Guide: Improve Your Wii U's External Hard Drive Performance By Disabling Sleep Mode

Talking of which, can anyone recommend a relatively low priced (as close to £50 as possible) external that is guaranteed to work with the Wii U? I've had trouble finding ones in the UK.

Not to fussed about size, even 500GB would do.

How much more energy consumption are we talking about here? If its like 10Wh more then that's loads and would be totally worth turning off the sleep mode.

would that mean I no longer have to use a self powered HDD and can get cheaper ones powered by the console itself?

@Mogster If 320gb is enough, then this is the type I use with my Wii-U - came with a Y shaped cable, and has worked fine for a year for me.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00JEF10XS/ref=twister_B00JEF10U6?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

How did those guys find this, I wonder? It's one of these obscure things you'd NEVER expect in the System Settings, of all things.

@FullbringIchigo Still a risky deal, and still not advised. Whenever you disconnect a USB-powered HDD, it will instantly lose connection. Also, there's no way to ensure the HDD isn't being accessed, risking file corruption and full-on data loss.

@Mogster try Maplin, I got my 500 gig WD My Passport Ultra external drive from them. I've had it for about 18 munths now and it works perfectly, although I did need to get a Y cable as it's a portable drive, not plugged in.
The drive was about £60 (there probably cheaper now) and the y cable I payed about £4 off amazon.
As for the menu think, it makes me wonder what other little menu tricks there are that we aren't told about.

Yay hopefully this will stop the problems I occasionally have where my hard drive goes to sleep during a game and fails to wake back up causing the console to crash

@Mogster

Or I recommend this one:--

http://www.staples.co.uk/external-hard-drives/cbs/426980.html?keywords=426980&promoCode==200200555&ajx=1

Had to get the special Y cable, it works great!

Would this reduce the life of you hard drive?

@heathenmagic
Cool, thanks! Any chance you can link me to the cable you got?

@Kaze_Memaryu I'm not fully understanding of the difference it makes other than risk avoiding(using a usb powered hdd) But it does seem allot of people do use non recommend devices allot, I shamefully have a 32gb usb stick in my Wii u!!! How much of a risk to our files do you think it is really??

Sure! Good question as I wasn't sure at first. This is the one I got:-

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-3-0-Y-Cable-Y-Cable-USB-3-0-Micro-B-to-Standard-Male-A-High-Quality-New-/141090823620?

Everything working great so far, setup for nearly three months

@ULTRA-64 I was doing this for a while, and then a 32GB SD card. After downloading more stuff it started doing funny things, and I even lost my save for mario kart - which is not so bad I guess, great game. So I moved everything back to system memory then to hard drive. So its a shame, but my USB sticks and SD cards while working at first, just perhaps for me not ideal if you have a few games on them

@heathenmagic I didn't know you could use sd cards to save data on the Wii U. How? I thought the Wii U just let you use HDD Drives.

@heathenmagic the usb stick was never planned to be a permanent solution but worked and I put off plans to get an hdd. I keep all my saves on my system memory so nothing risked except demos and finished e shop titles but the mk8 dlc is the last big file I can fit and with X out soon with pre install options I need to rethink this....

@RainbowGazelle I had to use one of those sd card reader adaptors so it kind of made it into a USB stick. It was alright at the start

@ULTRA-64 I never wanted to get a HD too, but was running out of space also ha. Luckily it is self powered what I use. Looking forward to X, still trying to finish Chronicles on Wii.........

@heathenmagic I guess I'll have to crack, I'll head to check on Amazon now =(
I've never played chronicles and tbh the game isn't the sort of thing that I normally look for but I love variety in gaming and I try to have a blast on anything that reviews well to see if I get on with it. And I like the sound of the mech's

@ULTRA-64 I'm glad I decided to upgrade back in January (got a digital copy of Tropical Freeze and MK8 last year as I was using the discs too much) solely because in the end I would've needed to get one irrelevant of my plans due to XCX's increase game performance files. I still think loading without those files will end up being as bad as Sonic 06.

