A Hard Drive Is Completely Useless

Here's what it comes down to, if you have the option between an SD card or a hard drive and you pick the hard drive you fail the test.

The Wii does not need a hard drive for one very important reason

They fail much too often.

All studies have shown one discouraging thing when it comes to hard drives. They are no better today then they were almost 2 decades ago. Instead of becoming error free they have plateaued when it comes to failure rate. A drive bought today fails at the same rate as a drive bought in 1994.

Now the way that Nintendo has tied everything to the Wii that means for a large chunk of users a failed hard drive means games lost forever. Even today people don't register their Wii at Nintendo.com and ask questions about what happens if your Wii dies. Adding a storage device that is shown to fail no matter what would only cause problems for the user and the company.

On the other hand if Nintendo expanded the SD slot funtions in the Wii everyone would use solid state memory for their saves. Solid state is better by leaps and bounds. You can put an SD card in your pocket and throw it in the laundry and once your jeans are clean the SD card will still work.

Putting saves on SD cards are idiot proof, you'd have to really try to lose your data.

Plus pricing is attractive, 4 gig cards right now are 20-40 dollars (depending where you shop) that's more then enough storage for even the downloadiest of the downloaders.

Wii users should be be pushing for solid state instead of the inferior method so many talk about.

First of all HDD's have greatly improved in two decades. They have become faster, higher capacity, and more durable. Your talk of failure rates is grossly exaggerated.

Second, SD cards are not without their own drawbacks. They have very slow write/read speeds and were never designed to handle continuous use.

Thank you ECG.

Where are you getting your numbers about hard drive failures from today and 1994? Do you even know what you are talking about?

Here's what it comes down to, if you have the option between an SD card or a hard drive and you pick the hard drive you fail the test.

The Wii does not need a hard drive for one very important reason

They fail much too often.

All studies have shown one discouraging thing when it comes to hard drives. They are no better today then they were almost 2 decades ago. Instead of becoming error free they have plateaued when it comes to failure rate. A drive bought today fails at the same rate as a drive bought in 1994.

Now the way that Nintendo has tied everything to the Wii that means for a large chunk of users a failed hard drive means games lost forever. Even today people don't register their Wii at Nintendo.com and ask questions about what happens if your Wii dies. Adding a storage device that is shown to fail no matter what would only cause problems for the user and the company.

On the other hand if Nintendo expanded the SD slot funtions in the Wii everyone would use solid state memory for their saves. Solid state is better by leaps and bounds. You can put an SD card in your pocket and throw it in the laundry and once your jeans are clean the SD card will still work.

Putting saves on SD cards are idiot proof, you'd have to really try to lose your data.

Plus pricing is attractive, 4 gig cards right now are 20-40 dollars (depending where you shop) that's more then enough storage for even the downloadiest of the downloaders.

Wii users should be be pushing for solid state instead of the inferior method so many talk about.

Jaysonguy

First of all HDD's have greatly improved in two decades. They have become faster and larger. Your talk of failure rates is grossly exaggerated.

Second, SD cards are not without their own drawbacks. They have very slow write/read speeds and were never designed to handle continuous use.

ECG_24

Completely wrong on both counts

Hard drive failure is just as common today as it was in the 90's. While size and speed has increased the failure rate has not gone down. HERE

As you can see in the 2nd and 3rd years of a drive's life there's close to a 10% chance it will fail. One out of every ten is not a small amount.

As for the speeds of solid state you're talking about a myth. Solid state made today is able to read and write incredibly fast (faster then hard drives made for consumer use) to where it's used in cameras that need to take multiple pictures in a second and is now used in military applications HERE

If speed is an issue there are solid state options to be purchased. Though you'll never need that speed and it will never effect performance of a game.

lol I thought this was funny

Anyways, these failure rates you speak of - Where did they come from? I've owned plenty of hard drives, and none of them have failed me yet? More than ten, too. And even if one DID fail, Im sure Nintendo's customer support would take care of it.

"They fail much too often.

All studies have shown one discouraging thing when it comes to hard drives. They are no better today then they were almost 2 decades ago. Instead of becoming error free they have plateaued when it comes to failure rate. A drive bought today fails at the same rate as a drive bought in 1994"

The disk drive that is currently in everyone's Wii is much more likely to fail than any hard drive. Also, I hope you don't own a computer because then you've violated your own argument.

