Wii & Hard Drive Enclosures

[stainy007]

I've placed an old 60GB SATA Hitachi hard drive into a Newlink 2.5" enclosure brought from Maplins to use with the Wii but having a few issues. Homebrew is installed along with USB Loader GX, both latest versions and they recognise a 4GB Memory stick, but the HDD, nothing. USB loader counts down from 20 seconds and then take me back to the home page. I've checked the compatibilty but found nothing so I'm guessing the enclosure will never work. Any Ideas would be grateful just to put a close to wasting my Saturdays trying.

Also, I'm looking at buying a Hitachi Touro 500 GB Portable External Hard Drive if all fails. Any ideas if this one works.

Any help would be great

[saltyboy]

have you got the hdd formated to either fat32 or with wbsf and make sure its active

[stainy007]

formatted it to fat32, ntfs & WBFS. no of them work. forgot to say that the Wii is 4.3e black .
it is also plugged into the right usb port as well, even though I have tried the other one to.

[stainy007]

should have said the correct usb port

[happy_highlander]

Did you have a game on the drive as the drive will not be recognised unless there is a game on it. Also a problem I had with a pc drive in an enclosure is that gx needs to be started before switching on the drive our it was not recognised. You also haven't said whether or not the drive is usb powered or had it's own supply.

[Captin]

I use 2 different hard drives, an 80gb from my PS3 when I updated it and a 250gb drive. I have them both in 2.5" USB powered enclosures I got from Amazon for ?3.99 each.

I have to use both USB plugs in the Wii but both drives work perfectly.

They are formatted FAT32 and have the games in a folder named WBFS and I use configurable USB loader on the Wii, I use Wii Game Manager to put the games onto the drives.

My Wii is an older model with 4.3e firmware.

I had a few problems at first with different loaders, but it works fine now. I still have the homebrew on the SD card and not on the hard drives.

[saltyboy]

the answer is right there i do take it your have soft modded your wii and not just using the hard drive etc as youve said firmware 4.3 you will need to soft mod again by looks of thiungs as 4.3 wipes everything but if post systemcheck post then would know better

[Keithuk]

Thats the problem not all external USB drives are compatible with the Wii. You don't say which Hitachi drive you have only a SATA 60GB?

USB Compatibility List

Here is shows Hitachi Sata FTS541080G9SA00 80GB in a Western Digital Passport enclosure - Working

but a

Hitachi Travel Star HTS42128 75GB with IB-250U-B (Icybox enclosure) - Not Working

Generally USB Loader GX once it locates the drive and it can't find any games will ask if you want to format it to WBFS. As happy_highlander says there must be one game on the drive else it won't load it.

Now you say that if that drive doesn't work you're thinking of buying a Hitachi Touro 500 GB Portable External Hard Drive. Now some people say these Passport drives work and some say they don't I personally would recommend a powered external USB drive. Obviously the size will be set on how many games you need to put on it so 500GB is a good starting point. I have a 120GB powered drive with 67 games on so if you get your 60GB drive working that will only take 30+ games. External USB drives are quite cheap today, you say you've bought things from Maplins they do good deals on these drives. I bought 2 1TB FreeAgent? GoFlex***8482; Desk External Hard Drive 3 months ago for ?55 and they work though the price has gone up alot since.

[stainy007]

Thanks for the replies folks. reinstalled everything again but still no luck. All USB programs are picking up the memory stick but still not the HDD & enclosure so I thinking that its just not compatible and if I waste anymore time on it somethings gonna give.

So once again many thanks for the quick replies

[happy_highlander]

Did you set the drive to primary and active when you formatted it

[saltyboy]

i still think the answer is there he says its on firmware 4.3 im sure he needs to re soft mod as he it looks like its been updated so will have wiped all the files off as stubs. just a thought would love to know if always been on 4.3 or what it was before.

[MarkARC]

Also, I'm looking at buying a Hitachi Touro 500 GB Portable External Hard Drive if all fails. Any ideas if this one works.

Hey, just a quick question. I am also looking into buying the Hitachi Touro 500 GB Portable External Hard Drive USB2 version. Did this drive work for you?

[amberwii]

Got a verbatim portable 320gb drive from Asda direct for ?35 a couple of weeks ago - works a treat - prices gone up a bit since, but no doubt they'll come down again in another fortnight... 70 games loaded so far and under half full

[Keithuk]

These portable\passport USB powered drives some work and some don't because there isn't as much power on the second USB port that needs the external drive. There is more power on the first port but the drives aren't recognised in there. You would be better of with a mains powered HDD.