This is nice for people who are concerned about maximizing their hard drive's potential but I myself am not too concerned about it. I can afford a little longer load times if it makes my hard drive's life last longer.

Are you kidding me?!
I have to buy a new HDD only for this creepy thing. Normal HDD got turned off and WiiU haven't turned it on again "on time". Result : every game crashed when wanted to save something.
I was forced to buy an SSD HDD, where is no sleep mode.

Well.... it would be nice but I don't really see it that important. It isn't really that slow. Plus... sleep mode is a must because my roommate constantly uses it for Netflix and tends to like to leave things on such as the Wii U or TV so... i put sleep mode on everything

@Grumblevolcano yeah it worries me a bit that the loads will be epic even WITH the install files.
I almost wish I'd downloaded dk:tf so I'd have the box on my home screen as a badge of honour. Doesn't seem right hidden away on a shelf after the hours I poured into finishing that one off. Difficult game. =/

I mentioned this last September. Don't know why Nintendo hid this feature, they should include it as an option right in the HD Management.

AWESOME !
I thought that this was a HDD controlled feature, and that the WiiU OS had nothing to do about it.
Thanks for the headup on this one, MUCH appreaciated !

@ikki5
The following Scenario:
Youre playing a VC game. Usually, VC games get loaded completely into the system RAM.
Therefore, the system doesnt access the drive anymore which sends it into sleepmode.
Now, you finished your play session and turn your system off.
Remember what happens to data stored in a systems RAM on shutdown ? Exactly, the RAM gets wiped. Where are your games save files ? You guessed it, on your systems RAM.
If your drive isnt fast enough to turn on JUST before the system shuts off, your save files will not be written onto your HDD. Happened to me more often then i can whish for.
What that meant was: Exiting the game via the home menu, waiting for the HDD to wake up, wait for it to stop writing THEN turn the system off, just to be sure.
There, theres the "importance" about this

@FullbringIchigo the HDD I use is powered by the Wii U. However, you need to buy a Y cable in order to do that. It takes up 2 USB ports in the back.

@Farpun Yes it would since the drive will be spinning continually.

@ULTRA-64 I was not expecting to enjoy Chronicles, but I was so wrong. I think it is a great game, like the story especially, and the combat although 'different' to the norm, is kind of addictive. Good luck on your hunt for a HD

@Einherjar I've never had this problem and I've saved my game and then hit the power button on the gamepad right away without even going back to the home menu... so basically I'd save and 5 seconds later the system would be off.

Is this method advised with external hard drives not powered by dedicated power sources? My HD is powered by my wiiu through the y cable

Dont think I need this. My drive seems to be working all the time.

@Mogster I bought a 2tb seagate drive from maplin for £80 which I thought was good . slightly more but worth it for the price I reckon.comes with the y cable and power lead too so you're good to go.

My drive only needs to catch up if I stop playing a game to check the browser or leave a game on pause for an extended period.

When the Wii U was first out however it would crash the system all of the time. The big update last spring(maybe the year before) stopped that though. In hundreds maybe even thousands of hours since then it has only happened twice.

I've never noticed this problem with mine so I'm keeping mine the way it is. However, it's always nice to know this kind of stuff.

@dkxcalibur

Yeh, ditto - it's useful to know this exists.

Makes me wonder what other combinations of buttons makes stuff happen.

I thought this was already well known. (I know I posted it months ago on the forums).

Think it was Gamefaq's I got it from originally but it is certainly old news.

@erborlongan If you are using a Y Cable it might cause it to start crashing. If you are using a powered HDD then it won't make any difference.

@Farpun Hardly, hard drives are designed to spin constantly. You do more damage to a disc by shutting it down constantly, ie the setting in the operating system that shuts off the disc after 20 minutes of non-use. I work on our companies network SAN (large collection of hard drives for those unfamiliar) and have some experience.

