Booting from USB HD (PS2)

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Mon May 07, 2007 10:55 pm

My paranoia for keeping games in good condition has led me to seek out alternate ways of playing imports. Since I currently own SwapMagic and magic keys sets, I decided to simply use the swapmagic.elf exploit and boot images directly from my external hd. Here's the kicker: It has to be FAT32, and my 120gig hd is, naturally, NTFS.

My question: If I add a FAT32 partition to my HD, will the PS2 recognize that partition automatically?

rockaroller · Post by **rockaroller** » Tue May 08, 2007 2:02 pm

If you're going to use USBAdvance, it is recommended that you format your HD with its formatting tool, which will create a FAT32 filesystem automatically.
Anyway, if your format your PS2 with a FAT filesystem, tools like LaunchElf will recognize it as a mass storage device. But I do not recommend using an external device to play games - the access is very slow because PS2 USB ports are version 1.1. And the software used to do the trick doesn't work as desired - many, many games won't work with it.

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Tue May 08, 2007 8:44 pm

I have a theory...and it's probably very wrong. Shmups generally load the entire level at once, correct? If so, then I would be experiencing long-ass load times only between levels. How long would these load times be? Since I'll only be using this for shmups, would this be a huge problem?

lawnspic · Post by **lawnspic** » Wed May 09, 2007 12:05 am

like he said not woth the effort, back up you originals. If you own most shmups, seek out the multi game collections on DVD on BC. Dummy files ripped reducing size. I can make them myself, but rather let the guys on P2p do it because i dont have the patience to hex edit a bunch of shmups so they dont share the same directory's.

zakk · Post by **zakk** » Wed May 09, 2007 12:17 am

Damocles wrote:I have a theory...and it's probably very wrong. Shmups generally load the entire level at once, correct? If so, then I would be experiencing long-ass load times only between levels. How long would these load times be? Since I'll only be using this for shmups, would this be a huge problem?

You're assuming the games even work. USBAdvance has horrible compatability. Seriously, the compatability matrix at ps2hd.com has 5.4% in the 'compatible' column for USBAdvance. For 2461 games.

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Wed May 09, 2007 2:30 am

Well then...looks like I'll be sticking with what I'm doing now. I refuse to stick backups in my PS2 (Did that a few times...damn laser works insanely hard).

lawnspic · Post by **lawnspic** » Wed May 09, 2007 2:52 am

Damocles wrote:Well then...looks like I'll be sticking with what I'm doing now. I refuse to stick backups in my PS2 (Did that a few times...damn laser works insanely hard).

Dam, backups made correctly work like there original counterparts. As long as quality (Taiyo, Verbatim) media is used, slow write speeds, good burner with booktype setting enabled for ROM (not + or - R) ect. I run a Slimline V 15 new revision and also had a V 12 one with a DMS4PRO and my new has a Matrix Infinity green dot. Never had a problem. I dont have any experience with SM or slide tools and such but i feel they do more harm than good not ot mention being a pain. You have to swap witch puts alot of stress on the spindle hub and such. If you have a pro like Davebere or somebody who is good do the install you would be very satisfied.

As a note CDrom games for ps2 make they laser work hard (just like a DC) its working at 12x. With a little time you can take small shmups like these and convert them to DVD really easy for smooth operation (done many myself)

Good luck, if you need help i can steer you in the right direction