Hardware What HDD do you use for Wii U?

[MetoMeto]

I plan on buying new HDD for my Wii U, so i wanted to see what everyone of you uses as their HDD (please only post if you use mechanical HDD with Y cable) and how are your experiences with it.

Please post exact model of your HDD, that's all i need, and how happy you are with it.

Thanks! ^^

 

[Nemix77]

Do not use a USB thumb drive, sometimes it lags. Been using one temporarily to test installs because I have not ordered an enclosure and y cable for my Firecuda SSHD. I expect my Firecuda to work flawlessly and since it's a SSHD with SSD caching I expect loads times to be better than a normal 2.5" mechanical drive. Regardless, I feel a mechanical USB 2.5" hard drive is best followed by a Micro SD with USB adapter. You can buy Seagate or Western Digital USB external and just turn off the power saving feature, or you can buy a Seagate or Western Digital 2.5" hard drive alongside a USB 3.0 enclosure (Orico). I do NOT recommend buying a USB thumb drive for storage!

Edit: I used a mechanical USB hard drive with my Wii is the past, it worked flawlessly. Seagate was the brand, Western Digital required a y cable and Hitachi's had not option to turn off the auto sleep feature (avoid Hitachi's USB external).

 

[V10lator]

@Nemix77 Did you even read the OP? Cause this has nothing to do with USB sticks...

@MetoMeto I used a WD Scorpio Black (WD5000BPKT-75PK4T0) in the past but got "USB disconnect" errors. Not sure if they where cause of the brand or cause the drive was old (with many S.M.A.R.T. warnings). Now I'm using a WD Blue Mobile (could give the exact model number later if needed) and am just happy with it. Yes, seek times are higher with the new HDD and I think I'm seeing this in some rare situations but I never measured it, so it could just be my imagination.

BTW; The SATA to USB adapter I'm using didn't want to run with the WD black (had to improvise to get it connected) combined with the Wii U (worked just fine on PCs) but the blue + the adapter works just great on the Wii U.

since it's a SSHD with SSD caching I expect loads times to be better than a normal 2.5" mechanical drive

How exactly should load times be better? The SSD cache is a writing cache mostly (only hot-reading paths are cached but I don't expect the Wii U to have hot loading paths) so reading/loading is limitted to the HDD part of your hybrid drive.

You can buy Seagate

What are you suggesting here? Hitachi, Toshiba and Seagate drives are the worst (failing fast, unrecverable, ...) - and that's not limited to Wii U usage. I'm speaking of 15 years experience in stress-testing drives here...

a USB 3.0 enclosure

...is a waste of money as the Wii U is USB 2.0.

I used a mechanical USB hard drive with my Wii is the past, it worked flawlessly. Seagate was the brand, Western Digital required a y cable

Seagate needs a Y-Cable, too. Only because it manages to spin-up doesn't mean it will be stable.

and Hitachi's had not option to turn off the auto sleep feature

You do know that the sleep feature needs to be cooperated between the operating system and the drive? So you turned the autosleep off on your PC while the Wii U will still use it... And the Wii U is able to turn off autosleep on all drives that support S.M.A.R.T. (which I assume are all drives that exist on this planet). Stop using tools from the drive manufacturer and learn the techniques behind it. Pretty sure there are S.M.A.R.T. tool available which are able to turn off autosleep for your Hitachi drive on Windows, too..

 

[Hayato213]

Seagate ST2000LM015 with a Y cable and a Transcend enclosure. No issue here.

 

[VinsCool]

One of the devices I use is a Seagate 3TB HDD for my Wii and GC games on WiiU.
However on the WiiU itself I run on thumbdrives sinces most of my games are retail discs so all I need really is space for update data

 

[V10lator]

One of the devices I use is a Seagate 3TB HDD

Wait... What? I thought the Wii U supports 2TB max...?

However on the WiiU itself I run on thumbdrives sinces most of my games are retail discs so all I need really is space for update data

So you're using different drives for Wii (+ GCN) and Wii U? Why not use VC injects for Wii so you're able to store everything on one drive?

 

[VinsCool]

Wait... What? I thought the Wii U supports 2TB max...?

So you're using different drives for Wii (+ GCN) and Wii U? Why not use VC injects for Wii so you're able to store everything on one drive?

I honestly could do that, but considering I share that drive with my older wii it makes it more convenient.

I might get a proper drive for WiiU stuff one day but I couldn't be bothered for now

Also regarding the size of that other drive, my bad, it's actually 2 TB. I haven't used that stuff for a long time.

 

[RHOPKINS13]

Wait... What? I thought the Wii U supports 2TB max...?

For Wii U Games the maximum it will utilize is 2TB. You can use a drive bigger than 2TB, but the Wii U will only use the first 2TB of it. But if you're using the drive with vWii for loading Gamecube and Wii games, you can use much bigger drives.

So you're using different drives for Wii (+ GCN) and Wii U? Why not use VC injects for Wii so you're able to store everything on one drive?

