need some advice installing an hard drive to fat ps2.

hello. i was wondering if anyone could help me out with a few things as i'm looking to get a hard drive installed on my fat ps2.
theres plenty of tutorials about how to format the drive install games and so on so that aint an issue.
i have already purchased a network adapter SCPH-10350 which should do the job. now i need to purchase either an ide hard drive or a sata hard drive with an ide to sata adapter but i have a couple of questions.

1. can anyone confirm that using a ise to sata adapter with a 2.5 notebook style hard drive works? i would prefer this option due to not enough space in the ps2 hd bay and large ide drive are now expensive in comparison.
2. what is the best ide to sata adapter to use with the ps2. i was hoping to not to do any modding just plug and play.

any help would great.

 

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you would prefer an adapter & 2.5" drive due to 'not enough space in the ps2 hd bay' - there is enough space in the hard drive bay for a standard 3.5" hard drive. I don't think there is a cheap way around this, might just need to save up and get an IDE drive. Unless you can borrow a drive and an adapter to test it, i wouldn't waste your cash. I'm sure you could find an IDE drive on eBay cheap, it was the standard at one point so there will be plenty floating about....

*EDIT* have just been reading HERE that an Adapter made by PAC Link works.

Plu# 5983774 RH-SATA-PATA
SATA TO PATA BACKPLANE
ADAPTER FOR IDE DRIVE

... but you need to do some modding.

 

IDE drives are not that expensive and probably cheaper than a sata 2.5", and theres plenty of space for a 3.5" drive in the ps2 drive bay unless you've got something else in there, as thats what it was designed for.

i dont see why it wouldnt work aslong as the drive is getting power but i've not tried it myself.

 

Hello,

Here is one that has found an adapter that works and with a very clever use of anglers(?) to mount it: http://psx-scene.com/forums/f98/startech-com-ide-sata-adapter-converter-works-102141/ I have done this myself as well, using a very similar (although *slightly* bigger) adapter found on ebay and with similar anglers, and it works ok.

I remember also a different thread, I think it was on psx scene as well but not sure and can't find it now, were someone had found a just perfect adapter: it was a complete "box" were you slapped in the 2,5" SATA drive and the thing would have the exact same size as a 3,5" IDE drive, and this was fortunatelly also compatible with the PS2... However, it was only sold in some japanese site that did not deliver overseas

Biggest advantage to me is that a 2,5" drive is a lot quieter than a 3,5" inch drive... And some day, I might upgrade it with an SSD

 

cheers for the replies guys. the reason a say there aint enough space is because i heard that when using an ide to sata adapter with a 3.5 sata drive then it wont fit without modding the network adapter. i can get a 1tb 2.5 sata drive at a reasonable price compared to ide drives. they seem to have gotten very expensive from what i've seen. if a 3.5 sata drive would fit into the bay with the ide to sata adapter i would get a 2tb 3.5 for about £70 or so and be happy. wont fit though i heard

thinking about it i may have a better solution lol. the pc i'm using now has a slave 500gb hard drive which is large enough i guess. maybe i should purchase a 2tb sata drive and adapter and use that as a replacement for my pc.

only issue now though is if this hard drive is compatible ? i will have to check the model against the compatibility list. i think it's a maxtor though.

 

aahh well that clarifies things a bit more,

also i'd be careful with larger drives as some people have reported them to be not working with various ps2 programs such as HD loader etc.

if you find a nice adapter and working drive you could list it here also to help others

 

Just remembered there are also some fake chinese network adapters that have SATA connectors out-of-the-box, some of them are missing the actual network adapter part though... I've seen these on ebay before, can't find any now though. --

They have been discussed here: http://www.assemblergames.com/forum...-Adapters-Network-to-be-trusted-or-not-at-all

 

i think using the 500 gig one in this computer is going to be my best after all. it's ide to start with so none of the adapter nonsense. also it's not as if i could fit all my ps2 collection onto even a 2 tb hd and have them all in one place anyway. i think i must have about 1500 games or so. would be great to just update the hd with a few games evry once in a while to save the almost dead laser. any games that aint compatible with all the various loaders are listed in compatibility charts and i can play them on my slim. i worry that i may be wearing out my slim laser also by playing everything on it from disks. only potential problem is if this damn drive is not compatible.
i'm still gonna have to get a two ide to sata adapters thou. one for a replacment 2tb slave drive in this pc and i'm also lookinh to put a 2tb sata drive in my old xbox 1 which will require another adapter lol.

