Topic: Questions on using an external HD with the Wii U

Hello all,

I have a Wii U that is nearly full of data and wish to use a 1TB external HD, but would like to ask some questions first.

1. This is my only external HD and I would like to use it for my personal files on my computer. Can I use this for both the computer and the Wii U? or won't they be able to share it?

2. If this external HD fails, and I have purchased another one, before the failure/lost of files, can I back up the files onto the other external HD and be able to use it with ease, not lose games, and their save/data files?

Thank you for your time & help.

@Linux-Blue No, you can't use it simultaneously for anything else, not under normal conditions anyway (hackers may have found a way around this by now, but I've not heard about it).

I am not sure about the first one but if you buy a second HDD and connect it to the Wii U you can tranfer games easily from the menu from the one HDD to the other. It is painfully slow though. I would recommend to see a buying guide before buying to see what if you need some kind of power supply via USB or power outlet.

While you can do that (Q2), there's a much better way of backing save data at least. You could mod your Wii U and back your save data to the SD card.

Thanks all for the reply. I suppose the best option is possibly a SD card. Would a flash/thumb drive be better or worse?

I'm sure it's rather embarrassing to ask such questions like what I will be asking, but I never used any other external hard drive for a console, and I have no idea how they function with external drives.
SD cards aren't too common beyond 64gb. So can you have some data on one SD card, some on other, or will the Wii U be searching for only one?

I'm mostly worried about using some external drive in some fashion, and losing the data somehow and not having my games anymore, being most games I have, have been downloaded.

Im getting some answers from a pc gaming forum i frequently visit. Im not sure why you have gone silent on me, but i am getting answers now on the other site.
Ill just use an external HD.

@Linux-Blue The Wii U thread on this site is nearly dead. Just FYI.

Your best choice, without any modding, is the external hard drive. It isn't exactly cheap, but it's as simple as plugging it in and telling the Wii U to format it.

The Wii U doesn't use the SD card slot other than for Smash Bros. replay and a couple of odd game tasks....you can't run digital games from it on Wii U.

The SD card slot is mainly there for backward compatibility with the Wii. The virtual Wii uses it.

Powered USB HDD is best. I have found that getting one 2 TB or less these days is more difficult than getting a bigger one, at least I got a 3 or 4 TB drive for mine that was cheaper than the smaller drives about 7 months ago or so...it only uses 2 TB of the drive but I saved money.

USB flash drives or SD cards in USB adapters work but will not be as reliable...more likely to fail.

There is no good way to backup your saves that I can recall. Switch is like this too and Wii had some console locked saves as well. Homebrew has save managers though.

So just a USB connection to an external HD is not as good as one with some power cord? I found one on Amazon, I think just USB connection, that says it's good for computer & console systems. It's pretty cheap and is as low as 80GB, and as high as 750gb.

I did some research and it sounds like the Wii U has an 32 gb hard drive.

I may buy that some day.

The black console has 32gb. The white has 8 gb. Your right about hdd, one with a power supply cable is best as Wii U USB ports don’t provide much power. Y cable supposedly works if it doesn’t have power supply cable but I had issues when I tried to use one.

They will not work without the extra power cable, or at least mine doesn't.

The HDD i was looking at on amazon is a Kesu brand. Outside Amazon, i have failed to see any reviews, good or bad. When clicking on the item, it states all it supports, but i tend to agree a powered one would be better.
I know i have the 32gb, its black, its the wind waker bundle pack.
I dont do much gaming and figured $20 some dollars for the kesu would be nice, but not a powered hd though.

I had an external hdd with power cord to the wall. Worked great. Unfortunately it died on me. The other hdd i had on hand was usb 3.0 and did not agree with the wii u. Not really in the mood to purchase ANOTHER hdd just for the wii u, so i stuck a usb jump drive on the back to see what would happen. Works great so far. I have my important games and save files on the wii u internal drive in case the jump drive dies. Seems good enough of a solution for now. Lesson learned is, get physical copies of games unless they are otherwise unavailable.

Definitely go with an external power supply for any mechanical drive. I tried various ones out with mine and although there were a couple of drives that seemed to work at first without one, they were prone to dropping out and it seemed like only a matter of time before I trashed a save game with them.

There's enough power coming through the USB port to run a solid state drive though, so you'd be safe enough with one of those.