HDD to hook up Wii via USB

[Obiwanshinobi]

Asked about it in some other thread and have learnt that certain "energy saving" discs may cause trouble when used with Wii. So, which particular models gave you trouble and which ones didn't?

I gather once you go HDD on your Wii, you only need optical drive to rip ROMs off optical discs. Sounds like just what doctor ordered.

[blizzz]

Some external drives will spin down the disks to save a few watts. When you try to access them again it takes a couple seconds until the hard drive responds. Early homebrew apps didn't wait long enough and would just crash or not load correctly. I don't think it's a problem anymore with the current loaders.

The SDHC card can cause more problems than the hard drive. Lots of cards will not work perfectly. For example my 8GB Transcend card won't load BootMii or Gamecube games, but the 16GB card of the same brand does. You will get the best results with an original SanDisk SDHC card.

Saving your games on the hard drive (or SDHC card) is really easy in USB Loader GX. You get a prompt when you insert a disk and the program will do the rest for you. There were a few games that had some issues but I think that was also fixed.

[Zapf]

I used a seagate portable external HDD (no need for an external power), and ran the seagate utility to disable spindown

[Einzelherz]

I have a cheap Rosewill SATA external dock with an old Seagate 250gb drive and it's been golden for me the past three years. The nice thing about a dock is that it's reusable and dumb.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I have a cheap Rosewill SATA external dock with an old Seagate 250gb drive and it's been golden for me the past three years. The nice thing about a dock is that it's reusable and dumb.

Now that's more like it. Doesn't it require a separate PSU to power the disc up, though?

[SGGG2]

I use a Startech USB 2.0 2.5" SATA enclosure and It works fine with whatever I've thrown in it (2 different drives) so far. Might just be dumb luck, but I don't think so. Draws power over USB.

[EllertMichael]

There's a pretty comprehensive list here: Wii USB Devices Compatibility List

[blizzz]

Interesting list. I didn't know that so many hard drives don't work on the Wii. I guess I was lucky with my 2.5" drive in an Icy Box enclosure.

Edit: It's a Western Digital WD3200BEVT Scorpio Blue 320GB.

[DoomsDave]

Used a bunch of different USB powered WD's on the Wii and never had a problem.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Thanks for the replies. Seems I just need to get one and if it doesn't work - return it.