Is it possible for one of my USB harddrives to work with SMS?

[personuser]

Hi. I've been trying to get two harddrives to work with SMS and my PS2 in general. I've tried formatting one to FAT32 already with 1 320 gb partition (Seagate 320gb) but it crashes Swap Magic when inserted and shows a blank directory when popped into SMS (strangely before I knew about FAT32 limitations, and popped it in as NTFS, it did the same thing). I'm not sure what I did and if I did it right, but with nothing on the disk the format conversion took about 5 seconds (I had to use partition wizard as only NTFS and exFAT were available via windows formatter.)

Okay now. My Western Digital Drive is 500 mibs big, so did I just do something wrong with the first? Or are these drives just never gonna work?

Oh, and It's not my PS2, or SMS, I've played Some Old Public Domain Cartoons Perfectly in SMS, loaded off my 2gb USB stick.

I appreciate Any Help I can Get. Thank you.

[dlanor]

Hi. I've been trying to get two harddrives to work with SMS and my PS2 in general. I've tried formatting one to FAT32 already with 1 320 gb partition (Seagate 320gb) but it crashes Swap Magic when inserted and shows a blank directory when popped into SMS (strangely before I knew about FAT32 limitations, and popped it in as NTFS, it did the same thing). I'm not sure what I did and if I did it right, but with nothing on the disk the format conversion took about 5 seconds (I had to use partition wizard as only NTFS and exFAT were available via windows formatter.)

It sounds to me as if your USB drive is either incompatible to PS2 device drivers or simply badly formatted.

There are several PS2-related PC tools available for performing FAT32 formatting of very large USB drives. The limitation of using that format only for very small drives is unique to the Windows OS as part of their method to force people to use NTFS instead. I agree that NTFS is the better filesystem, but that is beside the point here, as we MUST use FAT32 for compatibility with PS2 software.

You should search out the software kits for USBAdvance and/or USBExtreme, which both have FAT32 formatting programs.


As for SwapMagic crashing, that happens to my own setup too with some USB drives connected, including one that is fully compatible to all homebrew USB drivers on the PS2. But SwapMagic uses drivers of its own, with different compatibility, and the first thing a SwapMagic boot disc will do (after basic system init) is to load the USB device drivers and search for the SWAPMAGIC folder on a USB drive if available. And if the connected drive is not compatible to the drivers of SwapMagic, then this will crash/freeze forever.

One solution to get around that is to not leave the drive connected all the time, but only connect it after you've booted SwapMagic. (I assume you use it to boot into homebrew, like I do on my SCPH-90004 with bios v2.30 making FMCB use impossible.)

Okay now. My Western Digital Drive is 500 mibs big, so did I just do something wrong with the first? Or are these drives just never gonna work?

I don't know about those drives in particular, but I've used fairly large USB drives myself with my PS2 consoles, including the Verbatim 320GB (298GiB) drive that I normally use with that SCPH-90004 I mentioned. It's really a Samsung HM320JI USB 2.5" drive internally, but repackaged and marketed as a Verbatim drive. But whatever the case it works fine for me.

Oh, and It's not my PS2, or SMS, I've played Some Old Public Domain Cartoons Perfectly in SMS, loaded off my 2gb USB stick.

I appreciate Any Help I can Get. Thank you.

Hopefully it is just your current formatting messing things up, though it is quite likely that SwapMagic really hates that drive, in which case you'll have to leave it disconnected during SwapMagic boots. (Just like I have to do with one of my 32MB USB sticks.)

And if your luck is really bad then the drive itself (its USB interface firmware rather) may also be incompatible with the PS2 homebrew USB device drivers. That still happens with a few brands and models (like with several Kingston USB sticks).

But before anything else you should try a new FAT32 formatting, using tools known to work good for drives used with PS2.

Best regards: dlanor

[personuser]

It sounds to me as if your USB drive is either incompatible to PS2 device drivers or simply badly formatted.

There are several PS2-related PC tools available for performing FAT32 formatting of very large USB drives. The limitation of using that format only for very small drives is unique to the Windows OS as part of their method to force people to use NTFS instead. I agree that NTFS is the better filesystem, but that is beside the point here, as we MUST use FAT32 for compatibility with PS2 software.

You should search out the software kits for USBAdvance and/or USBExtreme, which both have FAT32 formatting programs.


As for SwapMagic crashing, that happens to my own setup too with some USB drives connected, including one that is fully compatible to all homebrew USB drivers on the PS2. But SwapMagic uses drivers of its own, with different compatibility, and the first thing a SwapMagic boot disc will do (after basic system init) is to load the USB device drivers and search for the SWAPMAGIC folder on a USB drive if available. And if the connected drive is not compatible to the drivers of SwapMagic, then this will crash/freeze forever.

One solution to get around that is to not leave the drive connected all the time, but only connect it after you've booted SwapMagic. (I assume you use it to boot into homebrew, like I do on my SCPH-90004 with bios v2.30 making FMCB use impossible.)

I don't know about those drives in particular, but I've used fairly large USB drives myself with my PS2 consoles, including the Verbatim 320GB (298GiB) drive that I normally use with that SCPH-90004 I mentioned. It's really a Samsung HM320JI USB 2.5" drive internally, but repackaged and marketed as a Verbatim drive. But whatever the case it works fine for me.

Hopefully it is just your current formatting messing things up, though it is quite likely that SwapMagic really hates that drive, in which case you'll have to leave it disconnected during SwapMagic boots. (Just like I have to do with one of my 32MB USB sticks.)

And if your luck is really bad then the drive itself (its USB interface firmware rather) may also be incompatible with the PS2 homebrew USB device drivers. That still happens with a few brands and models (like with several Kingston USB sticks).

But before anything else you should try a new FAT32 formatting, using tools known to work good for drives used with PS2.

Best regards: dlanor

Okay, I'll try that soon. But I have to copy everything onto my computer's Hard Drive before the format - Don't wanna lose all of those family pictures by accident But first, I gotta clean My internal HD - There's not enough space :P