A question about hard drives

Okay, finally took the plunge and installed HBC onto my wii. I'm now officially softmod'ed! After playing around a bit with the few channels and such, I can see how I REALLY want to install an HDD now!!! But I just don't have the $$$ to buy a WD essentials or mybook. But....I have seen WD drives on sale locally for good prices. Example, I've a Microcenter selling a 500gb WD Caviar Blue 7200rpm for $55!!!

Now, I just need a recommendation for an external, powered case that will still make it worth while buying a 500gb vs saving what little money "she who must be obeyed" (read my wife) lets me have.

Suggestions?

Thanks,

Jaxx

Check out the USB HDD compatibility thread and select what you like.

Read that already. Still need advice.....

If the drive is not on the list u will be taking a risk the same as anyone who gets a drive that isn't. The only advice I can offer u is I have stripped a PC and used a Wd internal drive from it with the cheapest external case I could find on Amazon and it worked no issues but u will still be taking a chance.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using WiiHacks

For me external enclosures are a hit and miss, trust me just wait and get your self a good external hard drive, otherwise you'll probably have to replace the one with the external enclosure in the future due to problems when loading or playing games, I might have a drive around if you are interested, PM if you do.

Too bad there isn't a case list! I've been working on computers and such since the late 80's. First hand experience tells me we could be missing opportunities at lesser expensive drives since not all external cases are created equal. Some are very basic and are nothing more then a bus that plugs into whatever type drive you have (pata or sata). Others I've seen with a bit more tech in them for additional buffering and what not.

So now I pose a few more questions. First having to do with drives or cases that are powered or not powered. Comments I've read here about powered drives has been positive. I haven't heard anything about drives that drew power to operate via the usb cable. Can a Wii hand the unpowered kind?

I have a reason for asking this. Having built more computers then I care to recall, and usually having a stack of drives laying around (I've half a dozen currently in my den), I found it very useful to have one of those usb to pata/sata cords. These don't cost much, and I can then at least verify any given drive will or will not work with the Wii. After which I can play "musical cases".....so long as I remember to keep my receipts!

I have external drives that are power only by usb and they work flawless, so the wii can run those drives without an issue, the problem with external enclosures is not the hard drives themselves, is the controller that cause the problems, If you decide to use an external enclosure specially a usb to pata/sata cords you are going to spend hours trying to trouble shoot problems that you could have avoided by getting the proper drive in the first place.

Mickeyo,

Can you expound on that some more? I sort of eluded to there being more electronics in some cases vs others. I figured that more to do with converting from pata/sata to usb. It would make sense though for external drives to have an additional controller board in them, especially those designed to be a nas.

I will clarify though, it would never be my intention to use a cord adapter as a final solution. More as a quick fix for now. My main issue is one that cannot be fixed here. And that's my 8 1/2 daughter. And like most children her age, leaves EVERYTHING all over the place. Already had to take a few games over to local video store to have the scratches removed and the disc resurfaced.

Having said that, I did try to rip Sports Resort as a practice disk. Managed to get that to run via wiiflow off a thumbdrive formated to fat32 with a wbfs directory added. I tried burning the wbfs, but cannot get that to run in any of the softmod included programs. (get some sort of !!!wit) error on neogamma. Tried again after converting to iso, and then got a "no disk" error on neogamma.

Point is.... When I first joined here and posted on the intro forum, I mentioned I had quite a few (seemed like 100's) wii games. Usually bought really cheap at flea markets, dump bins, garage sales, ect. Turns out I've 91 actually. Obviously some get played more then others. Think I'm constantly taking one of the Kirby disks out and wife has just a bad habit leaving here Guitar Hero disk in the machine as well.

While making back up disks of our (currently) favorite games, I can't see spending alot of money on disks, when I'd rather put that towards a hdd.

The thing is that if you use a cord adapter even as a quick fix the rips the you do while using it might not be good rips and when you go to play the games you'll start experiencing problems, I'm just using personal experience as an example, I now that for me any type of adapter or external enclosure cause nothing but problems when playing the games, I manage to rip every game that I want it, but almost all had issues when I try to play them, maybe it was just luck.........

Chatted with other half about the situation. She's beginning to see the light and it looks like (budget permitting) be getting a back up drive next month. I checked out the compatibility list again. It seems the WD model numbers are a bit older now. Could I get a recommendation on a more current model? Not sure which would be best. After posting I went to pick up my daughter from school. On the way home stopped at Best Buy to check out the prices on both larger thumb drives and external drives. Noticed that WD makes both smaller laptop type drives and the larger nas like drives. Is there a preference?