/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8496294]

does anyone have a recommended hard drive to use with a PS2 network/hard drive adapter? everyone recommends doing this but nobody mentions what type they used and apparently the PS2 is extremely picky about it.

[Anonymous No.8496329]

https://ps2drives.x-pec.com/?p=list

there you go, my son. now go, make your dreams a reality

basically Maxtor is the most reliable, I've never had problems with any drive though

[Anonymous No.8496335]

>>8496294
Honestly you can use whatever drive you want, so long as it's an PATA/IDE drive. If you want to use SATA, just buy a special PS2 SATA to PATA converter.

[Anonymous No.8496342]

I just use the sata converter board you replace the pata connector board with. I'm just using a 2tb Hitachi drive. I play all my games off hard drive.

[Anonymous No.8496357]

>>8496342
would a sata to ide converter work?

[Anonymous No.8496360]

>>8496342
This

[Anonymous No.8496384]

>>8496357
sure would

[Anonymous No.8496417]

>>8496357
I mean it's alot cleaner to just put the converter board in the housing.

[Anonymous No.8496435]

>>8496417
do you need specific tools to do it? i hear it's a pain in the ass

[Anonymous No.8496441]

>>8496294
>apparently the PS2 is extremely picky about it
Source on that? Every random drive I've thrown in mine has worked fine.

Just do this >>8496417 mod and put an SSD in it.

[Anonymous No.8496446]

>>8496294
If you go the IDE/PATA route, Maxtor tends to have the best compatibility and reliability. I have an 80 GB Maxtor IDE that I've used for ~8 years with no issues.
Otherwise, an IDE-SATA converter works well. Just don't buy a cheap off-brand drive.

[Anonymous No.8496467]

The PS2 can't address any more than 2TB of memory so don't bother with any drive bigger than that. You CAN use a bigger drive like 4tb or something but the PS2 won't be able to use more than 2tb of it.

If you want to use a stock network adapter you'll need any IDE drive, you can still find new old stock IDE drives for fairly cheap, but if you want more than like 80gb then high capacity IDE drives tend to be more expensive than just getting a SATA adapter and tossing a modern HDD in with it. You can also use SSDs or even SATA to SD adapters for this, the PS2 isn't that picky about storage, I don't know why people make such a big deal about it.

[Anonymous No.8496479]

>>8496441
Yeah don’t waste an SSD on the PS2. The connection is old as fuck it’ll never even reach SATA speeds let alone utilize any benefit an SSD brings.

[Anonymous No.8496492]

>>8496467
Do SSDs make a difference in loading times? I'd assume not since it's ultimately connecting to PATA and would be bottlenecked either there or by PS2's access times.

[Anonymous No.8496507]

>>8496479
I have two PS2s with OEM network adapters. One has the SATA mod with an SSD and the other is using a standard IDE drive.

Not only does the console with the SSD boot up faster, but applications and games load faster as well.

There is absolutely a noticeable performance difference, but I wouldn't suggest anyone go out and buy a 2TB SSD for it. If you have an extra drive sitting around like I did though, they work great.

[Anonymous No.8496895]

>>8496294
I got one the other day and after putting a SATA adapter it seems that a Seagate 1tb worked for compatibility
Also I thought I bought a fake one because of how different it looks from all the American ones

[Anonymous No.8496921]

I don't know why people don't just use an IDE>SD adapter.

[Anonymous No.8496932]

>>8496921
mostly because most people have a HDD lying around unused

[Anonymous No.8496959]

>>8496895
if the fastening screws are metal it's safe to say it's not a chink aftermarket one.

[Anonymous No.8496981]

>>8496895
Yeah, I had the same “issue”. It seems European(?) versions of the adapter are different so it threw me off seeing how mine didn’t look the same as most YouTube tutorials I’ve seen.

[Anonymous No.8497004]

>>8496959
nah it's official, the PAL ones are slim with only broadband, the screws are metal and it says made in japan

[Anonymous No.8497045]

I feel really lucky I got a Network adapter for like 10€. I thought it would be either insanely rare or criminally expensive (to be fair I did scour local ads for a month or something)

The IDE-SATA adapter is the thing I don't have. I'm not sure which one to get as I'm not sure it'll actually fit the enclosure. For example pic related looks like it doesn't fit

[Anonymous No.8497049]

>>8496492
The only advantage you'll see in using an SSD is not having a spinup time: the initial load is instant. Aside from that though you're right, the PS2 can't actually read it any faster than it can read an HDD due to slower hardware elsewhere. I wouldn't waste an SSD on a PS2 unless you have an abundance of them laying around for some reason, or you REALLY want OPL to load 2 seconds faster.

