External HDD is not recognized by wii u?

[Dragonracer21]

Hi,

My external HDD doesn't get recognized by my wii u. I bought one 2 years ago to jailbreak my wii mini and to store my wii games on it and so on and it always worked flawlessly on my wii mini.
A short time ago I decided to upgrade to a used wii u and homebrewed this one with a sd card also but it doesn't get recognized by my wii u even though I tried to plug it in via y cable.
It's a Transcend StoreJet 25M3 2 TB which needs 0.9A of power. Using 2 usb ports on my wii u should normally be enough for the hdd since one usb port gives 0.5A.
Do you guys have any idea why the hdd doesn't get recognized by my wii u?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hi,

My external HDD doesn't get recognized by my wii u. I bought one 2 years ago to jailbreak my wii mini and to store my wii games on it and so on and it always worked flawlessly on my wii mini.
A short time ago I decided to upgrade to a used wii u and homebrewed this one with a sd card also but it doesn't get recognized by my wii u even though I tried to plug it in via y cable.
It's a Transcend StoreJet 25M3 2 TB which needs 0.9A of power. Using 2 usb ports on my wii u should normally be enough for the hdd since one usb port gives 0.5A.
Do you guys have any idea why the hdd doesn't get recognized by my wii u?

The Wii U's USB ports actually give less than 0.5A. Usually 2 ports is enough, but you seem to have an especially power hungry drive. You can try a powered hub.

 

[Dragonracer21]

The Wii U's USB ports actually give less than 0.5A. Usually 2 ports is enough, but you seem to have an especially power hungry drive. You can try a powered hub.

Well, guess I will have to do that .. If I buy a D-Link DUB-H4 usb Hub will my hdd work with it? The mentioned one uses external power and is supported by Nintendo America but it has only usb 2.0 ports. Do usb 3.0 hdds work with usb 2.0 hubs?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Well, guess I will have to do that .. If I buy a D-Link DUB-H4 usb Hub will my hdd work with it? The mentioned one uses external power and is supported by Nintendo America but it has only usb 2.0 ports. Do usb 3.0 hdds work with usb 2.0 hubs?

USB hubs can't be used directly with USB loaders, but you can plug the power plug of the Y-cable into a powered hub (or into a wall adapter if you have a long enough cable) to allow the HDD to get extra power from a secondary source.
It doesn't matter if it's officially supported as you won't be plugging it into the Wii U.
I can't guarantee that it will work, if you want a guaranteed solution get a drive that's powered from the wall.

 

[Jayinem]

Hi,

My external HDD doesn't get recognized by my wii u. I bought one 2 years ago to jailbreak my wii mini and to store my wii games on it and so on and it always worked flawlessly on my wii mini.
A short time ago I decided to upgrade to a used wii u and homebrewed this one with a sd card also but it doesn't get recognized by my wii u even though I tried to plug it in via y cable.
It's a Transcend StoreJet 25M3 2 TB which needs 0.9A of power. Using 2 usb ports on my wii u should normally be enough for the hdd since one usb port gives 0.5A.
Do you guys have any idea why the hdd doesn't get recognized by my wii u?

Even if you can get it to recognize it, you do realize you will have to format right? And it will wipe everything off the drive. No choice.

 

[Dragonracer21]

USB hubs can't be used directly with USB loaders, but you can plug the power plug of the Y-cable into a powered hub (or into a wall adapter if you have a long enough cable) to allow the HDD to get extra power from a secondary source.
It doesn't matter if it's officially supported as you won't be plugging it into the Wii U.
I can't guarantee that it will work, if you want a guaranteed solution get a drive that's powered from the wall.

I already tried that, I connected the power plug of the y cable to a wall adapter and that doesn't work either ... Any other solution for this?

Post automatically merged: Feb 20, 2023

Even if you can get it to recognize it, you do realize you will have to format right? And it will wipe everything off the drive. No choice.

That's no problem for me I already made a backup of the hdd

 

[Jayinem]

It's the hub causing it that I'm sure of. Either get another hub or a totally new external hdd that doesn't need a hub that either powers into the wall or get a y cable so it plugs into both ports if it's an external that doesn't need to be wall powered.

 

[V10lator]

Some combinations are simply incompatible. One example: I'm using a WD blue drive. Originally I connected it through a big, known brand SATA to USB adapter. This worked fine on PC but the Wii U couldn't detect the drive. So I purchased the cheapest adapter I could find from Alibaba and the exact Same HDD works just find on the Wii U with this.

That said: Try another adapter / enclosure in case you have one.

 

[Dragonracer21]

USB hubs can't be used directly with USB loaders, but you can plug the power plug of the Y-cable into a powered hub (or into a wall adapter if you have a long enough cable) to allow the HDD to get extra power from a secondary source.
It doesn't matter if it's officially supported as you won't be plugging it into the Wii U.
I can't guarantee that it will work, if you want a guaranteed solution get a drive that's powered from the wall.

Update: I got my USB Hub now. It let's me connect my hdd directly with a normal cable, but when I try to connect it via y cable my hdd makes a weird click click click ... Sound just like when I connect the hdd with the y cable to the wii u. Do you have any solution?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Update: I got my USB Hub now. It let's me connect my hdd directly with a normal cable, but when I try to connect it via y cable my hdd makes a weird click click click ... Sound just like when I connect the hdd with the y cable to the wii u. Do you have any solution?

That's what I was worried about. So your drive just isn't going to work with the Wii U. Time to cut your losses and get a different drive.

 

[V10lator]

Update: I got my USB Hub now. It let's me connect my hdd directly with a normal cable, but when I try to connect it via y cable my hdd makes a weird click click click ...

Not enough power / cheap Y cable with too high internal resistance.

//EDIT: This continued clicking is the drive trying to spin up, getting a brown out, trying to spin up, brownout, spin up, brownout, ...

//EDIT²: Or to be more precise: It's the heads getting pulled away from the platterns to not create a headcrash in this brownout situation. They get pulled by analog magnets (as there is no power available at that brownout situation) and crash into their parking position, producing a clicking sound. After that the drive spins up again, heads move out of parking position, brownout, bla...

 

[Dragonracer21]

That's what I was worried about. So your drive just isn't going to work with the Wii U. Time to cut your losses and get a different drive.

Maybe it Just doesn't support y cables .. I wonder then why it works just fine on my wii mini

 

[Ettino]

Maybe it Just doesn't support y cables.

More like the other way around. The cable is probably crap. Can always try SSD route too.

 

[Dragonracer21]

More like the other way around. The cable is probably crap. Can always try SSD route too.

I tried to connect my external hdd with my y cable and it worked flawlessly. Will have to buy a compatible external hdd for my wii u then. Damn