Using hard drives on a Wii U
Wii U games and injects can only be installed to the internal storage of the console or an external hard drive.
The Wii U will format the hard drive in a proprietary format, which can't be read by other devices.
The Wii U will only format up to 2 TB of the drive, you can still connect larger drives though.
Tools like DumpsterU exist, which allow you to dump games and saves from a Wii U formatted drive on your PC.
Any external hard drive from a reputable brand will work, but most of them need a Y-Cable if they're not externally powered. A Y cable is required because of the Wii U's low power output, so two USB ports are used. The most common Y-Cables will look something like this:
| USB Micro-B Y-Cable | Female USB-A Y-Cable |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| This Y-Cable will plug directly into your hard drive. | This Y-Cable has a female USB-A connector for the cable of your hard drive. This is useful for hard drives which don't have a Micro-B port. |
An external SSD will also work, but some of them still need a Y-Cable. Also note that the Wii U will barely benefit from the faster transfer and access times.
You can find Y-Cables like these on Amazon. The two listed can be found here:
Using a flash drive / thumb drive / non high endurance SD Card in a USB adapter is not recommended!
Those devices are not made for constant writes which occur while dumping a game or saving games.
This can lead to crashes or corrupt partitions, which may result in permanent data loss!
While there was a way to load games from an SD Card, that method is no longer recommended due to the same reasons mentioned above. Additionally games loaded this way lack online functionality and have slow loading times. A stroopwafel plugin know as SDUSB is a much more effective way of playing games from the SD card, but it's recommended to use a high endurance SD card for this. Nonetheless, HDD's will still be recommended before SDUSB.
