[FR] Grimdoomer large HDD support

[DukeJP]

Checks

• [X] I have checked existing OPL feature requests for duplicates and found none

Describe the FR

add support for internal disks larger than 2TB. I know that the Grimdoomer fork exists, but it stopped updating months ago, the last update of its fork was on July 7, and Grimmdomer itself has not shown any activity on psx-place since August. Do you plan to add this feature in the future? I hope so

Describe the solution you'd like

support for disks larger than 2TB

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

[cobhc2019]

I second this. The grimdoomer fork has been working flawlessly for me, but it would be really nice to have this in the main release.

[VicCatarino]

not only larger HDD support but also the features of grimdoomer fork, like exFAT support for HD and 64bit sector adress.

[nikeymikey]

I am another advocate for the exFAT support. So much easier to manage a HDD on your PC without any of those quirky tools. Please add this to official OPL.

[JaeOfMordor]

i too would like the forked features to make it into the mainline version

[AmyRoxwell]

Implementing also EXFAT support for HDD from that fork would be amazing too :3!

[bryc]

I think it's important to point out that this feature was never advertised as stable - it's beta.

Not everyone has had success with it, as some HDDs and adapters have issues. So there may be kinks to work out before it's ready for prime time. Putting the feature out there saying its ready could end in a wave of people encountering issues or complaining.

I understand the frustration, but remember, we are merely testers, we should know what we were getting into. It certainly has potential, and is likely to reach the PR stage, but some patience and understanding is warranted here. I'm sure there are very valid reasons that it's not part of the latest stable OPL yet. It's a lot of work to do testing and ensure it's ready for release.

And yes, I'm aware @grimdoomer has been quiet, that's his right. He doesn't owe anyone anything, etc. I don't blame him, it's understandable to have other priorities given the times we live in. He already did more than enough to show that it is practical, his code is there, and anyone skilled enough can potentially learn from it or even find improvements.

[AlSiSan]

I wish this feature were officially supported too.

[KawaiiDinosaur]

Bumping this because I think exFAT support on the HDD for easy drag and drop of images is an absolute must have this day and age. I only have a linux pc and a macbook and I don't want to go to the hassle of installing Windows just to run some abandonware tools.

[BatRastard]

I'm all "ExFat Or Bust" over here ... ;-)

I turned 50 in January and work 60 hours 7 days a week. Literally don't have time for my PS5 or my gaming PC let alone time for Winhiip. Don't have time to juggle flash drives anymore. I shit thee not - I took my 500GB Seagate USB SSD and turned that into my over glorified Ventoy sti ...er uh ... Ventoy Rectangle! Yeah! That's it. It's a friggin rectangle. Anyway, using flash drives for Ventoy took 7 to 12 minutes per ISO with my 64GB Patriot RAGE. This SSD takes just 7 to 12 seconds per ISO. Guess what's going into the PS2 eventually? Yeah, a freakin' 1TB SATA SSD. With ExFat. Don't much time left on this planet, and GrimDoomer saved me a LOT of it ... :D

[Cyberosis]

Another +1 hoping this becomes a thing. would save me so much time!

[HVR88]

Has anyone successfully mounted an ExFAT internal drive with GrimDoomer's LAST release ([v1.2.0.6-1996) from May 27 2023?

That version won't read any ExFAT drive I've tried, regardless of size. So far I've been through 6 drives. 2.5", 3.5" and SSD. WD, Seagate, Kingston and Fujitsu - from 64GB up to 2TB

Version (1.2.0.5-1991) from April 24 2023 however reads the disks correctly and games launch as expected.

IMO, ExFAT support while nice, also needs to be added to other tools. As far as internal drive, it's not exactly convenient to take it out regularly to toss it onto a PC for maintenance.

[BatRastard]

Yeah, it works fine on my end with a 1TB Seagate 5400RPM laptop SATA drive. At first, it failed miserably because Windows's first attempt at formatting drive left me with an allocation unit size that was way too big. Once I followed Microsoft's specs for ExFAT, I had no further problems with GrimDoomer's fork. Because of the 2TB HDD limit on the PS2, the most common ExFAT Allocation Unit size we'll being using on our HDDs is going to be 128KB since that covers drive capacities ranging from 32GB to 256TB ...

[HVR88]

That's an interesting find, I'll reformat some of the drives to test it out.

When I left this last night using the .05(1991) version, I hadn't reformatted the last drive - it was the same 2.5" 320GB spinner that wouldn't come up at all using .06(1996)

I don't know what the allocation size is as I formatted it on my Mac which doesn't have a way to change that from its Disk Utility app.

EDIT: checked on Windows and the allocation size was 128KB for the 320GB drive.

[HVR88]

Did some testing and I can't replicate the issue with allocation size. The .05 (1991) seems to work with every drive up to allocation size of 512KB (haven't tested larger), while .06 (1996) won't work with any drive at all, including 128KB or even 32KB allocation.

At this time I'm still not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze - no other tools support internal ExFAT volumes which really limits what you can do with the HDD while installed in the PS2. If the only benefit is to make it easier to pre-load the first batch, it's likely a waste of time and I'd sooner stick with the official OPL. There has to be a reason this change hasn't been pulled up-stream in over a year.

At this point, PS2 has felt like the most pain in the arse system I've ever modded, and I've been doing this for decades. But it turns out, it's been all because of this ExFAT OPL fork.

[BatRastard]

Did some testing and I can't replicate the issue with allocation size. The .05 (1991) seems to work with every drive up to allocation size of 512KB (haven't tested larger), while .06 (1996) won't work with any drive at all, including 128KB or even 32KB allocation.

