WiiU Hard drive weird behavior

[liquidgykill]

Hi, I had for the past 2 years one no brand hdd enclosure/dock that I used for my 3. 5 hard drive that I use to store my WiiU content, no problems at all, my hard drive, enclosure and wiiU seems to work well.

Recently since I had that enclosure busy with another hard drive in a Pc, I tried to use a different enclosure from a brand called sabrent with the same hard drive on the WiiU, the WiiU didnt detect it, at all, didnt recognize it, didnt start it or gave me a message of format, it just didnt seem to be recognized by the WiiU and of course my hdd content didnt load.

I kinda freaked out about the posibility of my hdd being bad but no, as soon as I used my original enclosure and booted again the WiiU all my content was back again with no problems.

I also know for a fact that the second enclosure isnt damaged since I use it on the VWii on the same WiiU for my Wii games and it works!.

Just for curiosity switched my hdd back and forth between enclosures and the same happened over and over, everything appears with my first enclosure, nothing with the second one...

My question is, what If some day my first enclosure stops working?
Is this some kind of hardware Id bound to recognize my WiiU hard drive trough the enclosure?

I must add that my hdd was formated and is used with the original enclosure all the time with no problems.

Is there a way to change that behavior?
Im trying to use my only WiiU formatted hard drive with another enclosure/dock, but I cant.

 

[V10lator]

This is simply the Wii U not beeing 100% SATA compilant, so some HDD/Adapter combinations work while others don't.

 

[Lostbhoy]

I've found most success with uGreen parts. Anything on the "cheap" simply doesn't get recognised (not saying yours is!) . A few may work but for all the trail and error it causes, I'd recommend branded parts and enclosures.

 

[V10lator]

I've found most success with uGreen parts

Nintendo and uGreen is most likely a story on it's own. Like uGreen is the only company still producing Wii U compatible LAN adapters...

Anything on the "cheap" simply doesn't get recognised (not saying yours is!) . A few may work but for all the trail and error it causes, I'd recommend branded parts and enclosures.

Well, for me brand (Western Digital) HDD + brand (Inateck) encosure didn't work while the same HDD works with the cheapest SATA to USB adapter I found on Alibaba. This is really a protocol issue, not a hardware issue.

 

[Lostbhoy]

Ah, so trial and error are very much the order of the day then!

 

[liquidgykill]

I found a spare hard drive, I tried to format it on my WiiU with the second enclosure and it doesnt work, it never finished the format proces and says it cannot finish it, but when I try to read the hard drive on my PC it shows as unformatted/asking to intitialize, so it seems that this enclosure is indeed incompatible.

Any enclosure/dock brand you guys recommend to the wii u?

 

[Deleted member 571007]

I found a spare hard drive, I tried to format it on my WiiU with the second enclosure and it doesnt work, it never finished the format proces and says it cannot finish it, but when I try to read the hard drive on my PC it shows as unformatted/asking to intitialize, so it seems that this enclosure is indeed incompatible.

Any enclosure/dock brand you guys recommend to the wii u?

This could also be a case of lack of power to the actual HDD, while I'm not 100% on this I had a very similar circumstance to this a few years back. Just used a Y-Cable and the format started working, otherwise without it, it would be detected but the format would hang and never finish.

 

[liquidgykill]

This could also be a case of lack of power to the actual HDD, while I'm not 100% on this I had a very similar circumstance to this a few years back. Just used a Y-Cable and the format started working, otherwise without it, it would be detected but the format would hang and never finish.

Its a dock (I keep calling it enclosure) it has its own power cord.

 

[Deleted member 571007]

Its a dock (I keep calling it enclosure) it has its own power cord.

Ah well, sorry if I overlooked that aspect. It's just what I've generally come to assume when it comes to storage issues on the Wii U.

 

[N7Kopper]

Nintendo and uGreen is most likely a story on it's own. Like uGreen is the only company still producing Wii U compatible LAN adapters...

I thought the Wii U accepted most USB LAN adapters - I thought it was the Wii that was really specific. (Unless it's a vWii thing)

 

[V10lator]

I thought the Wii U accepted most USB LAN adapters

No. It accepts one chipset only (the same as Wii and Switch: ASIX AX88772). Why should Nintendo write drivers for most chipsets when they use the same even over multiple console generations in the official adapters?