Anyone used the wii-shaped hd encolsure on an actual wii?

[Howard_Casto]

I saw this a few days back:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.48350

Yes I know it's a chineese piece of randomness, but I'm wondering if anyone has actually tried to use one on a soft modded wii.  Right now I use a standard sized desktop hdd with a usb adaptor on my wii.  Because it uses an external power adaptor, it's a pain in the butt getting it to boot sometimes and it doesn't always shut down when the wii does. 

So I'm thinking of going to a 2.5in drive and adaptor so it'll be self-powered, read up a bit and find out people are sometimes having trouble with those as well.  The "compatable with usb 1.1" in the desc makes me think our asian friends made this specifically for a modded wii.  So does anybody have one and does it work well?  If not can somebody reccomend an enclosure that'll work well with a wii without effort? (In other words you  plug it in and it turns on and is detected when the wii boots up and turns off when the wii shuts down... no fiddling.)

[SNAAKE]

^ that probably works fine.

I have this one and its perfect. powers up and shuts down with the wii.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130407624372

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks man, that's helpful.  Now if I have issues I will at least have something that I know will work. 

The wii shaped enclosure is just 10 bucks, if nothing else I suppose I could buy that one you linked to and put the guts in the wii one. 

[danny_galaga]

Yes I know it's a chineese piece of randomness

Please can everyone please stop using the term 'random' or 'randomness' out of context?

K THX BAI...

[Dazz]

Thanks man, that's helpful.  Now if I have issues I will at least have something that I know will work.  

The wii shaped enclosure is just 10 bucks, if nothing else I suppose I could buy that one you linked to and put the guts in the wii one.  

I wish they had something like this for 3.5" HDD's.  I'll stick to my 1tb 3.5 external enclosure that has been working on my Wii for over a year now.  Will probably be upgrading to a 2tb here shortly.

[HaRuMaN]

Yes I know it's a chineese piece of randomness

Please can everyone please stop using the term 'random' or 'randomness' out of context?

K THX BAI...

Random Kat Sez:

[Howard_Casto]

Yes I know it's a chineese piece of randomness

Please can everyone please stop using the term 'random' or 'randomness' out of context?

K THX BAI...

It was completely in context.  I could have typed "I know it is a Chineese product, and the motives for the wii shape are in question as well as the reliability and quality of the product, varying from unit to unit."  But "Chineese piece of randomness" is shorter and more to the point.  Your post is completely random and out of context though. 

[danny_galaga]

Yes I know it's a chineese piece of randomness

Please can everyone please stop using the term 'random' or 'randomness' out of context?

K THX BAI...

It was completely in context.  I could have typed "I know it is a Chineese product, and the motives for the wii shape are in question as well as the reliability and quality of the product, varying from unit to unit."  But "Chineese piece of randomness" is shorter and more to the point.  Your post is completely random and out of context though. 

Still out of context. If it was a USB hard drive modeled on the first random word drawn from a hat (for instance, a twig, or a broken light bulb) and then filled with parts that were picked at random and haphazardly thrown together, I would agree it was a 'chineese piece of randomness'. But since the Wii is the best selling console of this generation, I hardly think they drew that name randomly out of a hat, or even from a scrabble bag...

[Ginsu Victim]

Holy ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---! What the ---fudgesicle--- is going on here?!? Please do not continue this idiotic ---smurfing--- argument!

(auto-censor, do your worst!)

[Howard_Casto]

I completely agree, but your reaction is almost as bad. 

Getting back on topic, I went ahead and ordered this and a 500 gb WD external hdd + enclosure from dealxtreme. (It was cheaper to buy a hd with an enclosure than to buy it seperately.) I figure this way if the wii hd shell's guts are crap I can use the ones that came with the harddrive. 

I've heard it takes quite a while to get things shipped from the place, but when it finally comes in I'll post pics with it alongside a wii in case anyone else wants to try it.  I've been looking for quite some time for a enclosure that would look nice sitting permenantly next to my wii.   

500 gigs... subtract the ~30 gigs for the virtual console partition (my wii's flash hd is full, need to move that stuff off) and that leaves me 470 gigs for iso's which is roughly 100 games without compression.  I doubt I'll ever own, nor want to play more wii games than that.  I do have around 40 so far though... so who knows. 

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks man, I'll keep that in mind.  I've ordered stuff from chineese importers before and generally they have a good track record.  The products are always questionable though.

[Howard_Casto]

I got this along with a wd 500 gig hd from dealxtreme yesterday.  I'll post pictures later this week but initially everything seems to be working great and I love the look of the enclosure. 

I think I paid 70 bucks with shipping for the hd (which also included an enclosure) along with the wii shaped enclosure from dealxtreme.  I would suggest anyone else starting from scratch do the same thing.  Having an extra enclosure is unnecessary but the price is really good and you are going to want to have a spare "double usb" cable and those would cost as much as an enclosure anyway.  An extra cable means that you can leave one cable hooked up to your wii at all times so that you don't have to fumble around blindly at the back of your wii every time you need to transfer files from your pc.

