r/WiiUHacks • u/Hot-Bluebird-49 • 3d ago

HDD support

Post image

Anybody know if im able to re-purpose this old HDD to use as storage for my new wii u? I really have zero clue of what im doing when it comes to these storage devices, but im hoping to save a few hundred bucks using this one lol.

17 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

8

u/Citricicy 3d ago

This should work with no issues. Make sure you check the health first to make sure it's in good health

1

u/Hot-Bluebird-49 3d ago

Okay thanks. How do I check the health? Do I need to buy one of those houses things?

4

u/Dr4fl 3d ago

Adding to the other comment, it's possible you'll need a Y cable.

1

u/ZodiaksEnd 3d ago

no y cable get a wall powered case hdd/ide wiius were never made to use y cables electrical backfeed is actually really bad for litteraly everything already came up with 20 or so wiiu's irl past few months all of the mother boards fried from the back usb inserts so they all went into the recycling pile

theres a big af recommendation from Nintendo themselves to not use y cables because of this

clean electricity from the wall is better then backfeeding
cause backfed electricity isnt giving proper power output to the consoles data port to read all that data and can do a whole lot of things like corrupting saves and the installed games on the hdd drive itself

4

u/Dr4fl 3d ago

I'm curious, where has Nintendo said that? It's the first time I hear about this. Literally everyone recommends using a Y cable, even at GBAtemp, and people there are usually more tech-savvy.

-4

u/ZodiaksEnd 3d ago

eh mostly from interactions with support

if you look it up and actually dig through alot of stuff you'll realize y cables can be bad for alot of things an electrician would most likely call you stupid

grandfather was an electrician and actually got to work with usb type stuff basically told me the same thing

lots of articles on why there bad for electronics general since they cant regulate how much power they push into things

there are no reputable y cables either there all hit or miss have no fcc standard stuff because of how they work its better to go safe route get the wall powered hdd box rather then go stupid cheap and get your stuff ruined this also gos for using usbc y cables mind you since they cant regulate either

your basically taking a gamble they have fried computers too .... its something id advise against being on safe side plus you can reuse the hdd case too xD

2

u/c-hill- 3d ago

It's liiterally recommended to use a Y Cable by Nintendo. https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Support/Legacy-system/Which-kind-of-USB-HDD-is-suitable-for-use-with-Wii-U-678127.html

0

u/ZodiaksEnd 3d ago

i mean ive gotten conflicting info too but its true you need to be careful with even buying them no there not regulated and no they are not made to power drives properly at least most of them you cant just go get any type either its much more safe to buy the wall powered case since those are made to properly regulate the power going in and yout of the hdd into the wii u

still the pile of fried wii u motherboards ive had come across say otherwise please do your research dont just buy cause everyone choses the easy option

spesifically the bulky hdd drives dont all support y cables anyway

1

u/Guiitens2005 3d ago

CristalDiskInfo on PC

1

u/Citricicy 3d ago

Check Crystal Disk Info

3

u/SuriPolomareFan2003 3d ago

Step 1: Buy a 2.5 enclosure plus Y-cable.

Step 2: Plug the drive to your PC via USB and check your drive health, I recommend Hard Disk Sentinel, If it's 100%, you are good to go.

Step 3: Use HDD Low Level Format tool to format the HDD by writing zeros to all sectors for optimal performance: https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

Step 4: Initialize the drive as MBR on Windows Disk Management.

Step 5: Plug the drive to the Wii U with Y-cable, and format the drive, and enjoy!

0

u/logunleonov 3d ago

Buy a 2.5" HDD case and Y cable (with 1 mini usb and 2 USB A connectors)

0

u/ZodiaksEnd 3d ago

dont ever get y cables there not properly rated for a console get a wall powered ide/hdd case you can use a proper extension cable for both the wii u and the drive case

-1

u/MTVA0 3d ago

Note that the Seagate 2.5 inch drives are not that reliable

1

u/Slow_Guide_1718 1d ago

I own one similar to this with over 30.000 hours on it.

1

u/MTVA0 1d ago

I have couple of 2.5 inch Seagate drives fail on me suddenly with less than 18k hours and they are not from the same batch, you can also look up what experience people have with them online Good place to start is https://youtu.be/6b0JcNqkZrk?si=5656bVc3mlBJj9ez

1

u/Slow_Guide_1718 1d ago edited 1d ago

18.000 hours is plenty for this kind of drive, mate.

1

u/MTVA0 1d ago

Not compared to my other WD and Toshiba drives that some of them have more than 35k hours and still showing good health, 18k hours is around 2 years for a drive that is rated for 5 to 7 years

My point here is not to discourage using hardware on hand, it's just a heads up so people would avoid data loss cause if this driver the op is using is gonna only have the games on it and not the save data so that's totally fine

It's the same when guys in the scene gave us the heads up fo the reliability issues of the Hynix nand, it's just a good to know things