This guide details advice for people seeking to use or buy an external storage device with a homebrewed console. For the purposes of the guide, an external storage device is an SD card or a USB disk and/or drive.
SD Card Buying Guide
 |
SD cards 2TB or larger currently do not exist, anyone attempting to sell you one is trying to rip you off. |
SD cards come in various sizes, form factors, and speeds.
Form Factor
The primary form factors for SD cards are SD, Mini SD, and Micro SD. Mini SD is effectively nonexistent in the present day, while full size SD is still used in applications, while micro SD is ubiquitous and is generally just used with a full size SD adapter if needed. For speeds, there are four parameters to worry about:
Storage Size
Sizing on SD is determined by its specification, usually shown on the front of the card.
- SD (1999) - Original specification of Secure Digital, supports up to 2GB.
- SDHC (2006) - Secure Digital High Capacity, supports up to 32GB.
- SDXC (2009) - Secure Digital Extreme Capacity, supports up to 2TB.
- SDUC (2018) - Secure Digital Ultra Capacity, supports up to 128TB (no cards on the market for this specification).
Speed
Deciphering SD card speeds can be complicated, but beneficial depending on your application. There are five speed parameters that are helpful to know:
- Bus Rate - Essentially determines maximum throughput on a card as speeds higher than a card bus can handle will simply translate to being "busy".
- Speed Class (C symbol) - Translates to minimum sequential writing speed in MB/s, as-is. A speed class of C2 would be 2MB/s, C4 would be 4MB/s, so on and so forth.
- Ultra Speed Class (U symbol) - Translates to minimum sequential writing speed in MB/s, multiplied by 10. A speed class of U1 would be 10MB/s, U3 would be 30MB/s, so on and so forth.
- Video Speed Class (V symbol) - Translates to minimum sequential writing speed in MB/s, as-is. A speed class of V30 would be 30MB/s, V90 would be 90MB/s, so on and so forth.
- Application Performance Class (A symbol) - Defines the minimum sequential writing speed at 10 MB/s but ALSO mandates a minimum IOPS (read/write). For A1, this is 1500/500 IOPS, while for A2, this is 4000/2000 IOPS.
Buying a Card
When buying SD cards, it is generally recommended that you stick to well-known brands the more expensive and larger capacity that you get. While you can buy a generic 2GB SD card and most likely be safe, the same cannot be said for something like a 512GB SD card. General current pricing for SD cards is around 10-20 USD for 256GB and below, whereas 512GB is around 40 USD. When buying off of Amazon, make sure that your card is either `Sold by/Shipped by Amazon` or `Sold by [brand], Shipped by Amazon`. Be wary when buying storage on eBay.
Recommended brands:
- Samsung (EVO Select, EVO Plus, PRO Plus)
- SanDisk (Extreme, Ultra, etc)
- Lexar (E-Series, Professional)
- Silicon Power ("3D NAND" cards, higher capacity usually better value)
- PNY (Elite, Elite-X, etc)
External Hard Drive Buying Guide
|
Do NOT use a USB Y-splitter cable, it does not follow the USB specification and could lead to unexpected behavior! |
External hard drives are largely very similar to each other and much less complex to understand than external SSDs or SD cards.
When it pertains to hard drives, there are only three existing present-day manufacturers: Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba. Any and all other hard drive companies are defunct and have either went bankrupt, or were absorbed by the three aforementioned companies. With that said, if you have an extra hard drive lying around made by another company, it should still work! Hard drive technology has remained largely the same within the past 10 or so years. Just make sure to check the S.M.A.R.T data to ensure that the drive isn't failing before you throw all of your data on there.
Power Consumption
In terms of power consumption, a 3.5 inch external hard drive will always need external power, usually via a barrel jack connected to a power supply. As for 2.5 inch external hard drives, results can vary - but as long as it meets the USB 2.0 spec, it should power anyway.
Buying a USB HDD
When wanting to use an external hard drive for a console, this largely comes down to three scenarios.
Buying a new external hard drive from scratch
New external drives come brand new around 60 USD for 2TB, 50 USD for 1TB, around 30 USD for sizes lower than 1TB. Whatever you do, try to stick within the three present manufacturing brands listed above, but bear in mind that offerings are sparse for drive sizes lower than 1TB.
Buying a new hard drive, and a new enclosure
New hard drives are decently cheaper than buying a pre-made external hard drive, and you can buy an enclosure to house this new hard drive. An example price is buying a 500GB Western Digital drive and a 2.5 inch drive enclosure off of Amazon - all in all, about 30 USD.
Buying an enclosure for an already existing hard drive
If you already have a hard drive laying around, you can simply buy a drive enclosure and use it via USB. Enclosures can be found for prices ranging between 10 to 20 USD off of Amazon, as long as you have a drive to supply it with.
External Solid State Drive Writing Guide
To be written
Space Needed for Storage
When considering buying or using an SD card or USB device, it is worth considering the things that you will be using a storage medium for. Different uses can take up varying amounts of space, some common examples of which are shown below:
Switch
- Information needed -
3DS
- Information needed -
Wii U
- Information needed -
Wii
- Wii Backups - The largest Wii games (dual-layer DVD) are up to sizes of 9GB, more normal games are closer to sizes of 4GB or lower. The average user for a Wii backup device would probably want 128GB or more of space.
- GameCube Backups - The largest GameCube games reach sizes of up to 1.3GB. ISO sizes are normally this size regardless of the game, but can be considerably lower if NKIT is used as a format instead. The average user for a GameCube backup device would probably want 64GB or more of space.
- General Emulation - There are a wide variety of emulators available on the Wii, with PS1 games taking up the most space and being generally still playable. Because the size of different game ROMs differ dramatically, the average user for an emulation drive would probably want 32GB or more of space.
- General Homebrew - For homebrew, the average user would want 2GB or more of space.
- NAND Backups - For backing up your NAND with BootMii, the average user would need a minimum of 512MB of free space, but sizes of 1GB or more are recommended.
- Exploit only - The minimum amount of space to run an SD-card compatible exploit on a Wii is 128MB.
Console Specific Notes
Switch
- Information needed -
3DS
- Information needed -
Wii U
- Information needed -
Wii
Regarding Flash Drives - For USB devices, flash drives have a high rate of not working on Wii consoles. Instead, it is recommended to use a USB hard drive or solid state drive.
Regarding SSDs - For the purpose of using a drive with a Wii, external SSDs are often more expensive than conventional hard drives for no visible gain in speed on a Wii (the console only supports up to USB 2.0 data speeds). If you would like to buy one or already have one lying around, it's an option, but generally it's recommended to just go for a hard drive if you don't already have one.
Exploits - For the BlueBomb, str2hax, or FlashHax exploits, you do not need an SD card to hack your Wii; it is highly recommended to grab one anyway for homebrew and other tasks.
System Menu Compatibility - For stock Wii Menu versions lower than 4.0, a limitation in the Wii System Software prevents SD cards bigger than 2GB from being used. For stock Wii Menu versions 4.0 or higher, this limitation is removed and SD cards of various sizes can be used. Your highest chance of getting a working SD card on any Wii is at sizes 32GB or lower, but success has been reported various times on cards ranging up to 256GB.
File System - FAT32 is the recommended file system for SD cards, see Formatting an SD card for instructions. For USB devices, FAT32 is also recommended, although users should be aware of FAT32 limitations which only allow volumes up to 2TB in size. WBFS was a previously used file system for Wii game backups but today, it is outdated and should not be used.