What USB storage device would use the lowest power for the WiiU?

[Cyber Akuma]

I asked about this before, but it was more about durability back then.

Right now that isn't as much as a concern as trying to find a device that the WiiU can actually power without using a Y-Cable or an external AC adapter. I want to have two USB drives for my WiiU, one with my WiiU software and the other with my Gamecube/Wii software, since AFAIK there is no way to have both one a single drive.

I didn't like having a large mechanical drive dangling off of my WiiU, plus it needed a Y-cable to work properly with how little power the WiiU supplies to the USB ports (from what I understand it's 500mA per port, right?), so I swapped it with one of these:


I wasn't having problems, pretty much all my games were working fine, that is until I tried to go back to BotW. It would randomly crash with the error that the USB device was removed. I noticed that this pretty much always happened during autosaves, which leads me to believe it's due to how this game literally has hundreds of little files as part of it's save "file" either overloading the USB drive, making it take too long to process and make the WiiU think it failed, or just cannot provide enough power to write that many files at once.

So now I am trying to see what would be the lowest-power option without relying on AC adapters since it's already a mess back there of all sorts of cables and adapters.

Mechanical drives I am sure are right out, I need a Y-Cable to power my current one and I doubt that's changed much for modern ones, especially with many now expecting USB 3.0 USB drives many are 3.0 as well nowadays too, namely those slim-fit ones, and likely pull more power than the WiiU can supply during more strenuous workloads.

I was looking at M.2 drives, those come in both SATA and NVME. Not sure which would use less power, but I assumed SATA would, plus endurance would not be a concern since those are meant to run your PC operating system off of.

I was told there are some low-power M.2 SATA drives such as the WD SA510: https://documents.westerndigital.co...-ssd/product-brief-wd-blue-sa510-sata-ssd.pdf

Not cheap, but not too expensive, at least for 500GB. There are cheaper ones in the $20 range, but they seem to draw far more power.

Problem with that is I would also need an enclosure, and those will add additional power draw on top of that. I was looking at those dual-enclosures such as this:


And several others very similar to that concept, two M.2 drives each with their own USB port, but apparently those draw way too much power. I have no idea if there are any single M.2 SATA enclosures that would draw less. I can at least tape those to the side of my WiiU using double-sided tape or something, two 2.5 drives would be... a lot messier to do that with.

Then there is the option of MicroSD cards. From my understanding these are very low power... although how low power I don't know, and I would again need a USB adapter that itself is low power.... and preferably an adapter that is tiny (I don't want to use something that's like a standard flashdrive that will have a few inches sticking out the back of the WiiU, it would be easy to have a cable or something get caught on that and break, the whole reason I used those Samsung FIT drives was to have something flush with the back of the case that can't get caught or snagged on anything) but I know the speeds and endurance will suffer, likely even more than USB flashdrives.

So what would be the best option to have the lowest power consumption storage drive for my WiiU without resorting to external AC adapters or Y cables? M.2 SATA or NVME drives? What kind of enclosure then? MicroSD cards? A USB flashdrive that is known to work? Something else? I know there are people who have made internal modifications to the WiiU for this but I am not that skilled, and I want something easy to disconnect if need be.

 

[Blythe93]

So what would be the best option to have the lowest power consumption storage drive for my WiiU without resorting to external AC adapters or Y cables?

I personally have Samsung EVO 850 2.5" SSD and it works just fine from what I can tell. I've been playing The Breath of the Wild lately and no issues whatsoever.

M.2 SATA or NVME drives?

Maybe some low-end ones, but I'm not sure. The average HDD needs 6-15W, while an old SSD needs 2-5W. USB 2.0 port outputs 2.5W, so I guess that's just enough for it work. As I've said, I haven't run into an issue so far.

What kind of enclosure then?

I used to use generic USB 3.0 Logilink 2.5" enclosure for my Wii U external SSD, if it means anything. I still do for my old Wii.

MicroSD cards? A USB flashdrive that is known to work?

They aren't a good pick due to how many writes Wii U performs due to its proprietary file system. I'm not really familiar with the technical stuff behind it, but I'd suggest you against using those as game storage devices no matter how tempting it may be to have a small microSD card USB reader at the back of the Wii U.

 

[r1vver]

Although manufacturers always lie (slightly) in their promotional brochures, it looks like "Max Write Operating = 2000 mW" for any SA510s.
In other words, it's 0.4A (or 400mA). So, there are chances are they're not lying here.
The SA510s themselves also fit the definition of "low-end entry level disk" - they are both slow and dramless.
How much a nameless enclosure can consume... Perhaps the only way to find out is from the owner of the device (if he/she has something to measure it).
Or maybe it can be found out by finding out the chipset of the enclosure. I've heard once that the JMS583 is more power hungry than the some others.

 

[Cyber Akuma]

I personally have Samsung EVO 850 2.5" SSD and it works just fine from what I can tell. I've been playing The Breath of the Wild lately and no issues whatsoever.

I used to use generic USB 3.0 Logilink 2.5" enclosure for my Wii U external SSD, if it means anything. I still do for my old Wii.

I'll keep those drives in mind if I can't find any other options, though 2.5 drives would be a bit too big and I want to avoid those if possible since I will need two, one for WiiU and one for GC/Wii.

Are you aware of any viable M.2 SATA drives and enclosures? Apparently SATA would use a lot less power than NVME, so not going NVME is definitely what I have to do.... and make sure the enclosure I chose is SATA-only so that it hopefully uses less power.

Although manufacturers always lie (slightly) in their promotional brochures, it looks like "Max Write Operating = 2000 mW" for any SA510s.
In other words, it's 0.4A (or 400mA). So, there are chances are they're not lying here.
The SA510s themselves also fit the definition of "low-end entry level disk" - they are both slow and dramless.
How much a nameless enclosure can consume... Perhaps the only way to find out is from the owner of the device (if he/she has something to measure it).
Or maybe it can be found out by finding out the chipset of the enclosure. I've heard once that the JMS583 is more power hungry than the some others.

Hmm, 400mA does not leave a lot of wiggle room, the enclosure would need to use up to 100mA max to not consume too much power. Could be difficult to try to find that information, it's already not going to be common to find SATA-only enclosures although they do exist, but almost all expect USB 3.0 and/or C these days and might be power hungry because they are not limited by 2.0 power requirements anyway.

 

[Ettino]

I've been using silicon power 2.5 ssd 512gb for more than a year now. Cheap and cheerful, no y cable need. Just a sata to usb cable and you're good to go.

 

[Cyber Akuma]

Which SATA to USB cable though? The circuitry inside it to convert SATA to USB and to convert the 5 volts from the USB to the 3.3 volts the SATA uses can have an impact on power draw. depending what was used.

 

[Ettino]

Which SATA to USB cable though?

The first one when you type "SATA to USB cable" on amazon. They're all the same to me. I paid lke 10 bucks for it. Like I said, I've been using that set up for 12 months + and it's been fine. Stuff like Botw, Black flags, Mass effect etc ran perfectly.

 

[Blythe93]

Are you aware of any viable M.2 SATA drives and enclosures?

Unfortunately, I haven't checked those out. When I was doing a switch from HDD to SSD, I was already satisfied with the overall result of the setup I had running.
As a matter of fact, @Ettino made me switch to SSDs when I saw one of their posts. ^^

They're all the same to me. I paid lke 10 bucks for it.

Same here, I bought the cheapest SATA to USB 3.0 ones I could find and they work just fine.