Wii u external storage

EDit

Hi all. Like me, you may well have identified at least 4 or 5 games announced at E3 that you're going to want on your Wii u. If, like me, you prefer digital versions, you might also be thinking about buying an external hard drive. However, the official Nintendo site has pretty limited recommended options (and the recommendations are very US-focused and not all seem to be available here). Anyway, just wondered if anyone is using a "non-recommended" drive successfully. I'm sure I'm not the only person who'd appreciate the advice.

AlanS181824

I don't actually have a WiiU yet but I've seen a few people using a Toshiba Portable Hard drive either 500GB or 1TB which you can find on Amazon, I think it's the second or third one when you search portable hard drive.

Then you get the USB y cable so the WiiU can give it enough power and you should be good to go from there!

Banjo

If you're purchasing a drive specially, and you have enough plug points under your telly, try to get one that's got it's own power supply.

The Wii U doesn't support bus-powered drives (ie a drive that's powered by the USB port only) officially.
You can run a bus powered drive off the Wii U by using a splitter/Y cable - one with 2 USB connections at the WiiU end going into one mini/micro/usb-B connector at the drive end. They use the 2nd USB connection purely for power. However these can be a little hit and miss, so you'd want to google the drive you're planning on getting extensively to ensure someone else used it successfully. Most bus powered drives and enclosures are supplied with a Y splitter cable. Damo put a pic up on another thread in here in the last week if you really want to see one - happy hunting!

In terms of brand, I've plugged a bunch of random HDD enclosures and USB keys into my Wii U, all of them worked except the bus powered drive, and that one has trouble on laptops too so I wouldn't take it as representative of all Bus Powered drives. Personally, I'd avoid Seagate drives in general - but everyone has their own horror stories about different manufacturers, you need to develop your own biases by yourself

Just bear in mind that your Wii U hard drive is only for use on your Wii U - unless 3rd party tools have progressed in the last 6-9months you can't split the drive into a Wii U and Fat/NTFS partition. also, if it's plugged in when you start playing a game for the first time, the save data defaults to USB storage, which can mess with your head if you don't always have the USB storage attached.

____

Worth noting that after dealing with power considerations, you have 3 key points to look at
Reliability
Capacity vs Price
Noise

Depending on your front room and gaming preferences, the noise a drive makes can be a key deciding factor in whether or not you leave it always-on (hearing it whir and click while you're trying to watch a DVD without waking the kids is ****ing annoying). Unless you always game at full volume, you don't want a drive that interferes with your gaming experience. The other 2 points are more important of course but don't ignore the volume of noise it generates, you'll regret it in the long term if you do. Unless you plan on buying a LOT of games VERY quickly, capacity is not that big a deal right now and as time goes by you'll pay a lot less for a lot bigger drives - Pay extra for a reliable quiet drive now. By the time capacity becomes a problem you'll be able to upgrade to a much bigger drive for a much more reasonable price!

readyletsgo

Can anyone just recommend hard drives that they successfully use now with their WiiU please. Just need a hard drive and of course Nintendo make it awkward as possible, why couldn't they include 500gb in the system *sigh*.

So, what are you using? Where did you get it? What price was said hard drive?

Thanks

AlanS181824

Double Posted - Apologies.

AlanS181824

Basically cannot improve on what's been said by Banjo.

I have 2 1TB Toshiba hard drives that are USB powered, I used one with my router as a mini NAS.

It is really quiet, hums when in use, really unnoticeable.

If you've a Sky+ you'll know the sound I mean, like a very faint whir noise.

Here is the one I have.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-HDTB110EK3BA-Stor-E-Basics-External/dp/B005X7AXXE/ref=sr_1_1/275-7772080-3455801?ie=UTF8&qid=1402569546&sr=8-1&keywords=toshiba+hard+drive

From Googling it, it seems to work well.

But as I don't yet have a WiiU I can't personally comment.

Amazon are great at returns so if it doesn't you can easily return it.

Banjo

Currently using a 500GB WD Elements drive with external power, it's f'ing huge (physically, not in terms of capacity), quite loud and about 7 years old, I think. And I bought it in Currys/PCWorld, can't remember what it cost. But I bet they still have them and are selling them for the same amount or more...

AlanS181824

http://www.nintendolife.com/forums/wii-u/wii_u_external_memory

Have a read of that if ye like, the OP has the same Hard Drive and the one I'm talking about.

The OP appears Irish too and they posted an EBay.ie for a €5 Y cable which appears necessary.

