Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

All things Wii-U can be discussed in here!
Post Reply
siphoned
Posts: 189
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2010 3:50 pm

Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by siphoned » Sun Mar 23, 2014 11:36 pm

So I have a basic wiiU. Something like 8GB with only 2.5GB storage for downloading games via the eshop. They have Zen Pinball 2, The Cave, Puddle and virtual console stuff like balloon fight to download. 2GB is not going to be enough space. I was about to stick a 32GB flash drive in the rear of the unit and call it good, BUT the nintendo support page says not to use flash drives....... "because they have a limited number of write times". Really? Nintendo says not to use any flash or solid state memory/hard drives at all. "Only standard USB hard drives with external power supply." Hmm... Has anyone put a USB drive on the wiiU to up it's storage space? If so, what type of drive did you use?

I have always used USB powered hard drives on consoles, never used a drive with it's own power supply. Wouldn't the drive stay 'ON' all the time? .... or will the wiiU power it down when the console shuts off, so the drive is not spinning all the time?
User avatar
emu_kidid
Site Admin
Posts: 4927
Joined: Mon Mar 29, 2010 10:06 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by emu_kidid » Sun Mar 23, 2014 11:48 pm

Modern hard drives will know when to go to sleep if they are not in use (even if power is going to them).

Perhaps Nintendo are constantly writing to anything attached and that's why they are so against it?
Image
tueidj
Posts: 564
Joined: Fri May 03, 2013 6:57 am

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by tueidj » Mon Mar 24, 2014 3:16 am

They also say not to play longer than 30 minutes at a time. :P
Just ignore it, it's perfectly safe to use a flash drive.
siphoned
Posts: 189
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2010 3:50 pm

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by siphoned » Mon Mar 24, 2014 3:58 am

OK, I'll stick with the flash drive. See how it goes. Thanks!
baldjared
Posts: 52
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 7:41 am
Location: Canada

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by baldjared » Mon Mar 24, 2014 5:34 am

What they're talking about has nothing to do with powered or up time, USB flash drives and SSDs use nand, nand has a limited number of writes per cell, so after you've burned through those writes it can still be read from but some of the cells won't be able to be written to.

You really don't have to be overly worried about it though, I'm not sure on USB flash drive ratings but my samsung SSD is rated at 1000 p/e cycles, which on a 250gb amounts to 250 terabytes of writes which is like 68 years at 10 gigs of writes a day which is the amount of daily writing the industry generally rates SSDs targeted for consumers with, or 17 years at 40 gigs a day, I myself am actually doing a little under 10 gigs a day, and that's on a computer. USB flash drives probably use lower quality nand with fewer possible P/E cycles and the wear leveling may not be as aggressive but even if it's a tenth of an SSD you'd still have a pretty hard time burning through that key any time soon, even assuming 100 P/Es you'd have to write 3.2 terabytes to that drive, which is a fair amount of data for a wiiU I'd imagine.

You aren't going to ruin that flash drive anytime soon and reads are no impact it's only writes that matter.

Nintendo is just being overly cautious unless they are for some reason writing gigs upon gigs of crap to your drive daily.
tueidj
Posts: 564
Joined: Fri May 03, 2013 6:57 am

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by tueidj » Mon Mar 24, 2014 7:51 am

I was referring to their health and safety warnings, which are similarly extra-conservative rather than based on reality.
The MTBF for most mechanical hard drives will be reached long before most SSDs expend their erase-write cycles... I've gone through 5 HDD failures in 3 years but my trusty old 256MB SD card works without a problem.
baldjared
Posts: 52
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2012 7:41 am
Location: Canada

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by baldjared » Mon Mar 24, 2014 10:58 am

Sorry, I need to quote more, I got what you meant man, I wasn't referring to any post in particular, just nintendo's warning, your comparison to the health screen was entirely spot on, most companies are just overly conservative in most of what they do.

Yeah, the whole nand memory fear everyone has is mostly just unnecessary, I have a 120gb ocz vertex2 from probably more than 5 years ago that was on my main rig until very recently and it's still got over 1/3 of it's rated P/Es left in it, these things last. I've had one SSD fail in the last 6 or so years and it had nothing to do with the P/Es, on the other hand I've also had shitloads of harddrives die in the last 30 years that were less than 6 years old, far too many to count, I have more faith in my SSDs than I do my harddrives.
novenary
Posts: 1754
Joined: Mon Dec 30, 2013 7:50 am

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by novenary » Mon Mar 24, 2014 11:55 am

Yeah that's paranoia. I never backup before I flash something on my Android phone/tablet, just make sure I have a zip to flash back.
Same for electrostatic safety. I used to touch ground on a wall outlet every time I messed with electronics. Not anymore as I don't have a carpeted floor. Just avoid wearing wool. ;)
Tl;dr : Ignore stupid warnings because you're not risking anything.
siphoned
Posts: 189
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2010 3:50 pm

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by siphoned » Sun Mar 30, 2014 7:37 pm

Drive set up. Downloading games. Enjoying the wiiU. Wait..... The retro games and wiiware for the wii is not available for the wiiU? What....why? I can download Balloon Fight and My Life As A King for the wii but not the wiiU. Is that right?

So.... if I go into the wii mode and than into the wii shop to download wiiware....... does it still save to the USB drive or do I have to use a larger front SD card for wiiware channels? Hmm..
novenary
Posts: 1754
Joined: Mon Dec 30, 2013 7:50 am

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by novenary » Sun Mar 30, 2014 8:19 pm

I'd say see for yourself. I don't own a Wii U (yet).
User avatar
emu_kidid
Site Admin
Posts: 4927
Joined: Mon Mar 29, 2010 10:06 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by emu_kidid » Sun Mar 30, 2014 9:38 pm

I thought the Wii shop was gone if not going really soon. There's virtual console for WiiU, probably no where near as much as there was for the Wii yet, but it's coming weekly and there's quite a few WiiWare titles too.
Image
siphoned
Posts: 189
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2010 3:50 pm

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by siphoned » Sun Mar 30, 2014 11:34 pm

The wii shop channel has a notice that says 'some' services will be gone soon. Anything labeled with a 'blue' network icon like leaderboards, but 'red' icon services will stay for now. Red is a paid service. Not sure what that really is.

I really just wanted to unhook the wii, in favor of the new wiiU. Wanted to get a few of the older retro games and wiiware titles onto the wiiU so I can play them after I remove the wii. Turns out the wii shop stuff loads to the SD card and the wiiU stuff loads to the USB drive, for those who didn't know (like me). Had to give the wiiU a nice USB drive and an SD card. The 'previously downloaded' section only sees that wii unit and not the nintendo ID. So just cause I paid and downloaded it onto another wii doesn't connect it to my nintendo ID and I have to buy it again to download it to this new wii (wiiU).

I can download the wiiU stuff as many times as I want to the same wiiU. So upgrading/replacing the USB drive is as easy as logging back in and re-downloading everything (for free) again.

It's all good. I got everything in place and loaded up. I will wait on most of the wii stuff to see if it comes to the wiiU shop. I love the off-screen support.
tueidj
Posts: 564
Joined: Fri May 03, 2013 6:57 am

Re: Flash Drive storage on the wiiU no good?

Post by tueidj » Mon Mar 31, 2014 3:21 am

Basically when the "Nintendo Wifi Connection" service shuts down in may, nearly all wii games will lose their online abilities. You can still buy stuff like VC games or DLC but most multiplayer games won't work anymore.
Post Reply