It might be the way your Mac is handling things. Even formatting a USB stick to FAT32 for BIOS Flashback on a Mac has been problematic. On Windows, sometimes its necessary to run DISKPART and use the CLEAN command on the target drive. This nukes the drive right back into unallocated space. Even the CLEAN command on USB sticks has helped overcome BIOS Flashback detection issues. Oh, I neglected to mention: My 1TB Seagate Laptop drive was formatted to ExFAT with GPT instead of MBR ...

At this time I'm still not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze - no other tools support internal ExFAT volumes which really limits what you can do with the HDD while installed in the PS2.

There should be a version of wLE with ExFAT support. I believe AkuHAK was responsible for that. Honestly, the only tools we need are FMCB/FHDB, wLE, and OPL. One of the many reasons for this fork is ExFAT renders damn near all the old PS2 tools obsolete. Don't need HDLDumx. Don't need WinHiip. Don't need HDL Game Installer. ExFAT literally adds drag-and-drop support in Windows. No special drivers or tools needed or necessary.

There has to be a reason this change hasn't been pulled up-stream in over a year.

People are busy. People have real lives. It took YEARS for OPL 1.0 to come out of BETA!

As far as internal drive, it's not exactly convenient to take it out regularly to toss it onto a PC for maintenance.

Then don't. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NF6JQQ4/

You can hot swap with that Sabrent SATA to USB 3.x dock. I get about 150MB a second transfer speed.

At this point, PS2 has felt like the most pain in the arse system I've ever modded, and I've been doing this for decades.

I turned 50 on January 14th. This was nowhere near the worst mod I ever did. That belongs to recapping the inverter on a ViewSonic LCD some 8 to 10 years ago. It's native resolution 1440x900. This was long before 1440p became the shiznits. Without the mod, the LCD would turn on and off constantly. Eventually it would stay on, but it wasn't always guaranteed. My daughters great grandfather said if I can fix it, I can keep it. I ordered some high quality low ESR Matsushita/Panasonic capacitors and got to work. It was a pain. At one point, I left only a small sliver of copper trace for one capacitor. Got lucky and the operation worked great. The display fired up and stayed on from the start. Then about 6 months later, the switch bay for the OSD, power, and volume control bugged out. Into the landfill the bitch went. Didn't want to order a replacement and crack that bastard open again.

However, I am gearing up to build me a new rig this Summer/Fall. It'll be a mostly all white build. White Gigabyte B650 board. White Peerless Assassin cooler. White NZXT H6 Flow. My placeholders are a Ryzen 7800X3D and an AMD RX 7800XT but that'll probably change by the Summer/Fall. Got a white desk now. Got a pair of white Edifier speakers coming tomorrow. So the reason being for the all white build: I'm going blind. Age. Diabetes. Macular Degeneration. I had a hell of a time building my current B550 system with bifocals and a black motherboard back in 2021. That WAS going to be my final rig, but I really want to splurge and treat myself to a monster of rig for my last hurrah. Before I'm physically unable to do it anymore. And I'm considering a drop-in 5950X for my current B550 rig so that it can be my dedicated rig for Togonzo Media related stuff. So many things I want to do this year but limited by time moreso than money ... :-(

[HVR88]

It might be the way your Mac is handling things.

I've duplicated all formatting on my Windows 10 system as well, just in case, because I thought the same thing. Using Drive Managament, wiping everything, ensuring drives always MBR.

The smoking gun with the testing is this: all drives work as expected with the second-to-last OPL release. And none work with the latest.

There's definitely an issue with the code. Speaking of not having enough time, a few years ago I'd probably get up to speed on it and then comb through trying to find the issue and possibly fixing it myself. Maybe I'll do a simple diff to see if anything jumps out.

As I haven't kept up with PS2 modding (at all), I don't have a clue what's changing in recent OPL builds, but I expected that running the latest would be advantageous, at least for compatibility.

There's no denying the convenience of a disk partition natively recognized by the OS to manage its contents. I figured that however the drive ends up, I'd fill most of it in one go and in the future if I wanted a couple of additions here and there, they could be easily transferred with USB key.

WRT moving the drive out, it's not an issue of hooking it up to a host for xfers, more having to take the PS2 down off the shelf where it lives. :) I've got every console going back to the OG VCS set up and on display, where as many as possible don't need to move to be used. Unfortunately, given the space and setup, most of them are up on shelving above the dedicated TV.

I turned 50 on January 14th. This was nowhere near the worst mod I ever did.

Happy belated. I've got just about a year on you. By PITA I meant frustrating, because it was a ton of drive swapping trying to figure out what was going on - I probably shouldn't have set the PS2 up in my office while the Win10 system was in the gaming room downstairs.

Speaking of traces, have you seen how small they get on current gen consoles or even XB360? Yeah, last month I had to jump a couple of traces on a 360 without a microscope. As you mentioned, progressive lenses on glasses or bifocals are a pain for this stuff. Jewler's magnifier to the rescue! But, unlike this PS2, I knew exactly what the problem was and how to fix it. 🤣

I haven't built a new PC in a long time, but I might want to do one late this year too. Fell in love with glass cases with all wiring done behind the mainboard like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Qrs_J-NmY

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From: Alex @.> Sent: Monday, April 15, 2024 8:00:31 AM To: ps2homebrew/Open-PS2-Loader @.> Cc: Subscribed @.***> Subject: Re: [ps2homebrew/Open-PS2-Loader] [FR] Grimdoomer large HDD support (Issue #1098)

I wish this feature were officially supported too.

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