"On the other hand if Nintendo expanded the SD slot funtions in the Wii everyone would use solid state memory for their saves. Solid state is better by leaps and bounds. You can put an SD card in your pocket and throw it in the laundry and once your jeans are clean the SD card will still work."

Nintendo doesn't allow us to read files directly off the SD cards, and solid state memory is much more expensive than hard drives. SD cards are extremely slow. Try copying an N64 game, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

"Plus pricing is attractive, 4 gig cards right now are 20-40 dollars (depending where you shop) that's more then enough storage for even the downloadiest of the downloaders."

The Wii isn't compatible with cards over 2 GB.

They fail much too often.

All studies have shown one discouraging thing when it comes to hard drives. They are no better today then they were almost 2 decades ago. Instead of becoming error free they have plateaued when it comes to failure rate. A drive bought today fails at the same rate as a drive bought in 1994

The disk drive that is currently in everyone's Wii is much more likely to fail than any hard drive. Also, I hope you don't own a computer because then you've violated your own argument.

On the other hand if Nintendo expanded the SD slot funtions in the Wii everyone would use solid state memory for their saves. Solid state is better by leaps and bounds. You can put an SD card in your pocket and throw it in the laundry and once your jeans are clean the SD card will still work.

Nintendo doesn't allow us to read files directly off the SD cards, and solid state memory is much more expensive than hard drives.

Plus pricing is attractive, 4 gig cards right now are 20-40 dollars (depending where you shop) that's more then enough storage for even the downloadiest of the downloaders.

The Wii isn't compatible with cards over 2 GB.

Rocky32189

Couldn't have said it better myself.

"They fail much too often.

All studies have shown one discouraging thing when it comes to hard drives. They are no better today then they were almost 2 decades ago. Instead of becoming error free they have plateaued when it comes to failure rate. A drive bought today fails at the same rate as a drive bought in 1994"

The disk drive that is currently in everyone's Wii is much more likely to fail than any hard drive. Also, I hope you don't own a computer because then you've violated your own argument.

"On the other hand if Nintendo expanded the SD slot funtions in the Wii everyone would use solid state memory for their saves. Solid state is better by leaps and bounds. You can put an SD card in your pocket and throw it in the laundry and once your jeans are clean the SD card will still work."

Nintendo doesn't allow us to read files directly off the SD cards, and solid state memory is much more expensive than hard drives. SD cards are extremely slow. Try copying an N64 game, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

"Plus pricing is attractive, 4 gig cards right now are 20-40 dollars (depending where you shop) that's more then enough storage for even the downloadiest of the downloaders."

The Wii isn't compatible with cards over 2 GB.

Rocky32189

1. There is no disk drive in the Wii. As for me owning a computer I'm not sure what you mean. No computer owner should expect their data to survive on a hard drive, that's why backing up is mandatory if you have a computer.

2. That's why I said expand. Also you're just repeating a myth that I've already debunked, anyone with a high end camera knows that speed is not an issue if you're willing to pay.

3. I repeat, that's why I said expand

Solid state does not fail, hard drives do.

If hard drives were likely to fail as often as you appear to make them sound then probably many of us wouldn't be responding. I am sure many of us here have never had a hard drive problem. I've had two in the last thirteen years. While on the other hand I have lost data, broken, and completely lost SD and flash cards/drives several times over the last few years. Whether it is my fault or not I would prefer to have a bulky (more likely slim) HD than greater SD support.

Whether or not a HD would be a good thing or bad for the Wii is one matter. You are simply bashing the HD completely. The HD isn't useless, if you think so then you should toss out the ones in your computer and hook it up to flash memory. A good comparison might have been better pointing out the pros and cons -.

Solid state does not fail.

Jaysonguy

That statement is so wrong I don't even know what to say.

1. There is no disk drive in the Wii. As for me owning a computer I'm not sure what you mean. No computer owner should expect their data to survive on a hard drive, that's why backing up is mandatory if you have a computer.

2. That's why I said expand. Also you're just repeating a myth that I've already debunked, anyone with a high end camera knows that speed is not an issue if you're willing to pay.

3. I repeat, that's why I said expand

Solid state does not fail, hard drives do.

Jaysonguy

1. Of course there is a disk drive in the Wii. Whether you want to believe it or not, the Wii does have moving parts inside it, which are as likely or more likely to fail than a HDD. If hard drives are completely useless, why does every computer come with one, and why are you using one? The answer is because, all things considered, HDD are a much better storage solution. The fact that they are vastly cheaper far outweighs the nearly insignificant failure rate.

