Fastest way to transfer games to HDD?

[gizmomelb]

thanks for the info and the help dlanor.

yeah finding any decent sized PATA is going to be an issue, so I'm going to try a PATA to SATA adapter and use a 2.5" laptop HDD (500G is cheap, 1TB is very expensive, at least here in Australia).

[Bat Rastard]

Let me tell ya what I use because chances are ripe people still might have 'em rattling around in a desk drawer!

Years ago, my computer was based on the widely popular ABIT NFS-S 2.0 nForce2 motherboard -- all of which came with 1 "Serillel 2" IDE to SATA convertor. I'm also running a spare P4 rig with the case open 24/7 as a headless file server and hostage for my MagicJack phone line. So when I go to install ISOs on the PS2, it only takes me 2 minutes to shut down that spare rig, attach the drive and cables to that IDE-to-SATA dongle, set the drive down on the nearest cardboard box or milk crate, and fire the rig back up into WindowsXP and let WINHIIP have a field day ...

Transfer rate: around 30 to 40MBs a second, between 15 and 25 average ...

Total cost out of purchasing stuff I don't have/need: ZERO!

Total time involved: 15 mins, 30 mins tops.

It all depends on how many ISOs you're installing and how big they are since only 5 minutes of that time is spent removing the drive from the PS2 to hook it up to the spare rig, and back again.

[gizmomelb]

sounds good rat bastard, I'll pretty much be doing the same thing - I've got a SATA <-> PATA bridge and I'll connect the HDD direct to my PC using a SATA cable, then use the PATA <-> SATA bridge inside the Phat PS2.

Now something which occurred to me tonight and I apologise if this is a silly question, but what format do I need to use to be able to play games off external USB HDDs? FAT32 or do I have to format them too with winHIIP? thank you.

[dlanor]

sounds good rat bastard, I'll pretty much be doing the same thing - I've got a SATA <-> PATA bridge and I'll connect the HDD direct to my PC using a SATA cable, then use the PATA <-> SATA bridge inside the Phat PS2.

Now something which occurred to me tonight and I apologise if this is a silly question, but what format do I need to use to be able to play games off external USB HDDs? FAT32 or do I have to format them too with winHIIP? thank you.

On external USB drives the correct format is always FAT32, and the installation methods are not related to WinHiip at all. Instead you'll need to use tools specially made for installation of games to USB drives, in a split-file form that allows large games to run despite the 4GB filesize limit of FAT32.

But for smaller games the game loader OPL can also run them as normal ISO files, so that you only need to copy those files (properly renamed for recognition) into a folder named "CD" or "DVD" on the USB drive. (NB: Older USB game loaders do not support ISO file use at all.)

Best regards: dlanor

[TnA]

Just to add to dlanor's post:

PS2ESDL also supports USB-Drives and ISOs.