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External hard drives and the Wii U

O

oconnomiyaki

Member
Quick question: what's the performance like with external hard drives and the Wii U? I've Googled and found lots on what's best to use, how to set them up, etc, but nothing on whether or not playing a game from them impacts performance in any way? It's only USB 2.0, so my gut is rumbling in uncertainty.

Anyone using one? How do you find it? Or is it better just to stick to physical?
 
I have an external Seagate 2TB with power source. Even if it's USB 2.0 the speed is still above the drive speed (35 42? MB/s vs. 22.5 MB/s if I remember correctly). I had no issues with it. I have most of the games digitally because I like the convenience of not swapping disks and I hate disks stored around the house.
But there are not so many games for which it makes a difference in terms of speed, as the drive speed is usually enough. I know ZombiU was one of the games for which it mattered, if I remember correctly.

Stupid, edited.
 
While we're here, I've been wondering a similar thing about PS4/XBO, what with the crazy internal memory to actual game size ratio.
 
Iceblade said:
While we're here, I've been wondering a similar thing about PS4/XBO, what with the crazy internal memory to actual game size ratio.
Click to expand...

Well, that's a interesting question in relation with the caching of games. How fast will be caching 35-40 GB when starting a game? And erasing afterwards. Clearly a SSD should make a difference, but will it be enough from the capacity point of view? Although this will be anyhow limited by the drive speed, hmm.
 
I find the home screen loads slower but I've never had a problem within a game itself.
I use a Western Digital 500GB self-powered drive. The blue light even matches the WiiU :)
 
NSider said:
External HDDs can reach about 42 MB/s read speed on USB 2.0. The Wii U disk drive is limited to 22.5 MB/s.
Click to expand...

Of course, it's flash memory, isn't it? For some messed up reason I was thinking it was SATA.

So it's generally okay, then? With Deus Ex being 16GB in size, I'm keen to suss out an external. If the Wii U bombs any harder here, digital might be my only option. :P

Does anyone know what the deal with ZombiU was?
 
I use a WD passport (not self-powered), it works like a charm with a y-cable

Speed is better than disc
 
KingSnake said:
I have an external Seagate 2TB self powered. Even if it's USB 2.0 the speed is still above the drive speed (35 GB/s vs. 22.5 GB/s if I remember correctly). I had no issues with it. I have most of the games digitally because I like the convenience of not swapping disks and I hate disks stored around the house.
But there are not so many games for which it makes a difference in terms of speed, as the drive speed is usually enough. I know ZombiU was one of the games for which it mattered, if I remember correctly.
Click to expand...

MegaBytes per second ?
 
Donutta said:
Of course, it's flash memory, isn't it? For some messed up reason I was thinking it was SATA.
Click to expand...

I was talking about the optical disk drive. The Wii U's internal flash memory is indeed flash-based. The eMMC flash storage used in the Wii U is made by Samsung, and it should be fairly fast. Much faster than any typical HDD, I think.
 
USB 2.0 is still faster than blurays drives - no problem here. In fact i am quite happy with my 500GB external harddrive via y-cable. Going almost full digital this time.
 
Interceptor said:
USB 2.0 is still faster than blurays drives - no problem here. In fact i am quite happy with my 500GB external harddrive via y-cable. Going almost full digital this time.
Click to expand...
Does the y-cable put strain the Wii U at all? I wanna get a hard drive but my set up has no more outlets to plug a hard drive into.
 
MarkusRJR said:
Does the y-cable put strain the Wii U at all? I wanna get a hard drive but my set up has no more outlets to plug a hard drive into.
Click to expand...

Never had any problems myself, works like a charm. And I never heard about any issues with harddrives, except when you don't use Y cable and it doesn't get enough power from the console. If you use one, you won't get any problem with your HDD.
 
L~A said:
Never had any problems myself, works like a charm. And I never heard about any issues with harddrives, except when you don't use Y cable and it doesn't get enough power from the console. If you use one, you won't get any problem with your HDD.
Click to expand...

Same for me.
 
The first time i plugged an HDD i noticed Nintendoland loading a lot faster.


Its an old 100gb from an old desktop computer i gave away, but first i took the hdd and bought a case/enclosure for it.

Works fine, but it has a on/off switch. So its kind of annoying to have to turn it off when i finish playing. In the first week i was keeping it on all the time, but then it began to fail at the WiiU startup and make some CLEK CLEK CLEK noises.
 