@ kungmidas. the chinese knockoff adapters would be a pain for me because once i have fitted my ps2hd with a large collection of iso's i would prefer to make future updates by copying games i want to play throught the network side of things to save taking it apart. unfortunatly those chinese adapters don't support that. besides i already purchased a official sony adapter.

 

does your PC have no SATA ports?

 

Also note that Network Adaptor clones will probably not let you run the original HDD OSD.

 

FYI, you probably know this but transferring a game over network isn't exactly super fast, I think most games takes at least 20 minutes. If you intend to install that many games to a HDD then you I think you'll save a lot of time by connecting the PS2 drive to your PC (preferably direct connection, not using bottleneck-ing usb 2.0 case or so) and copy the game using winhiip or so.

About the original HDD OSD, doesn't the HDD OSD (at least the unmodified version) also require an original Sony drive as well?

 

That's right. But even if it's ATA device driver is patched for not authentifying the HDD, the console won't proceed in reading the master boot record of a HDD that is hooked to a network adapter clone.

 

Sorry I can't help with any SATA related advice, as I use an IDE drive in mine (250GB, I think, but only about 220GB is seen by the PS2, this can be remedied, I think (via Open PS2 Loader, I think), but it's already more than enough for all of my PS2 games so I don't miss the extra space.

Use Open PS2 Loader as your menu (it's fantastic, much more compatible than HD Loader or HDAdvance!), and Free McBoot to boot up your PS2 from your memory card (which means your PS2 boots faster, and you never need a disc in the PS2 drive at all, except to install the games to the hard drive). I won't post links to Open PS2 Loader or Free McBoot, in case it's against the assemblergames rules, but google will find them for you (they are freeware) no problem.

A PS2 with a hard drive and Open PS2 Loader (and Free McBoot) is fantastic!

 

i use a 400 gig samsung drive i brought from this link http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148416 $34 USD
it was the largest drive i could find that worked on the compatibility chart http://ps2drives.x-pec.com/?p=list

the sata adapters just arnt worth it because if your luck a 1 TB drive will work but not bigger then that
its something do do with the driver in OPL

 

i can always connect the ide drive back to my pc to ad games quickly, i guess undoing two screws ain't a big deal. i was planning on using all variations of loaders in case of varying compatibility and free mcboot to launch them. never used fre mcboot because i always played from burned disk but i old fat ps2 is as an old messiah chip in it so installing free mcboot should be easy enough.

 

OPL has the best compatibility and is in constant development HDL is usually just used for direct backup on the actual consoles and games played via OPL

 

i came across a list and out of 4 loaders oly one could play everybodys tennis properly. cant rmember which one. opl sounds good though for best compatibility. looking forward to ps2 hd heaven now. i hope the loading is as fast as people say.

 

if you use sp193's latest drivers, you can upload games to your ps2 via ethernet port at about 5 megabytes per second, which is really enough for me. it saves me from plugging/unpluggin hdd everytime i load a game.

also if you have a modchip which supports dev2 booting, you can directly boot opl from the hdd. first you have to run an elf to create the necessary file system on the hdd though.

if you don't have a modchip, you can always use fmcb. fmcb is slower than dev2 booting though.

 

good news about those latest drivers. adding games to ps2 via ethernet port would be easier to save me pulling the ps2 out and removing hd and so on. speed is not so much an issue unless it's super slow. how long roughly does it take to copy say a 4gb ps2 game with sp193's latest drivers?
yes i have a modchip. it's a messiah mod. it's one of the first proper ps2 mod solutions. before the messiah we had to use an action replay disc with a less functional chip which allowed the ps2 drive to open without reebooting. can't remember chip name sorry. i'm not sure if the messiah chip supports dev2 booting. with it being an older type chip maybe not i guess.

 

If you have a decent modchip, it breaks the protection allowing backup games to be installed without needing to transfer from pc.
Unless you're really concerned about laser usage.