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[ClayKavalier]

I bought a couple games on the current eshop sale and it's finally time for me to get a hard drive. Before I was just cleaning the fridge and keeping three or four games I knew I'd be playing on the drive, but it's getting annoying.

I went to the official Nintendo page about hard drives and it wasn't very helpful. They recommend a drive with an external power supply which is really annoying since I'd rather not have yet another power cord coming out of my entertainment center.

Are there hard drives that work with the Wii U with no external power supply? Can I just use a flash drive? I'd like to just get this 128GB stick, not a ton of space but I think it'll work considering the size of most Wii U games.

 

[flamesofchaos]

Yeah they work, except you will need to use a USB Y cable (will use 2 USB ports on the Wii U). I have a 1TB Seagate which is self powered but have to use a Y cable or else the Wii U won't give the hard drive enough power.

 

[jimi_dini]

Don't use flash drives. Use actual harddrives.

external harddrives with USB power supply will work w/o issues, but you have to use a Y-cable.

 

[Boney]

Yeah they work, except you will need to use a USB Y cable (will use 2 USB ports on the Wii U). I have a 1TB Seagate which is self powered but have to use a Y cable or else the Wii U won't give the hard drive enough power.

This. Similar to the GC adapter you need a Y cable

 

[orborborb]

I've been using the highest end Sandisk Extreme 64GB USB stick for almost a year now with my Wii U with no issues, but I wouldn't trust that cheaper USB stick you linked to for that kind of extended/frequent usage, or for maintaining the consistent transfer speed some games require.

 

[KratosEnergyDrink]

Don't use flash drives. Use actual harddrives.

external harddrives with USB power supply will work w/o issues, but you have to use a Y-cable.

SSD Drives are always the better choice, if you can afford the higher price.

 

[tbb033]

There's nothing wrong with using flash drives, Nintendo just doesn't recommend it as a CYA against people using bargain basement no name garbage flash drives. Samsung makes good stuff though, you should be fine with them. Just make sure to buy somewhere reputable so you don't get a fake.

 

[M3d10n]

If you really want to use a USB flash drive, make sure to go for a high end one. The off-brand ones often don't come anywhere as near as maxing USB 2.0 speeds and are often slower than most people's broadband connections.

A safe bet is to grab a USB 3.0 one that actually reaches USB 3.0 speeds: they'll max the USB 2.0 speeds and thus will perform as fast as a mechanical drive.

 

[Lonely1]

If you really want to use a USB flash drive, make sure to go for a high end one. The off-brand ones often don't come anywhere as near as maxing USB 2.0 speeds.

A safe bet is to grab a USB 3.0 one that actually reaches USB 3.0 speeds: they'll max the USB 2.0 speeds and thus will perform as fast as a mechanical drive.

Not only that, First I used a cheap 32GB USB drive and games would freeze outright, requiring me to disconnect the console. Now I'm using a non-cheap 128GB USB flash drive and has worked fine for over a year.

 

[SMattera]

I'll make it easy for you.

Buy this:
WD My Passport Ultra 500 GB Portable External Hard Drive, Black
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W8XXRKW/?tag=neogaf0e-20

and this:
eForCity dual A to Micro-B USB 3.0 Y Cable, Black
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005M0ICG2/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[Meaty]

The only hard drive I could find that fit nintendo criteria was a 2 TB samsung one, it was so expensive =/

 

[flux1]

I use an external 128GB SSD I got on sale and it has been working good for me. It doesn't need any extra power or Y cables either, freeing up the other USB port in the back to use a 32 gig in Wii mode.

As people have mentioned, if you get a flash drive, get a good quality one. I used the 32 gig previously on my 360 for a year with no issues, but the Wii U might write more often to it, causing cheaper ones to die faster. I do keep a backup on an external drive of all my eshop games though.

 

[simpleton]

I'm using a 2 tb with the y cable and not having any issues. I made a video that shows how it works here and also show how to disable sleep mode on the hard drive, which is a ridiculous hidden setting.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bRVXoYSHShQ

 

[Sayter]

I'm using a 2 tb with the y cable and not having any issues. I made a video that shows how it works here and also show how to disable sleep mode on the hard drive, which is a ridiculous hidden setting.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bRVXoYSHShQ

I'm curious. If you disable the HDD sleep mode wouldn't that cause more wear and tear than usual? Do the benefits outway it?

