I'm looking to buy an external hard drive for my Wii U. Anyone care to comment on what they are using? I'm leaning toward the Toshiba Canvio 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive (HDWC120XK3J1).
I had a spare Samsung 500GB 2.5" from a broken (screen) laptop. I bought an external case (AC powered) for it and was just using it as portable storage. I now use it on the wii u.
I have a 2TB Seagate expansion drive that was my former media drive (one of the shiny black plastic ones). It's quiet and works a treat, but if I was buying new I think I'd go with a couple of smaller drives and copy between them for backup purposes. Even if games were 10-20GB each I think it's very unlikely I'll be filling up a 2TB disk during the life of this system!
That's the one I got too, Best Buy carries them, under a hundie. It's quiet as a ghost, and looks like it belongs next to the Black Wii U. Absolutely loved the ease of setup, and how the Wii U knows to just use it now, instead of internal.
Edit: Almost forgot, the lights even seem to go well with the Wii U. Er, the disc light anyway. If you're into 'looks', that is. Even has that shiny piano finish.
I may need to get an external hard drive soon. I've never used one before. Can someone explain to me the differences (if any) between playing a game from internal storage vs. external storage. For example, does initial start-up of the game take longer, are load times the same, is there any lag or any other issues? Thanks!
That's the one I got too, Best Buy carries them, under a hundie. It's quiet as a ghost, and looks like it belongs next to the Black Wii U. Absolutely loved the ease of setup, and how the Wii U knows to just use it now, instead of internal.
Edit: Almost forgot, the lights even seem to go well with the Wii U. Er, the disc light anyway. If you're into 'looks', that is. Even has that shiny piano finish.
I have the seagate backup as well and can confirm it looks great and is quiet. Got it in December so far haven't had any issues. Won't have to worry about storage for a long time, load and start times are great no difference between games on the system storage or discs.
I may need to get an external hard drive soon. I've never used one before. Can someone explain to me the differences (if any) between playing a game from internal storage vs. external storage. For example, does initial start-up of the game take longer, are load times the same, is there any lag or any other issues? Thanks!
I haven't done any benchmark tests or so, but I would say a HDD is slightly slower on loading than on the internal Wii U storage, but a HDD is loading faster than the discs. The interesting title to compare would be Lego City: Undercover, since that game has really long loading times.
I may need to get an external hard drive soon. I've never used one before. Can someone explain to me the differences (if any) between playing a game from internal storage vs. external storage. For example, does initial start-up of the game take longer, are load times the same, is there any lag or any other issues? Thanks!
I haven't done any benchmark tests or so, but I would say a HDD is slightly slower on loading than on the internal Wii U storage, but a HDD is loading faster than the discs. The interesting title to compare would be Lego City: Undercover, since that game has really long loading times.
So you'd say that the Wii U's internal storage is the fastest option? Does anyone else agree?
@Edwin
From what I can tell, there's not much of a difference. The only benefit I've seen from the internal drive, is stability with smaller files(apps like Netflix, Google Street U, etc, and game updates for your disc games).
The way I see it, is that if you need more memory on your Wii U, you're gonna get an ext. HDD. Having the memory is more important than whether it reads a few seconds slower.
Is their a list of known external hard drives that will not work with the Wii U? Seems to me any USB 2.0 AC powered external HDD with 2TB or less capacity should work.
"Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock-n-roll." - Shigeru Miyamoto
@Edwin
From what I can tell, there's not much of a difference. The only benefit I've seen from the internal drive, is stability with smaller files(apps like Netflix, Google Street U, etc, and game updates for your disc games).
The way I see it, is that if you need more memory on your Wii U, you're gonna get an ext. HDD. Having the memory is more important than whether it reads a few seconds slower.
I'm specifically interested in if this choice will make a difference for Mario Kart 8's online gameplay. I think it's safe to say that this game will be the Wii U's most ambitious online game so far so I just hope that all storage methods can handle the workload equally.
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Topic: Thoughts on External Hard drive for Wii U
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