[Anonymous No.8497058]

>>8496895
Yeah that's an official one. The america version has two ports on it, one for dialup and one for ethernet, while the euro and JP version only has ethernet. I don't know if they're region locked or anything

[Anonymous No.8497073]

>>8497045
Network adapters aren't that rare. It's usually easier to get one already installed in a used PS2 but you shouldn't have to overpay to get one by itself. The PS2 did sell like 150 million units and a lot of people did play online with them.

And yeah the slot on the Network adapter is right next to the bottom so any adapter that sticks out underneath any distance won't fit. Yours definitely wouldn't fit. You need an adapter that's flat. Maybe someone can chime in with an adapter they've used that fits, but honestly just order a SATA conversion board from china. They're like 20$ and it's not hard at all to install one, the only experience you need is knowing how to turn a screw driver.

[Anonymous No.8497089]

>>8496294
SATA adapter or PATA to SD card adapter. Random SATA or SD adapters have all worked for me. No reason to get a PATA drive. There's also Chinese clone network adapters that lack networking but come with a SATA adapter build in.
SATA adapter with SSD is most reliable, quiet, less heat and gives a slight boost with speed, with SD card is cheaper and more than good enough for PS2.

>>8496492
>>8497049
Access times play a role, bandwidth has less effect than seeking/access times.
Since you'll be playing optical disk rips anyways, the bandwight is already several times faster over PATA than it is from the optical drive reading from disk, but the seek time benefit is huge.
The difference it makes in real life for PS2 isn't huge though, like anon said, couple seconds faster load in games is all you'll notice, which I personally do find a benefit in games that do load a lot. But combined with noise, heat and realibility benefits, a SD/microSD or SSD is the definitive choice over a HDD, PATA or SATA.

In something like a PS3, a SSD already makes a huge difference in loading though. But that's not the topic of the thread.

Considering how cheap SSDs are these days, I wouldn't say it's a bad investment for a console you love.
Remember that SD cards / microSD with an adapter will give you huge benefit over hard drives too and a 30€ 256GB microSD card will be faster in both seek/access times and bandwidth than the PATA bus of the PS2.

[Anonymous No.8497134]

>>8496435
take a look at the picture, it's quite obvious what tool you need.

[Anonymous No.8497135]

>>8496479
there are more advantages of ssd over spinning rust than just speed.

[Anonymous No.8497160]

>>8496479
I like how people think speed is just this one solid thing and not made out of different aspects or that things don't have more pros or cons than just speed
As a /g/tard I find it sometimes hard to believe how normies marketing is so retarded, but then I see posts like that and realize it has to be for it to be effective

[Anonymous No.8497171]

>>8497160
As far as PS2 goes, I don’t think he’s wrong though
I’m assuming you mean heat and no mechanical parts aspect
The only reason I used a HDD is because I had a 1tb HDD sitting there doing nothing

[Anonymous No.8497174]

I'm using a Western Digital 1TB drive with mine.

[Anonymous No.8497489]

>>8497160
You need to examine bus connections and the one the PS2 uses, considering that the consoles came with USB 1.1 the bottle neck is clearly the HDD adapter whether it’s the official or the 3rd part will never utilize even half of the bandwidth that a 7200rpm SATA 6GB/s has to offer.

Then you take into account the fact that SSD require trim to function otherwise you’re gonna fuck the write speed up and end up with a dead drive far sooner than an HDD. There is NO way to enable trim via the file system the PS2 requires.

Last I looked, a 2TB 2.5 7200 drive is about $30. It’s nearly triple that for an SSD you’ll eventually destroy.

It’s clear you have no idea what you’re talking about. Typical home user who read surface level deep and think they’re a data center engineer.

[Anonymous No.8497527]

>>8497073
Can I say what an annoying pain in the ass it was to do this? Getting all the parts to stay stable while I screwed them back into the case was a lot harder than I felt like it would have been.

[Anonymous No.8497582]

>>8497527
Yeah it's tricky trying to keep the cables tucked in properly while also holding the board down to screw it in. Still definitely an entry-tier console mod though.

[Anonymous No.8497587]

>>8497527
some websites that sell the adapter sell it with the thing pre installed in a network adapter if you dont have one yet

[Anonymous No.8497593]

>>8497587
I wanted to use an OEM adapter so I could keep the Ethernet functionality.

[Anonymous No.8497598]

>>8497171
Modern SATA HDDs and SSDs, also SD cards, will easily saturate the PATA bus of the PS2.
SSDs and SD cards have the benefit of faster seek times, producing less heat, using less power and running silently.