I typically only depend on discs for around five years although I do use several that are around eight years old, but I have data backups elsewhere. Hard drive sleep modes in the operating system whether it's Windows or Nintendo are designed to save power (the average drive uses around 5W). This is usually most beneficial in the case of a portable laptop or game console (though most portable consoles don't use spinning discs but flash memory). I have a microserver at home running a RAID 1 configuration (two hard discs that are exact copies of each other) just in case one should fail. The drives I am using are consumer grade hard drives, not enterprise, and even if they were enterprise drives I would still have redundancy because they can still fail. But I have been running my current server for two years straight so far without powering it off. So to have your Wii U's hard drive spinning for the 20 minute to five hour game session should be a non-issue for power as the cost will be minimal. And the drive life should not be affected by staying on, and I would argue that it would be more likely to take damage being used in the standard mode where it turns on and off frequently. So I would recommend adjusting this setting on the Wii U if you have an external hard drive.

Mine doesn't go to sleep as far as I know, as it has it's own power button. It does make a ridiculous amount of noise when in use though.

Also, dat new Nintendo Life login screen

@Einherjar I lost an entire game for this exact same reason. My entire file for BIT.TRIP RUNNER 2 is corrupted and I can no longer play it or even delete it. I want to go back in and finish 100%ing it, but doing so would require me to reformat and wipe the whole hard drive, losing the saves on all the rest of my games, and forcing me to spend hours redownloading all my titles from the eShop. So now I'm stuck with a dead game.

THIS is the danger of sleep mode.

I have issues with the quick menu with the HDD connected. Anything that runs off the HDD or requires the HDD will not start. Perhaps this will address this mess too.

Thanks a ton for the tip!

Although not recommended by Nintendo, I've used a non-powered drive with one cable since launch with no problem at all. I've never disconnected the drive while the console was on, which is a habit everyone should adopt anyway. I intended it to be a temporary solution as at launch there weren't many 'recommended' drives that Nintendo listed and a y-cable I ordered was faulty on arrival. As I've never had problems I've just left the drive working happily with the WiiU, even 'quick start' works with no problems.

What the hell Nintendo, why is this hidden? I've had issues in the past with my old desktop Seagate that I'm sure are directly related to this: long VC game sessions and Crunchy Roll video watching resulting in an error stating the hard drive was disconnected (when it wasn't), presumably because the Wii U gave up waiting for the drive to wake up again.

I've since switched to using a desktop drive via a powered hub, the hub seems to keep the drive active, so no problems seen thus far, but I'm definitely getting another one for backup purposes, so I'm not fussed about a shorter lifespan (Seagate and Toshiba 1TB drives are like £45-50).

@bro2dragons Just out of curiosity, how exactly did that happen ?
Because the system is on during the DL process, turns on in the case you move something (turns on in File Management) and turns on for update purposes.
Im asking because the safe file is independant from the game files and once the game is loaded, the system shouldnt be messing with any game files anymore, sleep mode or not.

Also, is there Info out there if this feature was added recently or if it was always there ?
Because if it was added recenty, it might be hidden because its "experimental". Nintendo has a habit of implementing hidden features that get integrated into the main OS a little later.

Something tells me this would make my hard drive wear out faster. Seeing as how mine seems to work fine without any of the choppiness and what-have-you, I'll keep mine how it is.

This is NOT working for me. I have tried everything -word for word, several times. I have held it quick, long -up to 3 minutes. Nothing changes. I hev issues with my HDD it locks my WiiU up whenever access it. I am using the Y cable to usb 3.0 Seagate drive -this combo recommended from other users. I am mainly just using my drive for storage on junk eshop games for the most part I don;t think I have played something FROM the drive. I have even tried reaching the menu with the drive unplugged to see if that was causing the issue -most of the time though of course it is plugged in when I go through this process.

What am I doing wrong to reach this setting? I read the GAF posts too and I seem to be he only one to not make this happen?

My update version is 5.3.2 U if that means anything to anyone.
Thank you.

@Einherjar Well, I don't know much about how all this works. I was told recently the most likely reason the game was corrupted was turning off the system while the game was running instead of going to the menu first. When I read this, I kinda assumed it had something to do with it.