EDit

Thanks for all the replies. As someone pointed out, this is not an urgent situation (for me at least) so hopefully over time more info will come out as to which drives work best with the wii u

AlanS181824

EDit wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. As someone pointed out, this is not an urgent situation (for me at least) so hopefully over time more info will come out as to which drives work best with the wii u

Judging by this article
http://nintendoeverything.com/wii-u-game-download-sizes/
Nintendo game sizes seem very small so I'm sure the 32GB will be plenty for most people.

If not 500GB will surely suffice.

The_B_Man

Would there be any point in using a 64GB USB stick?
It wouldnt need much power, and is small and silent.

Banjo

The frequent writes would probably kill it quite quickly. If you installed games on the USB key and then moved the save games to the system memory (I'm not sure you can seperate the game and it's saves though, never tried it) that might mitigate the issue somewhat.

Star Lord

Games are made to frequently load/stream information from the disk, so the constant reads would be the issue rather than the writing of the saves.

EDit

Couple of questions for the more knowledgable folks....

1) I have a digital version of WW plus save data (I've finished the game) on the wii u...could this be moved over to a hard drive to make more room on the actual console or can you only save new games/save data that are downloaded/generated once the external drive is plugged in?

2) if you save a game to a hard drive and that dies, can you download again from the e-shop for free? (Obviously any save data would be lost forever, but would be gutting to have to pay for the game again)

Thanks

Star Lord

EDit wrote: »

1) I have a digital version of WW plus save data (I've finished the game) on the wii u...could this be moved over to a hard drive to make more room on the actual console or can you only save new games/save data that are downloaded/generated once the external drive is plugged in?

Yup, once you've connected your hard drive up and the Wii U has formatted it to it's satisfaction (All other data and partitions will be wiped, Wii U likes to control the partition tables too.) you should be able to copy the information over using the system settings.

EDit wrote: »

2) if you save a game to a hard drive and that dies, can you download again from the e-shop for free? (Obviously any save data would be lost forever, but would be gutting to have to pay for the game again)

You can indeed, so long as it's to the same Wii U, as Nintendo don't believe in/support the whole purchases-tied-to-your-account-rather-than-the-hardware thing.

readyletsgo

AlanS181824 wrote: »

Judging by this article
http://nintendoeverything.com/wii-u-game-download-sizes/
Nintendo game sizes seem very small so I'm sure the 32GB will be plenty for most people.

If not 500GB will surely suffice.

W101 is min 10gb to download, I would think over the next few years lots of games will be between 5 and 10gb, and w101 was free for me, so no, 32gb is puss poor of Nintendo to provide in the system.

Also I have heard people say about using USB sticks that they could burn out faster so better to get a HDD with own power supply.

I think I am going to get a Seagate 2Tb drive, it's WAY too much storage but handy for disc games that go on sale like tekken last week or Lego/batman games etc, same size as ps3 games, and I can see Ninty having a lot of sales on games I would otherwise never even look at on disc.


EDIT: also something I thought of today. With WiiU only using external hdd for WiiU downloads over the next few years I wonder if we will be able to use said hdd on their next system, what ever it is, as in will their next system be backwards compatible with downloaded WiiU games, AAA and indie?

Just a future proof thought.

AlanS181824

readyletsgo wrote: »

W101 is min 10gb to download, I would think over the next few years lots of games will be between 5 and 10gb, and w101 was free for me, so no, 32gb is puss poor of Nintendo to provide in the system.

Also I have heard people say about using USB sticks that they could burn out faster so better to get a HDD with own power supply.

I think I am going to get a Seagate 2Tb drive, it's WAY too much storage but handy for disc games that go on sale like tekken last week or barman games etc, same size as ps3 games, and I can see Ninty having a lot of sales on games I would otherwise never even look at on disc.

That's very true, a WiiU with 500GB storage would've been great but this would've raised the price.

2TB is really overkill IMO as that drive will be dedicated to the WiiU as soon as it's formatted, it won't work with a PC anymore.

2TB is definitely future proof but IMO 1TB Max will be enough for this generation.

Andrew76

readyletsgo wrote: »

I think I am going to get a Seagate 2Tb drive, it's WAY too much storage but handy for disc games that go on sale like tekken last week or Lego/batman games etc, same size as ps3 games, and I can see Ninty having a lot of sales on games I would otherwise never even look at on disc.


EDIT: also something I thought of today. With WiiU only using external hdd for WiiU downloads over the next few years I wonder if we will be able to use said hdd on their next system, what ever it is, as in will their next system be backwards compatible with downloaded WiiU games, AAA and indie?

Just a future proof thought.

Bit confused by the above. Can an external HDD only be used to store downloaded games? Or can you also install disc games to it also?

Banjo

You can't install disc games.

AlanS181824

Like Banjo said I'm afraid, save files and downloads only.