PlayStation 2 HDD

rage12345 · Post by **rage12345** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 12:59 am

I live in Canada. Unfortunately, we *still* don't have a HDD availble for the PS2. Is it possible to just put any 40GB HDD in my PS2?

I have the official sony ethernet adapter and in briefly looking at it, it seems like a standard IDE HDD could connect to it. Is this possible? If so,

1. How would I properly format it?
2. Can I use it to save games to (my memory card is ALWAYS full)?

Post by **mrbrown** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 4:06 am

rage12345 wrote:I live in Canada. Unfortunately, we *still* don't have a HDD availble for the PS2. Is it possible to just put any 40GB HDD in my PS2?

I have the official sony ethernet adapter and in briefly looking at it, it seems like a standard IDE HDD could connect to it. Is this possible? If so,

1. How would I properly format it?
2. Can I use it to save games to (my memory card is ALWAYS full)?

No one outside of Canada has the consumer HDD for PS2 either (except Japan) because it hasn't been released yet. You can still get the official HDD by ordering the PS2/Linux Kit, check playstation2-linux.com for more details.

If you don't plan on using official games that use the HDD (for memcard saving, data caching, etc.) then you can use most modern HDDs that will fit the IDE adapter on the network adapter. Official games will require the official Sony HDD however.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 1:34 am

question: do all of the sony network adapters have a ide connection on them, and would it be possible to boot directly off a normal hard drive connected to it, or, if not, would it be possible to indirectly boot off it (ie with a cd or something)?

FuNkY MoOsE · Post by **FuNkY MoOsE** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 1:38 am

ergh, that was me, forgot to log on

Post by **mrbrown** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 2:06 am

Anonymous wrote:question: do all of the sony network adapters have a ide connection on them, and would it be possible to boot directly off a normal hard drive connected to it, or, if not, would it be possible to indirectly boot off it (ie with a cd or something)?

Booting directly off of the HDD requires MagicGate, and only Sony holds the keys to this mystery.

Of course, if you can boot from disc or the exploit then you can easily load programs stored on the HDD. Just take a look at ps2menu.

Post by **Drakonite** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 3:33 am

Anonymous wrote:question: do all of the sony network adapters have a ide connection on them

At least in most places, all sony brand network adapters should have the IDE connectors.

rhancock · Post by **rhancock** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 1:54 pm

If I remember correctly, it is only the network adapters that have the HDD logo on the back. The first release of them did not.

Rufnut · Post by **Rufnut** » Sun Feb 15, 2004 11:30 pm

I read the above and assume that I cannot plug my ps2 formatted HDD in as a secondary HDD in my linux pc and mount it because it was accessed by the ps2 with magic gate ?????

Or is it because the PS2 file system is different :?:

rhancock · Post by **rhancock** » Mon Feb 16, 2004 7:40 am

The controller on the HDD for the PS2 is slightly different than a normal IDE. I'm not sure what they changed. I believe it is the same as the HDD as is in the PS2Linux kit. But they are formated differently. At least that is my understanding.

Post by **mrbrown** » Mon Feb 16, 2004 4:14 pm

Rufnut wrote:I read the above and assume that I cannot plug my ps2 formatted HDD in as a secondary HDD in my linux pc and mount it because it was accessed by the ps2 with magic gate ?????

Or is it because the PS2 file system is different :?:

You can use the PS2 HDD in your PC, but you will have to reformat it as the PC won't recognize the partition scheme that PS2 software uses.

Rufnut · Post by **Rufnut** » Mon Feb 16, 2004 8:42 pm

thankyou mrbrown and rhancock :-)

I saw this:

http://blackrhino.xrhino.com/main.php?page=howto

and thought maybe I could see the hard drive under linux on my PC and even set it up for Blackrhino.

I guess I better learn a bit more about it :-)

:) :)

mharris · Post by **mharris** » Tue Feb 17, 2004 3:16 am

mrbrown wrote:
Rufnut wrote:I read the above and assume that I cannot plug my ps2 formatted HDD in as a secondary HDD in my linux pc and mount it because it was accessed by the ps2 with magic gate ?????

Or is it because the PS2 file system is different :?:
You can use the PS2 HDD in your PC, but you will have to reformat it as the PC won't recognize the partition scheme that PS2 software uses.

hmm, maybe it's time to write a ps2fs driver for linux? This I can probably handle, since it's an environment that I know... ps2 dev is vexing me ATM (stupid GIF tags...)

The only problem is I have no ps2-formatted HDD... However, that shouldn't be a huge deal. If I had an HDD image, I could mount it using the -o loop option (like mounting an ISO image). Anyone feel like mailing me a small disk image, or posting one somewhere?

Post by **mrbrown** » Tue Feb 17, 2004 3:51 am

Keep in mind that you'll also have to add support for the APA partitioning format Sony uses. You can find examples of this against the 2.2 kernels if you look in the xRhino kernel source.

Awhile ago, Andrew (?) Church wrote a fdisk clone that created APA partitions. You should be able to find it at achurch.org/ps2. I have an updated version that supports the resierfs FS type, I'll have to dig it out sometime.

For PFS, your best working example is Sjeep's ps2fs driver in libhdd. Use libhdd's HDD format example or grab the DMS format utility, and you can create a valid PFS filesystem, then you could rip those off the PS2's HDD.

If you still need an image, I can get you one sometime this evening after work.

mharris · Post by **mharris** » Tue Feb 17, 2004 4:40 am

mrbrown wrote:If you still need an image, I can get you one sometime this evening after work.

that would be great. post a compressed image on your site, and I'll fiddle with it.

FYI I'm still having problems accessing your site, DNS seems to be fubar. If I put an entry in /etc/hosts I can get to it, otherwise it's not found.

m

Post by **mrbrown** » Tue Feb 17, 2004 7:05 am

Thanks for the heads up re: DNS. I've been meaning to ditch my current DNS provider, I guess I'll get to that today as well.

I'll post here once the image is up or track you down on IRC.

BiB · Post by **BiB** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 10:36 pm

After reading all posts about HDD on ps2, i have some questions :

1) With the network adapter, we can put a PC HDD (but ps2 formatted) on the ps2 ?

2) if yes, can we put official games on this HDD instead of running them with a cd ?

3) How can we format the HDD ?

Maybe some of these questions seem to be stupid for you, but i'm new :?

Thanks

BiB

sjeep · Post by **sjeep** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 12:42 pm

KYA26, thats warez (a SCE tool meant for licensed developers only, not the general public).

BiB, you can use the DMS HDD Format Tool to format a PC HDD for use in your PS2:

http://www.dms3.com/dms3/files/chips/DM ... at-1_0.zip

forums.ps2dev.org

PlayStation 2 HDD

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