@bro2dragons Well, normally, running a game doesnt require the system to meddle with the games actual files. And since save files are seperate from the actual games files, i find it rather odd that your actual game files, and not just the save is corrupted, because thats what normally happens.

Just a "last resort" kinda idea: Is your HDD filled beyond your WiiUs capacity ? If not, try to move everything BUT Runner2 to your system (maybe even just the save files, i dont know if that works though, never really dealt with it)
That way, youre able to wipe your HDD without loosing any more importnt data.
Because trust me, corrupted data is a huge hazard in the long run.
And yes, it takes bloody ages :/ Better have your 3DS charged for that operation.

Or maybe someone who has done a HDD to HDD transfer can help out here: Can you only "carbon copy" the whole HDD, oder are you able to transfer data individually ?
If the latter is possible, you might get your hands on a second HDD (maybe a friend got an unused one lying around which you can lend) and do it that way.
All you need is a way to isolate everything else from the corruption.

Yeah, why is this option hidden? I've never heard of this before.

I don't download a lot of big games but the internal storage is slowly being filled and I had to use a usb flash drive to download Tropical Freeze because I didn't want to have to get an external hard drive, since I really don't plan to download a lot of retail games. I hope it doesn't cause problems. Will this option affect how a flash drive works?

Most powered external hard drives do not enter sleep unless Wii U is entirely powered off, so that option does not affect them. The only ones that would seem to benefit from disabling this would be a) low-power 3,5" drives in powered enclosures (because those automatically park themselves after a short period of inactivity) and/or b) all 2,5" drives in powered and unpowered enclosures, because they all tend to park themselves to save power. Also this would not apply at all to SSD's and USB flash drives.

That said - disabling sleep state is potentially beneficial to the HDD lifespan. Wear from continous operation is a much smaller problem compared to wear from constantly spinning the platters up and down. I honestly don't know why isn't sleep mode disabled by default?

Also - don't expect that option to improve framerates. Outside of the situation when the HDD spun down and Wii U is waiting for it to restart and give data, this has no effect on anything whatsoever. ;]

I didn't know about this for awhile when I got my external hard drive and because it kept going into sleep mode, it would sometimes not load when I was returning to the home menu from some games. I think I just heard about this late last year.

@FullbringIchigo It depends. A slim line hard drive that uses a 2.5" hard drive and only consumes 2.5 watts of power would be fine. Many hard drives need 5 watts of power. The Wii U's USB 2.0 ports only provide 2.5 watts per port, so if your external drive requires 5 watts and can use a USB Y adapter cable to take advantage of two ports you should be fine. But again, your Wii U should be pretty stationary and so why not just plug in an external hard drive to a wall outlet and save your USB ports for things that will need them (Gamecube adapter, etc)?

@Einherjar I dunno. Yeah, it's filled way beyond capacity, so I think I'm eventually going to do what you suggest and move things back and forth from original hard drive to system memory to new hard drive with a few files at a time, then redownload RUNNER 2. It's gonna be a pain and I guess I still don't really know what caused it, but at least everything will be functioning properly once I find the time and money to drop on another hard drive.

@ted-k This option only affects USB connected hard drives, the internal flash memory isn't affected.

@TreesenHauser Hard drives take more wear from frequent powering on and off. It is better to have a hard drive run constantly for several reasons.

Awesome, will have to do this when I get home from work.... @Mogster as for what drive I have, I picked up a 1TB version of this Western Digital Elements drive plus a USB3 y-cable to plug it into two USB ports on the WiiU to power it, here's the 500GB model for $45:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA57Z22H4621

@bro2dragons I agree that sleep mode is more dangerous than just having the hard drive spinning constantly while the system is on.

I really hope that one day Nintendo gives us the ability to easily backup our save files from the Wii U. With the Wii you could simply copy them through the "Data Management" from the system memory to an SD card and back. With the Wii U there is currently no such method. I would even be happy if they had a premium service where we could back them up to Nintendo's servers. With Playstation 4 I can copy save files to a USB drive and back, or pay into PS Plus and enable "auto cloud backup".

