Playstation 2 Hard Drive

[Xander]

I was playing Metal Saga and Psychonauts this week and the loading time annoyed me a little bit.

I am considering buying a HD for my PS2. I currently own a fat model SHC-5000 (or something along those lines, I'm sure it's a -5000 tho). I would like to know some stuff.

I am mostly inquiring about the following features as to if they are possible and require additionnal hardware/software beside the HD (network adapter, boot dvd, modchip, etc..):

-Is my model 5000 PS2 compatible with a HD?
-Is it possible to stock games in the Hard-Drive?
-Is it possible to play games from the Hard-Drive?
-Is Emulation possible?
-Can I stock game saves on the Hard-Drive?
-Can I save my games directly from the game to the Hard-Drive?
-Are there any other fun functionnalities?

Thank you for your time.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I believe that you can outfit that model PS2 (or any fat PS2) with a HDD.

You don't need a mod chip if you use a HDD boot loader disc (there are several out there).

All you need is the Network adapter and a compatible HDD (The PS2 official HDD is guaranteed to work, and from what I recall Maxxtor drives were always rated high for PS2 usage.)

The boot loader disc will load a game in the PS2 drive tray directly to the HDD, and if it is compatible, it will run the game completely from the HDD.


Emulation may be possible, but you'll likely have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it to work (manually isntall the software onto the HDD outside of the ease of the boot loader discs).

Game saves can not be written directly to the HDD - unless you're using the official Sony HDD, and in that case they can't be written there, but can be STORED there but not accessed during the game (unless the game has that feature ... a few do, but not many), it's basically just for memory card management.

[Xander]

Thank you frankie for the informations :)

Without giving me urls, do you happen to know the names of some good HDD boot loader disc? If I have to buy something, better be the best possible.

[Oobgarm]

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=1883489&pagenumber=1

Digest the information there. I was able to use this exact tutorial to create a boot disc with a PSX game. All I needed was a memory card, a flash drive, an action replay, the game itself, and a couple of simple programs to get things going. The tutorial should spell it out fairly well. I've done it a few times now with little to no difficulties. There's even a link to the HDLoader program itself.

One thing to mention is that you can't use a Western Digital HDD, as it doesn't fit the network adapter.

[Trebuken]

Both games are playable on your PC with PCSX2. I have not used it much but it might be satisfactory for you with a good PS2 to PC (USB) adapter.

[Xander]

Wow Oobgarm, this is a very good link, thanks a lot for that.

And Trebuken, thx for the suggestion, I didn't think about PS2 emulation. But it wouldn't be the same as to play on the original hardware :)

[Sirus]

Hi, just wanted to warn you that Metal Saga might not work. (Metal Saga sounded familiar, so I checked up on it)

*edit* Sorry, not sure if I can put up that url?
There are other compatibility lists, easily found by googling.

Psychonauts seems to be compatible though.

Hope this helps and good luck!

[RARusk]

*takes notes*

[ProgrammingAce]

HDAdvanced and HDLoader are basically the same software. Grab HDAdvanced if you can, it has a few additional hacks for added compatability.

As a general rule, use a 120 gb hard drive. Larger drives are not easily supported.