 

[Diamond Dog]

I find most flashdrive's dont work in my Wii U for whatever reason. A 32gb san disk was the only one :L

 

[ClayKavalier]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

I'll make it easy for you.

Buy this:
WD My Passport Ultra 500 GB Portable External Hard Drive, Black
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W8XXRKW/?tag=neogaf0e-20

and this:
eForCity dual A to Micro-B USB 3.0 Y Cable, Black
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005M0ICG2/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Went ahead and grabbed these. I surprised Nintendo hasn't gotten together with a manufacturer and made an "official" Wii U drive.

 

[simpleton]

I'm curious. If you disable the HDD sleep mode wouldn't that cause more wear and tear than usual? Do the benefits outway it?

I'm no expert but I've always heard the act of spinning up and down would be more harmful. Typically I might play my wii u for a couple hours at a time so I think keeping the sleep mode off would probably be worthwhile to avoid spinning up and down.

If for some reason you kept your wii u on for 10 hours at a time then you might want the drive to spin down I guess.

 

[Sayter]

I'm no expert but I've always heard the act of spinning up and down would be more harmful. Typically I might play my wii u for a couple hours at a time so I think keeping the sleep mode off would probably be worthwhile to avoid spinning up and down.

If for some reason you kept your wii u on for 10 hours at a time then you might want the drive to spin down I guess.

That's good advice. I keep mine on pretty much all day. Disabling sleep mode may not be best for me.

Thanks.

 

[M3d10n]

Not only that, First I used a cheap 32GB USB drive and games would freeze outright, requiring me to disconnect the console. Now I'm using a non-cheap 128GB USB flash drive and has worked fine for over a year.

Yep, cheap drivers are often horrifically slow. We are talking ~4 megs a second, far less if it's a bunch of small reads due to the terrible controller chips.

BTW, there's no need to worry about wear and tear: the mast majority of accesses will be reads, not writes.

 

[WhiteRabbitEXE]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Went ahead and grabbed these. I surprised Nintendo hasn't gotten together with a manufacturer and made an "official" Wii U drive.

Eh, all that would mean is an extra logo stamp and a massive price increase. Anyone remember the $40 "Wii" SD cards?

 

[mobilesworking]

Echoing ClayKavalier's thanks. I came to GAF looking for just such a thread and there it was. Magic, I tells ya.

 

[Hyrule Warrior]

For those people talking 1-2tb hard drives for Wii U, not sure if I'd bother. I own 100+ games all digitally on my Wii U, 31 of which are retail games, and at least 48 are eshop non-VC games, and I still have over 200gb on my 500gb external hard drive.

I have a feeling I'm not gonna run out of space before the end of the Wii U life cycle.

 

[ShinySylvee]

I tried using 2 different flash drives for my Wii U and both ended up failing. Got one of the officially supported external drives with its own power supply and it's worked fine. 1 TB is a bit overkill but if you go cheap there is a real possibility that it will fail. idk I wouldn't take the risk if I had the money but it's up to you.

 

[ClayKavalier]

OK, I bought that hard drive and y-cable linked above, hooked them up to my Wii U, and formatted the drive. It looks like it's working, the console reads the drive, the drive is spinning, and if I go into data management it says I have 490GB (or something like that) available on my external USB device.

BUT, if I try to download anything I get a message telling me I don't have enough space (internal memory is basically full). What gives? The system claims that it defaults to using external storage, and I can't find any option to force things to the external drive. Getting frustrated, not sure what else I can do.

Edit: Never mind, figured it out myself. I had a hunch that maybe this was the issue before I posted but thought it was too moronic to try.

What happened was there was save and update data for a couple games on the internal memory, so I guess when I was trying to download the games the system detected that and wanted to have all of the information for each game on the same drive. I copied the save and update data over to the external drive and everything works fine now.

 

[frankie_baby]

I'm curious. If you disable the HDD sleep mode wouldn't that cause more wear and tear than usual? Do the benefits outway it?

My Wii U hangs for so long it seems like it's crashed if I press the home button if the hard drive has gone to sleep so disabling sleep mode has to be done

 

[deletethis123]

Has anyone tried a high end micro SD card with a USB adapter? I think I will need to expand storage but don't like the idea of having something hanging out of my wiiu and that would maintain the slim profile.