Snes9xGx hates Western Digital HDDs

*Whew* Haven't visited these forums for a while and I must say, it's good to be back! Now, the reason for my posting it is I'm trying to solve a mystery; the mystery as to why Snes9xGx hates my USB 3.0/2.0 HDD when it's clearly under the list of GBATemp's compatible hard drives. The HDD I'm using is a Western Digital My Passport Essential (Black, WDBAAA5000ABK-NEWM http://tinyurl.com/75f2t3d ), which according to this page. USB Devices Compatibility List - WikiTemp clearly lists it as one of the better ones to use. So naturally, I bought it and when I backed my games up to it, it ran like a charm (and still runs backups perfectly).

The next thing I tried were emulators, and they work perfect, except one; Snes9xGx 4.2.0+. When I booted Snes9x up, it also ran pretty dang good, until it locked up and got a code dump. So I was thinking to myself, Oh, I've gotten these before, no big deal, and tried it up again. After an unspecified amount of time, it locked up, but this time there wasn't a code dump. Then I thought, What the heck? Why is it doing this? thinking it odd to freeze one time and show a code dump and freeze later the same day only to NOT show a code dump.

I spoke with Tantric/Dborth (who maintains Snes9xGx) about it and after asking him some questions, I found out he has the exact same make, model, and color of HDD that I have, so clearly, it can't just be my HDD. Granted, I've been using a 8GB SDHC card after I finally got fed up with the random freezing and code dumps, but I would rather rely more on the hard drive. This and WiiMC are the only two programs that don't like my HDD, whereas every other program (Wad Manager, ModMii, GenplusGX, FceuGC, VBAGX, CFG USB Loader, etc) all run perfectly fine. This is the core of the mystery, why 95% of the programs work when my favorite emulator doesn't.

So then I spoke to the GBATemp community about it, and boy where they a "big" help; I was running in circles, as the only thing they ever told me was "delete the 'no_ios_reload' line in the .xml file". Didn't do a thing, with or without the Wii being connected to the internet. I've even gone as far as reformatting the HDD and reinstalling all the necessary cIOS and HBC modifications using ModMii but no avail. Why is this happening? Why is Snes9xGx so hell bent on not letting me using my HDD with it?

Again, Snes9x will lock up regardless of if I'm in a game, the menu, settings; it will lock up. Either the music will continue or there is a loud buzzing sound.

HDD Format: FAT32 (most compatible and stable file system for homebrew as a whole)

To me this screams sleeping drive. You'll want to check the power settings on the drive. The Wii doesnt play nice if drives go to sleep. I think for WD drives, theres an application WD SmartWare or some such that will allow you to disable the power management functionality. (Maybe set sleep timer to 0 or some such).

-blu

Yeah, I thought that was the case at first, and I installed SMARTWare and disabled the sleep mode, but did nothing to stop the lockups (w or w/out code dumps)... I could always double check again. What if it isn't the case, then what can I do?

Yep. It has been disabled for several months, turning off the sleep mode doesn't do jack squat!

Is your drive one whole fat32 partition? and what size is it?

File System: FAT32
HDD Size: 500GB
Cluster Size: 32KB (as per suggestion).

FAT32 is the most compatible file system for homebrew, or so I've been told. Aside from the fact there's no 4GB limit, I see no need to use NTFS. This particular HDD runs everything else just fine, Snes9xGx and WiiMC are the only programs it seems to hate. I re-hacked my Wii with all the necessary cIOS hacks and HBC/Bootmii versions, yet, it didn't do jack.

And marked as primary and active?

Sent from my GT-I9100 using WiiHacks

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pob3008

And marked as primary and active?

Sent from my GT-I9100 using WiiHacks

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Yes indeed. Again, this should NOT be happening. The HDD is supposed to be compatible and I don't know how or why Snes9xGx crashes 100% of the time on this, but not on an SDHC card. I'd use the card, but if I do that, why get an HDD?

Try a USB stick and see if it works.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using WiiHacks

Don't have one, I either have a USB HDD or an SDHC card. Why is this happening? This HDD by all rights should run Snes9xGx more stably. No program is perfect, and some crash every now and then, but this is ridiculous.