC's giving overload/power warnings

BTW this applies to ALL USB powered devices not just HDD. It could also be the same for those USB powered WIIMOTE chargers
 

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