[Anonymous No.8497603]

>>8497593
i got the OEM when i bought a pre modded one like 6 years ago

[Anonymous No.8497607]

>>8497489
>...considering that the consoles came with USB 1.1 the bottle neck is clearly the HDD adapter whether it’s the official or the 3rd part will never utilize even half of the bandwidth that a 7200rpm SATA 6GB/s has to offer.
The PATA bus in the PS2 is ATA66, which is 66MB/s. No idea why you're talking about USB 1.1 here.
A SATA III (6GB/s) 7200 RPM SATA hard drive will *NEVER* even get close to 6GB/s, that's just the bus, it's more around 200 MB/s max, which is 0.2GB/s.

The benefit of solid state storage however when it comes to performance is not just bandwight, but also it's pretty much instant seek time.
Considering how fast PS2 games load in general though, the benefit isn't more than a few seconds over a HDD, but it's not just a single "speed" parameter you have to consider.

>Then you take into account the fact that SSD require trim to function otherwise you’re gonna fuck the write speed up and end up with a dead drive far sooner than an HDD.
SSD's don't need TRIM. They have built in garbage collection in the controller, same for SD cards.
The only benefit of TRIM is keeping writing speed constant if you write and delete a lot, which you don't on the PS2 anyways, you'll be reading and that makes no difference. Also TRIM has nothing to do with drive life span, why is this myth still being talked about?

>Last I looked, a 2TB 2.5 7200 drive is about $30. It’s nearly triple that for an SSD you’ll eventually destroy.
You'll eventually destroy both, but a SSD is much more reliable. If you can't afford to drop a 100 bucks to get a 1TB SSD and fill it up with all the games you'd even need, that's up to you. That's not a technical problem though.

>It’s clear you have no idea what you’re talking about. Typical home user who read surface level deep and think they’re a data center engineer.
Ironic. I've been working in IT for 20 years, but I know people who haven't and still know these things.

[Anonymous No.8497610]

I wish there was an aftermarket solution for the rails.

[Anonymous No.8497615]

>>8497607
does the ssds faster loading break any games?
i remember when i tried to use a faster mode for san andreas on hdd it would crash if i drove to fast in the city

[Anonymous No.8497619]

I always thought loading PS2 games off of an HDD would deliberately cap the bandwidth to that of the DVD drive's bus to make sure data was moving at an expected rate.

[Anonymous No.8497623]

>>8497610
I just wrapped a bit of foam tape around the front corners of my PS2's HDD. Not a lot or anything, just enough to brace it against the insides of the expansion bay so it sits firmly inside there.

[Anonymous No.8497625]

>>8497619
it kind of does opl has different speed modes for the drive which can speed up loads but also glitch games

[Anonymous No.8497626]

>>8497615
That's another nice thing actually.
The loading speed hacks are to actually increase the bandwidth for games that expect DVD loading speeds but in terms of bandwidth, not seek times, so faster seek times benefit them but don't break them.

But as stated, most loading speed benefits are seconds and not more.

[Anonymous No.8497629]

>>8497619
See: >>8497626

Depends on the game. Some games don't care, others are build around the speed of the DVD drive. Seek time does not play a role here though, faster seek is always beneficial, no matter what the bandwight is or if it's capped or not.

[Anonymous No.8497630]

>>8497615
I don’t think that’s related to the speed, the GTA games crash randomly sometimes, I think you have to enable mode 6 if you’re having problems

[Anonymous No.8497635]

>>8497073
I've got this same adapter kit. Been using it with a 1TB Western Digital Black for a couple years now. Works great.

[Anonymous No.8497638]

>>8497630
i dunno i did an entire 40 hour playthrough and the only problem i had was when i tried out the faster mode for like 20 minutes
it wasnt really a crash it asked me to reinsert the dvd

[Anonymous No.8497639]

>>8497626
>increase
or cap* for games that expect DVD loading speeds and for games that don't you can uncap them.
Sorry for the confusing explanation.

[Anonymous No.8497641]

>>8497629
Personally if I was going to use an SSD it'd probably be more for reasons of long-term viability.

It's why I stopped using HDDs on my Wii. I've had two die that were connected to it. Now it's an SSD.

[Anonymous No.8497642]

>>8497638
Can I ask which ps2 model you have?

[Anonymous No.8497648]

>>8497642
50001

[Anonymous No.8497658]

>>8497641
Yep, it's just all around a better experience for many reasons, just clearing up some performance related topics people bought up and I've dealt with myself.
Also don't disregard SD/microSD to SATA or PATA adapters, these are perfectly fine for older consoles and offer good reliability and better than HDD performance too.