The Wii U home menu will only display up to 300 titles at a time. By using separate drives, you can have a full set of Wii & Gamecube games, and nearly 300 of your favorite Wii U games, all on the same console. And using emulators, you can pretty much run every console game Nintendo ever made up through the Wii U, aside from a handful of incompatible games.

I HIGHLY recommend going with 3.5" external drives that use their own power adapter, that way you don't have to mess with Y cables and you don't have to worry about how much power is being supplied by the USB ports. Best Buy pretty regularly has WD EasyStore drives on sale for cheap. And UStealth is a must, especially if you have kids, as I've already had one incident where my son accidentally wiped my entire vWii drive.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

I use a Western Digital my passport HDD with a Y-cable. It works fine.

 

[Codemastershock]

When I had mine, I was using with an old Samsung drive inside an enclosure. One good thing about Samsung drives at the time was that, before they were focused on SSDs, their drives could be easily modified inside the firmware, you could set AAM values on the drive itself, not relying on the OS like most hard drives do, so mine was set to Silent mode, which makes the drive pull less power and less vibration, which is perfect for devices like a console. I like Western Digital more, but their drives are very locked down (that is why it has a lot of brands such as blue, green, black and so on). It worked well but there were times that it pulled a black screen and I noticed this happened more with USB powered drives: if the drive is fragmented, which it does happen on the wii u FS, it draws more power and it bsods. What I did was to copy every game and content one by one to another drive, formatted the Samsung drive and copied everything again, one by one (which, being usb 2.0 takes like forever and mass copying doesnt work because the wii u fs is dumb like the xbox one fs, it doesnt copy the list of games one by one in order like it should and in the process, it doesnt properly defragment the game data if you mass copy). It worked very well in a long time without bsods ever until a power outage happened when downloading a game and the hard drive died.

 

[V10lator]

For Wii U Games the maximum it will utilize is 2TB. You can use a drive bigger than 2TB, but the Wii U will only use the first 2TB of it. But if you're using the drive with vWii for loading Gamecube and Wii games, you can use much bigger drives.

Many thanks for that info.

The Wii U home menu will only display up to 300 titles at a time. By using separate drives, you can have a full set of Wii & Gamecube games, and nearly 300 of your favorite Wii U games, all on the same console

I know about the 300 titles limit but are there even nearly 300 Wii U games available (stupid question, didn't check as I'm still way below that limit).

And using emulators, you can pretty much run every console game Nintendo ever made up through the Wii U, aside from a handful of incompatible games.

What emulators are you talking about? I'm searching for ways to get emulated games as home menu titles (so you don't have to start the emulator but just click the icon on the home menu to start the emulator with a autostart script for whatever game) like it's done on the 3DS since a long time...

I HIGHLY recommend going with 3.5" external drives that use their own power adapter, that way you don't have to mess with Y cables and you don't have to worry about how much power is being supplied by the USB ports.

Or just hardware-mod the Wii U to remove that artificial 500mA limit on the USB ports: https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-u-s...-vs-sd-card-with-adapter.554701/#post-8957149 ... I have my external USB drive at the lower back USB port, a LAN adapter at the upper back USB port and the front ports are completely free...

 

[RHOPKINS13]

I know about the 300 titles limit but are there even nearly 300 Wii U games available (stupid question, didn't check as I'm still way below that limit).

Yes there are, well over that limit. Although there's quite a bit of shovelware, I don't think it's too hard to come up with 300 Wii U games worth playing, especially if you include VC injects.

What emulators are you talking about? I'm searching for ways to get emulated games as home menu titles (so you don't have to start the emulator but just click the icon on the home menu to start the emulator with a autostart script for whatever game) like it's done on the 3DS since a long time...

Depends on what you're trying to do. I personally prefer using WiiFlow as a frontend for everything, but unfortunately in my experience it crashes a lot when loading Wii games so I end up using USBLoaderGX a lot more instead. You can install a USB Loader GX forwarder to your Wii U menu, and that will save you the step of going into vWii first in order to use it:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/usb-loader-gx-forwarder-channel-for-wii-u-menu.482595/

Or, you can use tools to make your own Wii U VC Injects. Keep in mind that these will count towards your 300 limit!
https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-wiivc-injector-script-gc-wii-homebrew-support.483577/
https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-uwuvci-injectiine.486781/

Or, to install them to your vWii's home menu, you can make your own VC Injected WADs:
https://gbatemp.net/download/all-in-one-wii-vc-injecting-tools-by-saulfabreg.35917/

Unfortunately I don't think there's any way (at least that's been made public) of making forwarders for individual roms with homebrew emulators on the (v)Wii. I know that you can do it on the Nintendo Switch though.

 

[V10lator]

Unfortunately I don't think there's any way (at least that's been made public) of making forwarders for individual roms with homebrew emulators on the (v)Wii.

I won't reply to the other things you said as that's common knowledge but this quote of you is exactly what I meand: Individual emulated games won't add up on the 300 title limit as these are just ROMs: The only thing that counts on the limit is the emulator itself (except it's in vWii but let's not get too technical).

In my eyes that's sad cause such forwarders would... Well, you know them from the switch, I know them from the 3DS...