@Nico07 Actually I meant I connected a USB flash drive, which I know is not recommended, but I don't want to spend money on an external HDD.

@ted-k In that case, I would still recommend making this setting change as it would disable power to your USB flash drive causing issues.

@Nico07 Yes there is, you can connect a second hard drive and backup to it. Okay, for eShop games you have to backup everything, but for retail games it of course only backs up the save data.

This spinning down of the HDD during idle times actually caused the Pikmin HD movies to stutter for me, because it would always load a chunk of the movie, spin down and then take forever to spin up to load the next chunk.

@OmegaPowerDX You do realise this is how most consumer hardware with a HDD works?

Been using a 2.5" drive in a £2 caddy with y cable since launch day and no problems so far... Have I just tempted fate!?

@Nico07 Thanks for the advice!

This seems like a Morkat Kombat code. "Up, Down, Right, Right, A, B, A." XD

@Damo I know this is a change of subject. But ive just bought and downloaded Pandora's Tower and there is a horrible audio bug where the sound cuts out every 30 seconds(literally) and it causes delays with the voices in the cutscenes. This is the only game that does this and i see nothing on the internet regarding this. Does ANYONE have a similar problem with Pandora's Tower and Damo could you please please look into this? I love the game but the audio delay has made it practically unplayable.

@FullbringIchigo U MUST USE a self powered hard drive. I went through a whole ordeal with Nintendo where I had them replace my motherboard unessecarily. The real problem was that I put all my save data (we're talking hrs upon hrs) onto a Seagate potable drive. Once I got everything on it, it made my Wii U black out and shut down for lack of power. Couldn't even boot up while I had it plugged in. No, it wasn't the drive, it did the same thing with another WD drive. I had to start all over on all my games after I bought a new powered hard drive, which now works perfectly. Nintendo's customer support set me straight. Just trying to save u the headache and frustration.

@OmegaPowerDX You really need to save power on 5 watts of hard drive usage? The US national average power rate is $0.12 /kWh, which IF you were playing ALL day, every day is about 1.4 cents per day. Remember we are talking all day. That's just under $5.50 per year if you never turned off your Wii U. The Wii U alone uses around 30 watts and the PS4 uses between 130 and 150 watts while gaming, I don't think you should worry about the hard drive to save power. I am sure there are light bulbs and other things that use way more power you could conserve on. To give you another example the standard CFL or LED light bulb uses 13 watts, a standard incandescent bulb uses 60 watts or more. So having one standard light bulb on in your home for two hours would use just as much power as this hard drive would use in 12.

Nintendo tries to conserve power to a fault with the Wii U. This feature is something everyone should have enabled. Nintendo would really be well off to enable this feature through an update and avoid problems relating to peoples drives not recovering from sleep mode and corrupting save files or a drive wearing out prematurely from constant spin ups and wind downs. I would also recommend not using USB powered drives, but opt for powered external hard drives instead.

Sweet, sweet tip...thanks a bunch!

Sorry my friend I though you meant the power saving was lame!!

As much as I would have liked the Wii U to have come with a bit more storage I actually see it as a good thing...

HDD's are relatively cheap and I can decide what size to use, I actually used a drive I had lying around so free for me.
I have a PS4 and I'll tell you (in my experience anyway) that space doesn't last long... But I could swap it out if need be. But it also adds to the cost of the machine.
As for the XBone, I don't have one but as far as I am aware you can't swap the drive but can use external... However you have still paid for the existing drive.

Like I said, Nintendo could and probably should offer higher capacities... Or even better, make a killing selling Nintendo branded external drives!!

@bro2dragons this might be a little bit of a late reply but is it possible to use two hdd with the Wii U yet? That would make it pretty simple to plug in one in the front ports and the other in the back and use the Wii U to transfer individual files over to the new drive. Just a thought, I'm not sure if they have implemented support for two drives yet though.

