Find out everything you need to know about Wii U USB and Wii U internal storage.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/32473
Nintendo revealed details about Wii U USB storage solutions in a Nintendo Direct this evening in Japan.
With the initial Wii U launch firmware, gamers will only be able to use one USB hard drive with a capacity up to 2 TB. Data can be stored and games can be run off of this device. Even if the device is larger than 2 TB, the Wii U will only be able to make use of 2 TB of storage. Once formatted for the Wii U, the hard drive will no longer be able to be used on other devices such as PCs or other gaming consoles.
For those using hard drive without dedicated power sources, a USB Y cable is recommended, which connects allows the device to be powered using two USB ports. Nintendo recommends that gamers do not use these kind of hard drives or USB flash drives due to limitations on data read speed.
At launch, only one USB hard drive will be supported, but at some point in the future, support for two hard drives will be added. This will allow for simple transfers of data between two connected drives.
In the Nintendo Direct, Satoru Iwata also clarified the exact amount of storage space that will be available in the different Wii U units. All Wii U systems will use approximately 4.2 GB for things such as account information and firmware. The 8 GB Wii U Basic set actually has 7.2 GB available for storage while the 32 GB Premium Set has 29 GB. When the required 4.2 GB is taken into consideration, the Basic Set only offers 3 GB of storage while the Premium Set has 24.8 GB available. You can watch the latest Nintendo Direct in its entirety below.
All Wii U systems will use approximately 4.2 GB for things such as account information and firmware. The 8 GB Wii U Basic set actually has 7.2 GB available for storage while the 32 GB Premium Set has 29 GB. When the required 4.2 GB is taken into consideration, the Basic Set only offers 3 GB of storage while the Premium Set has 24.8 GB available.
3 GB... LOL! Talk about false advertising. Also, does the hard drive have to be in FAT32?
And since I just bought a $150 desktop hard drive over a month ago, will I still be able to create a partition in the HD so I can use it for other **** too?
Once formatted for the Wii U, the hard drive will no longer be able to be used on other devices such as PCs or other gaming consoles.
3 GB... LOL! Talk about false advertising. Also, does the hard drive have to be in FAT32?
And since I just bought a $150 desktop hard drive over a month ago, will I still be able to create a partition in the HD so I can use it for other **** too?
How is it false advertising? EVERY device that has storage has less than the advertised amount. For example, I have a 16 GB iPad but only 13.83 GB are actually available to me.
I don't think so Ian, it hasn't stopped the Xbox 360 from getting any digital games and it launched with a version that had no hard drive or internal memory. There are already digital games confirmed for Wii U that are larger than 3GB.
Pretty much what I expected. I thought it would be unlikely that Wii U games would be stored on FAT32 or NTSC file systems.Agree and even a 5400RPM harddrive should be able to pull that off. But Nintendo specifically sights speed so yeah why no USB3 then.
USB 3.0 isn't such a big deal, the Wii U disc drive has a 22.5MB/sec read speed so USB 2.0 should be suffice to match it.
Agree and even a 5400RPM harddrive should be able to pull that off. But Nintendo specifically sights speed so yeah why no USB3 then.They said speed but not how much. If they wanted to go really really fast they would have had USB 3.0 and said "we recommend you use solid state drives" or if they wanted to go super mega fast then they would have allowed you to use those PCI-Express solid state drives.
QuoteOnce formatted for the Wii U, the hard drive will no longer be able to be used on other devices such as PCs or other gaming consoles.
The ****? Nintendo better support formatting selectable partitions in the hard drive, there's no reason to waste a whole drive for the WiiU other than lazy/idiot coding.
Maybe it's just because the social space has advanced so much and we've all been trained on how console launches are supposed to happen over the past 10 years, but the sporadic and often unnannounced Nintendo Direct onslaught in the past 2 weeks leading up to ground zero seem to illustrate that Nintendo themselves barely know what the hell they are going to do with this thing.
Seriously, why the hell would anyone expect Nintendo to let you use a standard formatted hard drive for this?
Seriously, why the hell would anyone expect Nintendo to let you use a standard formatted hard drive for this?
Because standard SD cards exist and we can use that. Plain and simple.
But this gives me hope. This gives me hope that hackers will go to town on the Wii U and obliterate the arbitrarity.
They treat the most routine stuff as top secret.
I do understand why there is such frantic protection over how they allow storage to be used due to piracy, but there is absolutely no mystery in how to solve it; online authentication.
You can bet your ass that Microsoft and Sony are looking to that type of model for their next machine.
Sony already did that with the PS3 and there was a **** storm how no one could play signal player games because PSN was hack. The industry is not heading that way.The industry quite frankly doesn't care about the relative few hardcore with loud voices. You're entitled to your opinion of course, but with respect, by this time next year I'd be willing to put money on the fact that MS and Sony will be building their platforms on a persistent Internet connection system, not unlike the direction Blizzard already has moved forward with on Diablo 3 and how Valve largely pioneered the practice with Steam. The future for consoles is always-on Internet connection, if you were to ask any publisher/developer (and make no mistake they hold a majority stake of the power in all of this) the quicker they can take control away from the used game market (and physical copies as a result) the better for them. Part in parcel of that model is security and persistent online authentication in that realm is the most reliable measure (outside of the jungle gym of procedures Nintendo is throwing down on their storage requirements).
I don't plan to download games so the deluxe set should be plenty for me.