 

[Nemix77]

I think someone here has a problem with my replies, assuming I have no experience.

Yes I'm new to Wii U hacking scene but I have more than your 15 years of experience in computers, just so you know (hint: my first Windows was 3.1 year of launch).

 

[V10lator]

I think someone here has a problem with my replies, assuming I have no experience

Sry if I gave you that feeling, wasn't on purpose... But the OP also edited his post after you replied (marking some string in red)...

 

[Nemix77]

No hard feelings...happy to meet you!

 

[meepdarby]

I made my own using a 500gb toshiba hard drive and an external hard drive enclosure.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

@Nemix77 Did you even read the OP? Cause this has nothing to do with USB sticks...

@MetoMeto I used a WD Scorpio Black (WD5000BPKT-75PK4T0) in the past but got "USB disconnect" errors. Not sure if they where cause of the brand or cause the drive was old (with many S.M.A.R.T. warnings). Now I'm using a WD Blue Mobile (could give the exact model number later if needed) and am just happy with it. Yes, seek times are higher with the new HDD and I think I'm seeing this in some rare situations but I never measured it, so it could just be my imagination.

BTW; The SATA to USB adapter I'm using didn't want to run with the WD black (had to improvise to get it connected) combined with the Wii U (worked just fine on PCs) but the blue + the adapter works just great on the Wii U.



How exactly should load times be better? The SSD cache is a writing cache mostly (only hot-reading paths are cached but I don't expect the Wii U to have hot loading paths) so reading/loading is limitted to the HDD part of your hybrid drive.


What are you suggesting here? Hitachi, Toshiba and Seagate drives are the worst (failing fast, unrecverable, ...) - and that's not limited to Wii U usage. I'm speaking of 15 years experience in stress-testing drives here...

...is a waste of money as the Wii U is USB 2.0.


Seagate needs a Y-Cable, too. Only because it manages to spin-up doesn't mean it will be stable.


You do know that the sleep feature needs to be cooperated between the operating system and the drive? So you turned the autosleep off on your PC while the Wii U will still use it... And the Wii U is able to turn off autosleep on all drives that support S.M.A.R.T. (which I assume are all drives that exist on this planet). Stop using tools from the drive manufacturer and learn the techniques behind it. Pretty sure there are S.M.A.R.T. tool available which are able to turn off autosleep for your Hitachi drive on Windows, too..

Huh? Hitachi/HGST has the absolute lowest failure rate out of all the brands.

Do not use a USB thumb drive, sometimes it lags. Been using one temporarily to test installs because I have not ordered an enclosure and y cable for my Firecuda SSHD. I expect my Firecuda to work flawlessly and since it's a SSHD with SSD caching I expect loads times to be better than a normal 2.5" mechanical drive. Regardless, I feel a mechanical USB 2.5" hard drive is best followed by a Micro SD with USB adapter. You can buy Seagate or Western Digital USB external and just turn off the power saving feature, or you can buy a Seagate or Western Digital 2.5" hard drive alongside a USB 3.0 enclosure (Orico). I do NOT recommend buying a USB thumb drive for storage!

Edit: I used a mechanical USB hard drive with my Wii is the past, it worked flawlessly. Seagate was the brand, Western Digital required a y cable and Hitachi's had not option to turn off the auto sleep feature (avoid Hitachi's USB external).

Ugreen enclosures are good too.

You need a Y cable, you risk damaging the drive without it even if it works.

For Wii U Games the maximum it will utilize is 2TB. You can use a drive bigger than 2TB, but the Wii U will only use the first 2TB of it. But if you're using the drive with vWii for loading Gamecube and Wii games, you can use much bigger drives.


The Wii U home menu will only display up to 300 titles at a time. By using separate drives, you can have a full set of Wii & Gamecube games, and nearly 300 of your favorite Wii U games, all on the same console. And using emulators, you can pretty much run every console game Nintendo ever made up through the Wii U, aside from a handful of incompatible games.

I HIGHLY recommend going with 3.5" external drives that use their own power adapter, that way you don't have to mess with Y cables and you don't have to worry about how much power is being supplied by the USB ports. Best Buy pretty regularly has WD EasyStore drives on sale for cheap. And UStealth is a must, especially if you have kids, as I've already had one incident where my son accidentally wiped my entire vWii drive.

There are barely 300 Wii U games, let alone 300 actually worth downloading

AFAIK only Nintendont can utilize more than 2TB of space, Wii games are still limited to 2TB. Which means, effectively you can't use more than 2TB at all if you care about Wii games, since the drive needs to be in MBR partition scheme which is 2TB max.

 

[cbunbury20]

also a 8 years old seagate 500 gig usb cable works awesome,

 

[Nemix77]

I don't know but brand really doesn't matter to me when it comes to hard drives. I tend to not buy WD hard drives because of price.

I've owned Samsung, Toshiba, Western Digital, Hitachi and Seagate hard drives in the past before the companies were merged.

Only one has failed but that was my fault for covering the hole at top of the hard drive (it was a Seagate).

Hitachi and Seagate are definitely my favorite brands for the price to performance ratio and noise/vibration.