Thanks for the comments. I didn't plan on getting an external drive since I don't plan on buying digital. However, NSLU DLC and Wii Sports may put a large dent in my tiny 3GB storage on the basic system. A HDD seems like such overkill, since I'll probably only need 20GB over the lifespan of the system. I guess I should have bought the deluxe system, but… black… ugh. Maybe I'll just hope for a white deluxe release in the future and some method of transferring data.

Any experience with the Sandisk "cruzer fit"? I like the small size.
http://www.sandisk.com/products/usb/drives/cruzer-fit/
 
Zing said:
Thanks for the comments. I didn't plan on getting an external drive since I don't plan on buying digital. However, NSLU DLC and Wii Sports may put a large dent in my tiny 3GB storage on the basic system. A HDD seems like such overkill, since I'll probably only need 20GB over the lifespan of the system. I guess I should have bought the deluxe system, but… black… ugh. Maybe I'll just hope for a white deluxe release in the future and some method of transferring data.
Click to expand...

You can try with an USB flash drive if so, just make sure it's a fast one.
 
Recently bought a 1GB Seagate HD for my Wii U. No problems so far, though I did have to buy a Y cable.
 
KingSnake said:
You can try with an USB flash drive if so, just make sure it's a fast one.
Click to expand...
This site seems useful.
http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net/?vname=SanDisk+Corp.&vid=1921&pid=21873

To answer my own question regarding the cruzer fit, it appears to have the same read speed as the ultra, but relatively slow write. Write speed doesn't mean much if I am just using it to store downloads, I assume. I can just use it for the downloads and keep save data on my system memory, right?
 
cacildo said:
Its an old 100gb from an old desktop computer i gave away, but first i took the hdd and bought a case/enclosure for it.

Works fine, but it has a on/off switch. So its kind of annoying to have to turn it off when i finish playing.
Click to expand...

Similar situation here. (but 500GB)

Been wondering if it matters when it comes to standby downloads/updates.

For the guys with a Y-cable/anyone: Does the WiiU wake-up/use the external HDD in standby "mode"? (orange power led)
 
I've used a single USB external powered HD and a portable HD with a Y cable on Wii U. Home screen loading aside, I noticed no performance difference in-game between the two kinds of drives, and have never seen worse performance with external storage than from a disc-based version of the same title.
 
Hmm, it seems that once you have an external drive configured, ALL data, including saved games, is written to that drive. This is based on info from a year ago. Maybe a firmware update has changed this? Can anyone comment on whether you can have just digital downloads go to the external and all other data (updates, save games) go to internal? I assume not. :(

Now I'm wondering if a sub-10MB/s write speed will be detrimental.
 
Zing said:
Hmm, it seems that once you have an external drive configured, ALL data, including saved games, is written to that drive. This is based on info from a year ago. Maybe a firmware update has changed this? Can anyone comment on whether you can have just digital downloads go to the external and all other data (updates, save games) go to internal? I assume not. :(

Now I'm wondering if a sub-10MB/s write speed will be detrimental.
Click to expand...

at best you can do this manually for every title, move everything except the digital downloads to internal flash one by one. I wouldn't recommend it though, too much hassle.
 
I use a "Western Digital WD Elements 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive" and works very well.

A good bit faster read speeds then retail disks. I've noticed a 20% to 30% faster read time for ZombiU load times.
 
I'm considering using an old HDD I have lying around, but it's so old I'm afraid it'll crap out on me and I'll lose all the saves.
 
After a lot of searching and reading, the most reliable data I can get on the internal flash speed is around 10MB/s read speed. This means that even cheap USB flash will be roughly equal in speed to the internal storage. The Cruzer Fit I mentioned above is likely faster than the internal storage!
 
Disorientator said:
Similar situation here. (but 500GB)

Been wondering if it matters when it comes to standby downloads/updates.
Click to expand...

yeah, here is exactly the problem

i bought deus ex and had to download it FOUR TIMES because of errors. The game is 14gb. Each download took 5-6 hours. Bought on friday, played on sunday.

And why? The only reason i could find: downloading to the hdd gave me an error. Probably when the system powers down.

The solution was to download it to the system internal memory, then transfer it to the hdd. It worked.
 
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