A few questions

[Badcrew]

Hi, I just registered on these forums. They look nice.

I have some questions. In your opinion, is it worth investing in a large HDD for your PC so that you can have a library of all of your games on it (for HDLoader), without needing to re-rip all of your games from disc if the PS2 HDD goes belly-up? Or do you guys think that it's not worth it, and you can just put up with re-ripping every time (as tiresome as it can get...)?

Also, how can I FTP to my PS2 from Windows explorer? I heard that it requires some configuration, but what exactly needs to be configured? If I enter ftp://xx.xx.xx.xx (the PS2's IP address) into Windows Explorer while running the FTP server from uLaunchELF, I can see all of the PS2 storage devices but cannot access them. Just in case it helps, my system is a v10 PAL PS2 with a Seagate ST3750640A 750 GB HDD. The system is connected to a 4-port router with my PC, and "ping" from CMD seems to indicate that everything should be working fine.

Thank you and sorry for all the questions. Sorry if my English is not too good; I am Spanish and English is not my native language.

[djflexmaster79]

I think it is always a good idea to make an extra backup of all your games on another HDD, I have all mine backed up on my 1.5TB HDD.

Even all the ones that are on my PS2 HDD. You just never know when a HDD is going to fail.

I never tried the FTP'ing. But make sure you have your firewall and router settings set to allow the access to those files. DJ

[Badcrew]

But in the case of a hard disk failure, surely you could just re-rip all of your games from the original discs? My question was whether the additional cost of a large hard drive is worth it for the added convenience of avoiding the tiresome re-ripping of games.

Again, sorry for my English. I'm still learning.

[dlanor]

In your opinion, is it worth investing in a large HDD for your PC so that you can have a library of all of your games on it (for HDLoader), without needing to re-rip all of your games from disc if the PS2 HDD goes belly-up? Or do you guys think that it's not worth it, and you can just put up with re-ripping every time (as tiresome as it can get...)?

Whether it's worth it or not is pretty much a matter of what the extra investment would mean to you, and that also depends a lot on what amount of storage space you'd need for your games. Finding space on the HDDs of a modern computer for some 40-50 GB might be acceptable, even for long-term storage, but most computer users would hesitate to lock up 500GB or more of HDD space just for PS2 game backup. But for others again that would also be acceptable, because they have a lot of extra HDD drives, and wouldn't mind having the unused ones carrying PS2 backup material (possibly taken out of the computer and stored on a shelf for possible future backup restoration for the PS2).

So it's mainly a matter of what extra resources you have, either in existing hardware and storage space, or in money for buying extra HDDs.

Personally I don't do this for PS2 games, as I prefer to use the available HDD storage space for other things than just extra backup copies of what I already have on other media.

Also, how can I FTP to my PS2 from Windows explorer? I heard that it requires some configuration, but what exactly needs to be configured? If I enter ftp://xx.xx.xx.xx (the PS2's IP address) into Windows Explorer while running the FTP server from uLaunchELF, I can see all of the PS2 storage devices but cannot access them.

If you got that right, then the 'anonymous' login which is required is already properly configured, and so is of course the low-level IP configuration, or you would not have gotten through to the server at all. What remains then is mainly to ensure that the PC does not attempt to use 'Passive mode' FTP transfer, as that will always fail with the PS2 FTP server. You need to use 'Active mode', and that will probably need changing as I think 'Passive mode' is the default. Another potential problem is firewall settings that might affect the FTP data transfers differently.

While it is possible to use the Explorer windows for FTP access this way, I really recommend using a real FTP client like FlashFXP instead.

Just in case it helps, my system is a v10 PAL PS2 with a Seagate ST3750640A 750 GB HDD. The system is connected to a 4-port router with my PC, and "ping" from CMD seems to indicate that everything should be working fine.

You already stated that you get to see the device list of the FTP server, so proper basic networking is already well confirmed by that evidence alone. Ping info can add very little to that (some delay timing is all).


However, if you plan to transfer a lot of large files by normal FTP, I would rather advise you to use the HOST protocol instead, as this allows much faster transfer rates than the FTP server can handle. The big difference is that you need to run a special client program on the PC, in order to connect to the HOST server of the PS2. That server is opened simply by browsing to "host:/" in uLaunchELF's FileBrowser. The first attempt to do so will just open the server, after which the client on the PC can connect. The next attempt thereafter to browse to "host:/" in uLE will then display the shared folder listing of the PC, which can then be browsed for file transfers in exactly the same way as folders of a drive local to the PS2, like those on "mass:/" or "hdd0:/" partitions. Some extra configuration is needed if you also want write access to the PC folders. (This is a safety precaution.) You can read more about this in the heavily commented example "LAUNCHELF.CNF" file that comes with every uLaunchELF release.

Thank you and sorry for all the questions. Sorry if my English is not too good;

Actually there is not much wrong with your english at all, judging from the current post you made. I've seen far worse from some people who do have english as their native language too...

I am Spanish and English is not my native language.

We are well aware of this kind of problem, and it is well known that this problem is usually worse for people from countries where movies and TV programs are 'dubbed' into the local language, as they never get any extra practice in english from such media. Unfortunately Spain appears to be one of the countries where this is done extensively, giving you a handicap in language practice, as compared to countries where such 'dubbing' is almost never done (like Sweden for example, where I'm from). Many of the other Spanish visitors to this site have had quite serious language problems.

In your case though, I wouldn't worry too much about this 'language barrier', as I had no problems understanding what you meant here, and did not spot any significant errors in it.

Best regards: dlanor