2. The SD cards which are currently compatible with the Wii are all incredibly slow. Also, I could buy a 100 GB HDD with an insignificant rate of failure for the nearly the same price as you could buy 4 GB of Solid State memory that runs at a comparable speed.

3. Everything has a failure rate to some capacity, and the rate of failure for HDD's is so small it's not even an issue.

SSD are too expensive, SD cards are too small (memory and physical size), and if you get a big one (32gb) you will be paying a butt-load of money ($200+). Even a 16gb one is around $70 bucks. You could get a 250gb USB HDD for around $100 bucks, or a 500gb one for $150-$200.cjm23

I purchased an external 500 GB HDD for $80 with a mail in rebate so it just shows how inexpensive they are.

[QUOTE="cjm23"]SSD are too expensive, SD cards are too small (memory and physical size), and if you get a big one (32gb) you will be paying a butt-load of money ($200+). Even a 16gb one is around $70 bucks. You could get a 250gb USB HDD for around $100 bucks, or a 500gb one for $150-$200.ECG_24

I purchased a 500 GB HDD for $80 with a mail in rebate so it just shows how inexpensive they are.

My Point exactly.

P.S.-Does anyone know why I just got a warning? I deleted one of my posts, could that be it? It said offensive material or something, and it said it was deleted by a mod or admin, but I'm pretty sure I deleted it. And it wasn't even offensive. Anybody?

an external hard drive would be ok by me, or good sd-cards of 4 or 8 gig. External drive is a pain though, I don't wanna have an ugly thing on top or next to my wii :pLub1

Ya, that's why I think Nintendo will make there own. Nobody wants an ugly USB hard drive sittin on top or next to their Wii. They want It flush with the system, like the 360's.

To clear up confusion about SSD, there are different types of SSD.

This is your standard run-of-the-mill SD card. They are cheap, durable, but very slow and have limited write cycles (meaning they will eventually fail).

VS.

This is the kind of SSD that is slowly making its way into laptop and desktop computers. The advantages you've been hearing about SSD are linked to these. But this kind of SSD is still ridiculously expensive and is not what we're talking about in this topic.

LOL Harddrives don't fail any more often than other standard computer equipment, such as graphics cards. Coincidentally, the Wii's graphics card has failed on many consumers, causing them to return their system to Nintendo. But I guess if graphics cards fail, we shouldn't use them in our products! ROFL....All technology breaks down over time, including cars. Should we not drive cars? This logic is beyond stupid.

You can't save certain games onto SD cards, you can't play VC games off of SD cards. SD cards are sloooooow.

Yes, I KNOW I can delete/redownload the games I have already bought, but it's honestly much easier and more attractive to just load them off of an HDD. Besides, with an HDD it opens the door to demos/videos/DLC, since lazy developers will no longer have an excuse to not make these things.

To clear up confusion about SSD, there are different types of SSD.

This is your standard run-of-the-mill SD card. They are cheap, durable, but very slow and have limited write cycles (meaning they will eventually fail).

VS.

This is the kind of SSD that is slowly making its way into laptop and desktop computers. The advantages you've been hearing about SSD are linked to these. But this kind of SSD is still ridiculously expensive and is not what we're talking about in this topic.

ECG_24

I just want more memory for my Wii. I'd prefer an SD card, but I really don't know if it could work or not. A hard drive is too bulky for me, and prolly too expensive (I don't like spending more than $20 on stuff like that). I'd buy it, though, if Nintendo made it.

I also like getting along, we should do that. Let's just all join hands and sing a song about world peace, okay?

I just want more memory for my Wii. I'd prefer an SD card, but I really don't know if it could work or not. A hard drive is too bulky for me, and prolly too expensive (I don't like spending more than $20 on stuff like that). I'd buy it, though, if Nintendo made it.

I also like getting along, we should do that. Let's just all join hands and sing a song about world peace, okay?

Picklechugger

Why can't we be friends?

Why can't "wii" be friends? (that was a horrible pun)

Sing everybody!

[QUOTE="ECG_24"]

To clear up confusion about SSD, there are different types of SSD.

This is your standard run-of-the-mill SD card. They are cheap, durable, but very slow and have limited write cycles (meaning they will eventually fail).

VS.