[Anonymous No.8497691]

If I've already got SMB set up and working with OPL, is there any reason to bother with HDD loading? Is HDD faster? I have had stutters in some games, particularly DQVIII, but I don't know if that's SMB or something else.

[Anonymous No.8497703]

>>8497691
Not really, unless you want it to be self contained and not dependant on the rest of the network. SMB is also easier to swap games in and out with.

[Anonymous No.8497709]

>>8496294
I can't be the only retard who always wondered what did they mean with "PPH"

[Anonymous No.8497734]

On the topic of speed, there is one game I played where the game speed was a lot better. Turok Evolution. It's doing the Half-Life thing where it freezes for a few seconds to load the new area. On HDD it's way faster. I assume this applies to a lot of FPSs, including HL which is also on PS2, so if you wanna test game speed those kinds of games would be good

[Anonymous No.8497818]

Shouldn't there be a regular PS2 thread on this board? There's so many fucking games to talk about

[Anonymous No.8497832]

>>8497709
Maybe it's a joke but just saying that it says "Hdd"

[Anonymous No.8497858]

>>8497598
>running silently
That's a rather useless benefit when you have a loud as fuck fat PS2.
>>8497818
>There's so many fucking games to talk about
It's easier to create threads for specific games or franchises.

[Anonymous No.8497871]

>>8497858
>That's a rather useless benefit when you have a loud as fuck fat PS2.
Clean your PS2, I never heard a Fat PS2 being loud, their fan always runs at the same speed with barely any force.

[Anonymous No.8497874]

>>8497871
I think it's a zoomer confusing it with PHAT PS3's
PS2's fat or not are silent as fuck

[Anonymous No.8497879]

cat knocked over my fat ps2 a few times when it was vertical and now it doesnt detect when i put a dvd in at all
could it just be a wire got unplugged or what
thankfully hard drive playing still works but there are few games that need burned dvds to play

[Anonymous No.8497883]

>>8497879
Could be or could be it fucked the optics somehow, only one way to find out

[Anonymous No.8497929]

>>8497871
I never bothered to clean my fat PS2 after purchase, but it was always loud, especially right after you turn it on. I googled a bit, and turns out it's a common thing, the fan might need a replacement.

[Anonymous No.8497942]

>>8497691
Yes, it’s far faster and worth it, plus it has much better compatibility with games

[Anonymous No.8497948]

>>8497858
Pretty sure the 5000x PS2’s are silent also a HDD is not very loud if you have a decent one but SSDs are invariably better

[Anonymous No.8497968]

>>8497929
All PS2’s pre 5000x had loud fans

[Anonymous No.8497978]

>>8497968
That's explains it then. Mine is 3900x.

[Anonymous No.8498171]

Anyone have experience with loading games from SD card? I have a couple of 128GB ones sitting around so I figure I may as well go that route rather than buy an HDD or SDD.

I'm wondering what all I would need to buy to get it working, and I'm hesitant when it comes to ordering chinky shit like adapters and such without knowing exactly what I'm doing and what I need.

[Anonymous No.8498185]

>>8498171
There are plenty of examples out there. You need a couple of different adapters that will cost you maybe 15 bucks, and an sd extender if you want to make it easier to add new games.

[Anonymous No.8498251]

>>8497858
This is because your PS2 is clogged with dust. The PS2 isn't completely silent but it's not noisy either

[Anonymous No.8498374]

>>8498251
What's the right way to clean a fan?

[Anonymous No.8498398]

>>8498374
Blow it with piss

[Anonymous No.8498423]

>>8498398
Please demonstrate with a Webm.

[Anonymous No.8498429]

>>8498423
Sure, give me your PS2

[Anonymous No.8500393]

>>8497610
Surprised nobody has 3d printed these

[Anonymous No.8500569]

>>8500393
What?
A 3.5” tray?

[Anonymous No.8500659]

>>8500569
Well it's not really a tray. It's rails that bolt onto the side of the drive that then hook onto the adapter.

It's the fixture points that allow it to attach to the adapter that probably make them unique.

[Anonymous No.8500669]

>>8500659
If that’s the case then they wouldn’t work, maybe the official HDD was slimmer than standard 3.5” drives
A simple piece of cardboard underneath it makes it fit snugly anyway

[Anonymous No.8501991]

>>8500393
There's this, but of course the guy didn't provide measurements.

https://www.ps2-home.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=7003

[Anonymous No.8502006]

>>8501991
That doesn't affix it to the adapter, though.

[Anonymous No.8502041]

>>8497610
There is

https://www.amazon.com/TPO-PlayStation-Drive-Bracket-30000-50000/dp/B08Z6983W2