[quadrider1]

500GB!!!! I have a 1tb and now know i went way to big lol. I have 65 games and that only took 100GB. And those are the memory hungry games like smash bros.
Try throwing on all the emulators and roms so you might have a chance to fill it up lol.

[Howard_Casto]

500GB!!!! I have a 1tb and now know i went way to big lol. I have 65 games and that only took 100GB. And those are the memory hungry games like smash bros.
Try throwing on all the emulators and roms so you might have a chance to fill it up lol.

Well I'm thinking long-term.  Years from now when the wii is considered a retro console, I intend to have the entire ntsc collection on it.  500 gb doesn't sound big, but as you say, once you get the images scrubbed and put in wbfs format (which strips the extra partitions off) most games dome in at under a gig. 

Even the emulators don't really fill things up though.  You've gotta remember, most of the systems emulated on the wii have TINY roms.  I think the entire nes collection, for example, is less than a gig. 


Even all the wiiware ever released only takes up a puny 10 gigs.

But the real reason you get a big drive is that it's usually cheaper to do so.

[Dazz]

500GB!!!! I have a 1tb and now know i went way to big lol. I have 65 games and that only took 100GB. And those are the memory hungry games like smash bros.
Try throwing on all the emulators and roms so you might have a chance to fill it up lol.

I have 1tb drive, 245 games and still about 490gb free.

[SNAAKE]

^ that can be said about......any system. I am sure there are more than 8 good/decent games.

500gb is overkill tho. then again these huge drives are so cheap now. why bother buying a smaller one.

[Dazz]

If you've got 500GB of games installed, you're just hoarding or your zero key got stuck.  There's 10 games, tops, worth playing for more than 5 minutes on the Wii.  Two of them are called NetFlix.

Not when you have kids...  The kids will play almost anything and everything.  Not to mention, I'm a completist when it comes to my roms.  I will eventually have all of the US Wii games on my drive, even if I have to update to a 2 or 3tb drive.  No need to have the Netflix discs when I have HD Roku boxes in every room.  Not to mention Gamecube games can now be launched via hard drive on the Wii.

^ that can be said about......any system. I am sure there are more than 8 good/decent games.

500gb is overkill tho. then again these huge drives are so cheap now. why bother buying a smaller one.

Tis true...  I picked up a 2tb drive about a month ago for my JTAG'd 360 for $80.  Right now my house has almost 20tb of drivespace amongst our PC's and game consoles.  I don't purchase anything less than 1.5tb drives now except for the SSD I'm purchasing shortly for my pin OS drive.

[Howard_Casto]

If you've got 500GB of games installed, you're just hoarding or your zero key got stuck.  There's 10 games, tops, worth playing for more than 5 minutes on the Wii.  Two of them are called NetFlix.

Funny because I currently own over 30 games, and with the exception of wii sports and wii sports resort NONE of these games are those quick party games.  As a matter of fact, I average twice as much time on a wii game than I do a 360.  I would suggest you start looking at the wii lineup more closely. 

Regardless you miss the point... those 5 minute games are the VERY REASON to install a hdd.  Are you really willing to go over to your game collection, pop out a disc, wait a minute for the wii to read it, ect... just to play for 5 minutes and then have to eject the disc, put it back on the dvd rack ect..?

With a hdd, you just click on the game play, and then are returned to the list of games when you are done.

[Howard_Casto]

Let's see I promised some pics.....  A word of warning though, this thing has the same high sheen as the wii and digital cameras have trouble with auto focus on shiny stuff.  Even with the flash turned off things turned out a bit fuzzy, but you'll get the idea.

I was suprised to find that EVERY side of the wii is emulated with the hdd enclosure as you can see below:









It also comes with two of these little whistles, which are adorable!  A usb stick or something similar could be fit inside if you want to make them more functional.  Also note they are to scale!


Overall I'm very happy with the purchase.  I have tried every usb loader and usb enabled app on the wii (yes ALL of them) and every one has had no trouble working with the included adaptor.  The status light is a ultra white led at the back of the unit and it's quite bright so keep that in mind.  On the other hand it might be overly bright on purpose so you can tell if there is activity even though teh light is on the back of the unit. 

I think I'm going to enhance this little guy with some paint and a home-made stand to match it's big brother.

[ErikRuud]

Yep, it'll be three weeks before you see anything.

When it arrives, if you find that it doesn't work DO NOT tell them you got it.  Tell them it never arrived and they'll ship you a new one.  If you mention you got it, you're on the hook for shipping it back to China.  They don't track their shipments, so they'll send you a replacement for free.

Not always.  I ordered a replacement shell for my daughter's Nintendo DS from DX and I was shocked when it arrived in 10 days.  There site says to expect it to take 14 to 21 working days and I was prepared to wait that long.