This is the kind of SSD that is slowly making its way into laptop and desktop computers. The advantages you've been hearing about SSD are linked to these. But this kind of SSD is still ridiculously expensive and is not what we're talking about in this topic.

rcignoni

Obviously you didn't read my post. Nowhere did I mention higher capacity SD cards. The bottom pic is not an SD card.

hahaha wow u guys are arguin over stupid things

by the looks of it neither is going to change there

opinion on it. But i would choose savin on SD cards

cuz if ur wii crashed like mine in a week and lost ur saved

data and vc games it sucks SD is a smarter way to go id

rather get a brand new wii then nintendo repairin it takin a month

then sendin it back. Im not lazy so ill keep on usin my sd cards

[QUOTE="ECG_24"]

First of all HDD's have greatly improved in two decades. They have become faster and larger. Your talk of failure rates is grossly exaggerated.

Second, SD cards are not without their own drawbacks. They have very slow write/read speeds and were never designed to handle continuous use.

Jaysonguy

Completely wrong on both counts

Hard drive failure is just as common today as it was in the 90's. While size and speed has increased the failure rate has not gone down. HERE

Here's an article that talks about that study and a couple other recent ones. It helps explain the MTBF ratings used in the study you posted, and why it really isn't a very reliable rating for the consumer. It doesn't necessarily mean that drives are failing more often than they should. ARTICLE

I think we should also remember that these articles are studies done on large data centers. These drives would be under duress 24 hours a day, and probably don't reflect what a Wii disk drive would be going through.

But, I do agree that a simple tweak allowing better SD support would be the best solution...for the moment.

Here goes Jaysonguy again going against the crowd. :roll: Love it.

This is what Nintendo needs to do- DO release external USB HDD in various models- possibly 20, 40, and 60GB.

Leave the SD card function intact but allow for SDHC to backup important information IN CASE of HDD failure.

Here goes Jaysonguy again going against the crowd. :roll: Love it.

This is what Nintendo needs to do- DO release external USB HDD in various models- possibly 20, 40, and 60GB.

Leave the SD card function intact but allow for SDHC to backup important information IN CASE of HDD failure.

gonzales1

That seems incredibly pointless. Instead of creating a 20/40/60GB HDD, why not just make the SD card be able to store what we want. It's small, affordable, and reliable.

Why go for an expensive and clunky hard drive that have higher fail rates and that have a ridiculous amount of space you're never going to use, unless you plan on buying the entire virtual console game collection and all the Wiiware games?

[QUOTE="gonzales1"]

Here goes Jaysonguy again going against the crowd. :roll: Love it.

This is what Nintendo needs to do- DO release external USB HDD in various models- possibly 20, 40, and 60GB.

Leave the SD card function intact but allow for SDHC to backup important information IN CASE of HDD failure.

Dark_Link142

That seems incredibly pointless. Instead of creating a 20/40/60GB HDD, why not just make the SD card be able to store what we want. It's small, affordable, and reliable.

Why go for an expensive and clunky hard drive that have higher fail rates and that have a ridiculous amount of space you're never going to use, unless you plan on buying the entire virtual console game collection and all the Wiiware games?

If you are wanting to play WiiWare/VC games off of a SD card then think again. An SD card's read/transfer spead is a lot slower than an HDD.

I think nintendo is already doing something about the storage problem. According to this very reliable site called Zentendo, Nintendo is testing "USB Devices" on the wii right now. The only logical thing i can think of they doing is either a hard drive or something to make USB memories compatible. Here is the link:

http://www.zentendo.com/news.php?newsId=1222

[QUOTE="ECG_24"]

First of all HDD's have greatly improved in two decades. They have become faster and larger. Your talk of failure rates is grossly exaggerated.

Second, SD cards are not without their own drawbacks. They have very slow write/read speeds and were never designed to handle continuous use.

Jaysonguy

Completely wrong on both counts

Hard drive failure is just as common today as it was in the 90's. While size and speed has increased the failure rate has not gone down. HERE

As you can see in the 2nd and 3rd years of a drive's life there's close to a 10% chance it will fail. One out of every ten is not a small amount.

As for the speeds of solid state you're talking about a myth. Solid state made today is able to read and write incredibly fast (faster then hard drives made for consumer use) to where it's used in cameras that need to take multiple pictures in a second and is now used in military applications HERE

If speed is an issue there are solid state options to be purchased. Though you'll never need that speed and it will never effect performance of a game.

wow,,,,,,,jayson guy, you lose,,,,,,,again, you are so full of it, how often do harddrives fail on the other consoles? not very....at all, you are just rying to rile up wii owners becaus you know they want a harddrive so they can have DLC and play games straight off of it, sc cards you cant do that on (right now) and max capacity is 4 gbs, any decent harddrive laughs at 4gbs........

