Just a PSA on using a HDD with the Wii U Console.
As some have mentioned, you DO NOT need to buy a Self Powered USB HDD for it to work on the Wii U. Using a simple USB Y Cable, which basically uses both the rear USB Ports of the Wii U allows you to use NON SELF POWERED HDD's with the Wii U. It seems that the USB ports on the Wii U do not provide as much power as needed by a non-self powered HDD, but using a Y Adapter gives the needed juice from both of the Wii U's USB ports enough juice to run the HDD without issues.
Below are two posts I made in the HDD Thread on using the Wii U and a non-self powered HDD.
I have confirmed that this HDD works with the Wii U. I am using a USB 2.0 Y Cable to provide enough power, but have not tested just plugging straight into the unit without the Y cable.
The Wii U detected the HDD immediately upon boot up. Was able to format the drive and moved my update data/save game data for Nintendo Land which was about 228 mb to the HDD and it transfered it rather fast. Moving it back from the HDD to the Internal memory took twice as long though, so unsure if that is normal. It seems to work perfectly fine and it being a semi-glossy small hdd, it fits perfect with the look of the black wii u.
Best Buy has a 1TB Portable External HDD Seagate on sale right now for $69.99 vs. the regular price of $99.99. It is part of the Black Friday deals and I was able to order with in-store pick up just a few minutes ago. Almost every best buy in my area had the HDD as available/in-stock.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Seagate+...0568&cp=1&lp=2
Will give it shot without using the Y Cable in a little bit. Will report back with the results.
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Tested the HDD without the Y Cable and it did work for a bit, but when trying to move data from the HDD back to the console it failed on 2 attempts. Once I plugged the Y Adapter back in it worked without any issue.
In testing, I did find sending a 226mb file (my Nintendo Land data) from the console to the HDD took about 20 seconds. Moving the same file back to the system memory took up to 1 minute. Not sure if that is normal or not. So in short, if you have a self powered USB HDD, you do need a Y Adapter since the single USB port does not give it enough juice. In my test without the Y adapter it did recoginize the hdd and was able to write to it, but reading from it and sending data to the console it would fail.
For $69.99 *if you act fast* a 1 tb (931 gb) usable for the Wii U is pretty damn good deal and the drive looks sleek and small and compliments the Black Wii U.
Here is the link again for the HDD.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Seagate+...0568&cp=1&lp=2
Oh and I am using a USB 2.0 Y-Cable, so not sure if a 3.0 would do anything differently being that the Wii U uses 2.0 instead of 3.0.
Feel free to add me as a friend: NINID: Hawk269 Mention GAF in the message.