Can't get HDD to work

[moth]

I've been trying for the past few days to get my hard drive to work in my playstation, I feel like I've tried everything and it just doesn't work still. I'm using a WD Blue 1TB 3.5" HDD and a Sony network adapter with a SATA upgrade in it.

I saw someone link to it in a ps2 group, so I used the "How to properly install FreeHDBoot" guide by israpps when first trying to get FHDB to work, using an old WD 2.5" HDD and a SATA-to-USB cord in place of a USB drive since I don't have one around the house. I did use a program to format it to FAT32 though, so I figured it should be fine. When I'd plug everything in and turn the playstation on, I'd hear the drives start up, but the wLE menu would never pop. Since that didn't work I tried to follow the PS2 AIO Guide on here and downloaded the FHDB image to use instead just to see if it'd work, and the same thing happened with nothing popping up.

At this point I've used a multimeter and checked everything too. I've checked to see that there's continuity between the ribbon cable connector of the network adapter to the one of the SATA board, and the power? cords of both as well, and everything was fine. I opened my PS2 up to make sure the fuses that power the expansion bay weren't messed up, and everything was fine. I put everything back together and tried again just to see, and then I couldn't even hear my hard drive start up when I turned everything on. Opened up the PS2 again just to recheck the fuses, they're still fine. Reopened the network adapter to check the connection there again, still fine.

I really don't know what to do about it. The drive is registered by my computer fine, so I don't think the drive is the issue. But the network adapter and SATA upgrade appear to have fine continuity, so I don't know what it could possibly be. Maybe it would've worked if I got an actual USB drive, or a new network adapter? But now with the hard drive not even starting up, I'm not sure it'd even matter. If anyone has any insight I'd be thankful!

 

[Berion]

Internal drive must be formatted in APA logic, not MBR/GPT. For every application, it will be empty if You will not format it that way. And to do that, You have few options: on PC by pfsshell, on PS2 by any uLE/wLE or HDDChecker.

You cannot use someone else disk image because of various of reasons. Or else You will corrupt it one day and loose data. Anyway, it is fine for test purposes and as vector attack of course. So in assumption that FHDB was installed on this image, after written it to HDD, console should boot from it. If not, it points to hardware issue.

What exactly is this SATA replacement in NA? And what HDD Manager in uLE shows (does he even see NA and HDD (top left corner yes/no for connection and formatting)?)

 

[moth]

Internal drive must be formatted in APA logic, not MBR/GPT. For every application, it will be empty if You will not format it that way. And to do that, You have few options: on PC by pfsshell, on PS2 by any uLE/wLE or HDDChecker.

You cannot use someone else disk image because of various of reasons. Or else You will corrupt it one day and loose data. Anyway, it is fine for test purposes and as vector attack of course. So in assumption that FHDB was installed on this image, after written it to HDD, console should boot from it. If not, it points to hardware issue.

What exactly is this SATA replacement in NA? And what HDD Manager in uLE shows (does he even see NA and HDD (top left corner yes/no for connection and formatting)?)

The SATA replacement I have in my network adapter is a bitfunx one. The HDD manager in uLE doesn't show that there's any connection so I can't format it on my ps2. I just purchased a new network adapter even cause I was wondering if it was the problem, but it also doesn't work. The fuses in my ps2 are all fine though, I've checked them with a multimeter and they're good, so I'm not sure what the problem is. I can hear my hard drive booting up again, but it still isn't being detected by my ps2