[QUOTE="Rocky32189"]

"They fail much too often.

All studies have shown one discouraging thing when it comes to hard drives. They are no better today then they were almost 2 decades ago. Instead of becoming error free they have plateaued when it comes to failure rate. A drive bought today fails at the same rate as a drive bought in 1994"

The disk drive that is currently in everyone's Wii is much more likely to fail than any hard drive. Also, I hope you don't own a computer because then you've violated your own argument.

"On the other hand if Nintendo expanded the SD slot funtions in the Wii everyone would use solid state memory for their saves. Solid state is better by leaps and bounds. You can put an SD card in your pocket and throw it in the laundry and once your jeans are clean the SD card will still work."

Nintendo doesn't allow us to read files directly off the SD cards, and solid state memory is much more expensive than hard drives. SD cards are extremely slow. Try copying an N64 game, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

"Plus pricing is attractive, 4 gig cards right now are 20-40 dollars (depending where you shop) that's more then enough storage for even the downloadiest of the downloaders."

The Wii isn't compatible with cards over 2 GB.

Jaysonguy

1. There is no disk drive in the Wii. As for me owning a computer I'm not sure what you mean. No computer owner should expect their data to survive on a hard drive, that's why backing up is mandatory if you have a computer.

2. That's why I said expand. Also you're just repeating a myth that I've already debunked, anyone with a high end camera knows that speed is not an issue if you're willing to pay.

3. I repeat, that's why I said expand

Solid state does not fail, hard drives do.

did you seriously just suggest the wii had no dick drive when it clearly reads disks?

Fine then make it so we can read from SD cards. When people say "We want a hard-drive" they mainly mean, we want a way to expand memory, they just use hard-drive because it's what the other two systems have in them. I'd be fine with reading from SD-Cards, I mean, you can buy a 2 GB SD card for super cheap, I'd be happy using multiple SD cards. But that's the problem, we can't even do that.bobbetybob

umm a failed hard drive doesn't mean everything is lost, and it certainly isn't just as useful as an SD card

the reason why hard drives are more useful than SD cards is the read and write rate, SD cards... are... slow, very very slow. They don't let us boot off them because they can't, if they did the whole games would have to be on the RAM, which with wiiware, just isn't possible

an SD card IS NOT and SSD, an SSD has a SATA drive bay connected to it, which is again leaps and bounds better than the SD card communication bays.

SD cards are not solid state drives, so please check this before posting such a topic

[QUOTE="Jaysonguy"][QUOTE="Rocky32189"]

"They fail much too often.

All studies have shown one discouraging thing when it comes to hard drives. They are no better today then they were almost 2 decades ago. Instead of becoming error free they have plateaued when it comes to failure rate. A drive bought today fails at the same rate as a drive bought in 1994"

The disk drive that is currently in everyone's Wii is much more likely to fail than any hard drive. Also, I hope you don't own a computer because then you've violated your own argument.

"On the other hand if Nintendo expanded the SD slot funtions in the Wii everyone would use solid state memory for their saves. Solid state is better by leaps and bounds. You can put an SD card in your pocket and throw it in the laundry and once your jeans are clean the SD card will still work."

Nintendo doesn't allow us to read files directly off the SD cards, and solid state memory is much more expensive than hard drives. SD cards are extremely slow. Try copying an N64 game, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

"Plus pricing is attractive, 4 gig cards right now are 20-40 dollars (depending where you shop) that's more then enough storage for even the downloadiest of the downloaders."

The Wii isn't compatible with cards over 2 GB.

PyroPice

1. There is no disk drive in the Wii. As for me owning a computer I'm not sure what you mean. No computer owner should expect their data to survive on a hard drive, that's why backing up is mandatory if you have a computer.

2. That's why I said expand. Also you're just repeating a myth that I've already debunked, anyone with a high end camera knows that speed is not an issue if you're willing to pay.

3. I repeat, that's why I said expand

Solid state does not fail, hard drives do.

did you seriously just suggest the wii had no dick drive when it clearly reads disks?

I'm talking hard disk drive, not optical drive