USB HDD Compatability / Seagate / iPod

[distra_ashrak]

Hi All

I finally got my hands on a USBextreme disk and now i wish i had spent my money on a mod chip... but ill work with what i've got.

Now... I have a Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB 200Gb hard drive, with a travel star USB2.0 enclosure (backwards compatible). USBextreme doesn't recognise my drive and ive formatted and re formatted and done everything that I can read up on. It doesn't seem to like Western Digital disks for some reason, i read in another thread that someone was having problems with a 120Gb WD disk.

I have another option... in my computer i have 3 more HD's... but only 2 are IDE. Would it be worth swapping the drive in the USB enclosure for one of my other HD's in my computer? The other drives i have are:-

Seagate 80Gb ST380011A
Western Digital 80Gb WD800JB-00CRA1
Western Digital 200Gb WD2000JD-00GBB0 - SATA(can't use in enclosure)

Anyone had any luck with the Seagate disks? I'm thinking of swapping it over for that disk, but means i gotta ghost the drive and image it to another drive... but im willing to do it.

damn i wish i got the mod chip...

Thanks

Dis'tra

PS. As a side note for anyone interested, my 4th Gen iPod doesn't work with USBextreme either... seems nothing much does...

[dlanor]

Hi All

I finally got my hands on a USBextreme disk and now i wish i had spent my money on a mod chip... but ill work with what i've got.

Now... I have a Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB 200Gb hard drive, with a travel star USB2.0 enclosure (backwards compatible). USBextreme doesn't recognise my drive and ive formatted and re formatted and done everything that I can read up on. It doesn't seem to like Western Digital disks for some reason, i read in another thread that someone was having problems with a 120Gb WD disk.

I have another option... in my computer i have 3 more HD's... but only 2 are IDE. Would it be worth swapping the drive in the USB enclosure for one of my other HD's in my computer? The other drives i have are:-

Seagate 80Gb ST380011A
Western Digital 80Gb WD800JB-00CRA1
Western Digital 200Gb WD2000JD-00GBB0 - SATA(can't use in enclosure)

Anyone had any luck with the Seagate disks? I'm thinking of swapping it over for that disk, but means i gotta ghost the drive and image it to another drive... but im willing to do it.
I think that would be a waste of time and effort.

A USB enclosure is much more than what that name implies. It also replaces (as seen by a PC or PS2) the drive's IDE interface and its IDE protocol with a generic USB interface and a corresponding USB protocol. This means that the PS2 doesn't 'see' the HDD directly, and replacing the HDD will not change the USB protocol 'seen' by the PS2. Some variations exist in how this USB protocol is implemented, and PS2 drivers are limited in the variations that they work with.

This is the main reason why many USB devices fail to work with PS2 homebrews. The drivers of commercial PS2 games differ both from each other and from the homebrew drivers, so even if a USB device works well with some commercial software that is no guarantee it will work with any other such, or with homebrews. On the other hand, any drive that does work with PS2 homebrews is almost certain to work with all commercial PS2 software too.

PS. As a side note for anyone interested, my 4th Gen iPod doesn't work with USBextreme either... seems nothing much does...
Apple drivers are rather likely to have odd quirks in the USB protocol mentioned above, so I'm not at all surprised that it failed to work. I've only used USBextreme with a 64MB "HP Disgo" myself, so that is the only one I can recommend from experience. But there is another thread somewhere on this site that discusses only these compatibility problems. If you use tips from others to guide you as to what USB drive/enclosure to get in the future, make sure to get one that is reported to work with LaunchELF, or other homebrew stuff, as that guarantees the best compatibility. If it's just reported as compatible to ARMAX or some other commercial software, it might still be useless for your needs.

NB: USBextreme/USBadvance is a special case here, developed using homebrew libs even though it is a commercial product. This is a characteristic it shares with HDL/HDA, and for the same reason. Sony would sue the pants off anyone using the official development system to make software of this kind...

Best regards: dlanor

[alitam]

hey, buddy, u sure the disks are propperly formatted. I had the same problem of trying to get the disks recognised!

but wen i realise the problem i was able to get my 200g western digital hdd to work (in the usb enclosure) and my apple ipod 3/4th generation (cant remember the wich 1 ive got) to work.

I was using the command line toll to format them to fat32 from ntfs, it worked but it still didnt get recognised. I took some1s advice to try a third party program like partition magic, and hey pesto i was ready to install my games.

Good luck and let me know how it goes, i know how frustrating it can be, didnt go college spent all day tryn to format it!

[distra_ashrak]

ok, i ghosted my drive, changed boot drives, done some HD swapping, now ive got my seagate drive in the enclosure... it recognised the disk first time... easy.... now ive tried to load athens 2004 and it wont work... i think it doesnt work because i copied the image of the disk onto my HD using alcohol and mounted the image on a virtual drive and installed it on the disk... ive got one other game im about to try... Mercenaries

it was a bit of work but now it works... sort of...

[distra_ashrak]

just installed mercenaries on the HD and it seems to be working... finally a game i can play... i like this game too

ill have to go to the hire shop and get some more games...