SOLVED: External Hard drive not recognized by WII
Okay, here is the solution that worked for me. Admittedly, I don't know all the in depth details about how the WII hack works or what the software does, but I followed mauifrog's excellent guide, and successfully soft modded a friend's WII with no problems. I recently tried to do the same to my WII, and everything worked great, except the USB loader would not recognize my external drive. I tried everything I knew, and combed the forums here, but to no avail.
I was afraid my hard drive was just not compatible with the WII. To try and discern whether it was a software problem, or a hardware problem, I took my friend's external hard drive with his games on it, and hooked it to mine. It worked, and loaded the USB drive fine. On a hunch, I switched my hard drive enclosure with my friend's. In other words, I put my hard drive in his enclosure. To my surprise, my hard drive in his enclosure booted flawlessly with the USB loader. (I haven't actually played a game yet, but the USB loader loads to the start screen and displays all games, so I am sure it will play fine.) Soooo, it was the enclosure, not the drive. I know many people here on the forums have issues with hard drives being recognized by USB loaders, so this may just help you out.
As to why, I am not exactly sure. I am really surprised that some hard drives, and apparently some enclosures won't work with the WII. It seems to me that a drive is a drive, and all enclosures should do the same thing i.e. transfer data through the USB cable to the WII. But, what do I know? :023: The hard drive enclosure that DID NOT work for me was Dynex DX-HD302513. It does say USB 3.0, but that it will work fine with 2.0 as well. The only other thing I noticed was that my friend's enclosure used a USB to USB cable to hook up. The Dynex had a different plug on the enclosure end. I think it is a Micro B.
Anyway, I wanted to share this info with all of you, and maybe it will help someone. By the way, my hard drive is Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320 GB SATA 2.5" drive.