I can't seem to get this to work. I'm following the directions, but the prompt doesn't appear. Maybe they removed it from the OS already?

I'd like to disable the sleep option as some studies show that having your drives sleep (frequently spin down, then back up again) can cause more wear and tear than spinning them full time. (Some studies also show the opposite, but I keep my PC drives spinning and it has worked out so far.)

@SmithJurd "make a killing selling Nintendo branded drives" you mean like Microsoft and the proprietary 360 drives? No thanks. Think about the Vita with its expensive proprietary memory cards compared to the 3DS and its compatibility with any SD/microSD cards. I think Nintendo are doing things right letting us use whatever drives/cards we want.

@T7L3RB I said Nintendo branded, not proprietary! Think standard portable hard drive but with your favourite Nintendo game/character on it. God I would hate anything proprietary!

@T7L3RB I only have the one, so I've never tried, but as far as I can find online... no. There doesn't seem to be any way to do that.

That's odd that some are saying they can't get it to work. For me it worked exactly the way it's described in the article.

@Sean_Aaron I had the EXACT same problems with VC games and would lose hours of progress. Since they're so small, I moved all of them to the internal drive in case that was the problem and then, because I was extra paranoid, used a y-cable to hook it up to a usb wall charger too. I don't know if both steps were necessary, but I'll definitely be disabling the sleep mode as described in this article.

@diastelo I moved the Crunchy Roll app to internal storage because I could only watch a couple of episodes before it would happen. Playing Earthbound was definitely a challenge - I got into the habit of creating new save points every 15-30 min. No issues since moving to the laptop drive (guess it doesn't sleep as quickly), but yeah, gotta turn this off, totally.

@audiobrainiac that's really not the case, you just need to ensure your portable drive has adequate power either via a y-cable or a powered hub (I used to do the former; now I do the latter). The key with a hub is to make sure it's rated for hard drives - even many powered hubs are not (generally the cheaper ones).

And yes, you can hook up a second hard drive, but only for backup purposes and only after you've gone into data management section of the settings menu. I also wish the just supported two drive mirroring or least prompted you to connect the other drive rather than guessing. I'm going to put something in my blog for future reference I think.

@Mogster This is the drive I use, it's eBay item number 261032581515 Sonnics Samsung powered 500gb hd. You need to tell the seller that you require a Y cable when ordering.
500gb hd drive
Y cable
Faux leather pouch
£33. Delivered!

@SmithJurd ok I see what you mean now. That would be cool. Sorry I just misunderstood what you were trying to say there.

would this improve load times?

@diastelo A Y cable is only needed if you don't have external power on some drives. So if it's powered, then just a single USB cable connection will do.

@Nico07 I know. To give some background, I was using a Y cable on a USB powered WD drive (it's a model with no external power). Then I started having problems with the hard drive disconnecting and freezing the system. Since I've switched to using the usb wall charger, I haven't had freezes. However, I think my real problem is what this article solves, turning off sleep mode for the hard drive.

@diastelo I get it now, and yes this setting change should solve that problem.

No words of advice for those of us that this did not work for?
My Wii U is updated to 5.3.2 ....
Hmmm...

wow, took us this long to find it. Thanks for the cryptic feature, Nintendo.

@bro2dragons Yes, you can connect two external drives and transfer game data between them on the Wii U.

Thanks for the secret Menu Code. Why would Nintendo even make this a hidden menu? Games that are installed to the hard drive start up with no delay now.

Worked for me with my external HD powered by a Y usb cable. I am on 5.3.2 E

@AENIGMA
Cool! You should have tipped @NintendoLife back then by going to:
https://www.nintendolife.com/contact
Your comment back then was buried by the comments.

for anyone that finds this... i also thought it was not working, but i figured out what i was doing wrong. i thought "hold down on the d-pad" meant hold the d-pad down... anywhere. but it really means hold the DOWN BUTTON. i hope this helps someone, although maybe i'm the only one who didn't understand.

Thanks for the hint.