PS2 Most Up To Date OPL Guide For Using HDD?

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Shinra54

Forum Noob
Hi all, read through the forums, but some guides are called out as crap by other users and some stuff seems prehistoric. I just needs the most straightforward most recent guide to get going. I have:

PHAT PS2
Network Adapter
IDE drive for it (plan to upgrade to SSD down the line)
FMCB Memory Card

I want to install OPL on the drive and get my games on the drive. I have a HDD to USB adapter and a win 10 machine.

Please lead the way! :tranquillity:
 
It would probably be easiest to use WinHIIP on your PC to format the PS2 drive and copy the ISO files. You can then install OPL on your FMCB card and configure it. In my opinion, this configuration works perfectly for your hardware.
 
@Shinra54 You have two roads ahead you to choose: RAW on APA or exFAT on MBR/GPT.

APA is native HDD environment, with some design problems and because none of OS on PC supporting it, you need dedicated apps to install games on it (like eg. WinHIIP which you should never use it... for various of reasons. Instead, the HDL Batch Installer or PFS Batch Kit: two toolkits based on hdldump). PS2 can boot from APA, so you don't need eg. FMCB.

exFAT is filesystem placed on MBR or GPT partition table. It is supported by every OS out of the box, so you don't need any dedicated PC apps for putting games. PS2 cannot boot from it and you need keep your disc images and/or VMCs defragmented. Nearly none of PS2 apps supporting it (because BDM drivers are quite new thing, so so far only OPL and NTR can read PS2 games from it).

Well, there is 3rd road: APA-Jail. It is mix of two above to get advantages from each.
 
Thanks, guys. Imma skim the tutorials for PSBBN and see if I'm up to it and if not, I'll fall back onto APA with HDLBI :) How is the drive prepared for APA? Is there a tool used?
 
On PS2 side: any uLE/wLE or HDDChecker.
On PC side: excluding outdated tools, pfsshell (and of course all toolkits which using it). But beware that I talking about ps2homebrew pfsshell, maintained by UYJulian, not protoplast which was dropped half baked (v0.3).
 
Berion said:
@Shinra54 You have two roads ahead you to choose: RAW on APA or exFAT on MBR/GPT.

exFAT is filesystem placed on MBR or GPT partition table. It is supported by every OS out of the box, so you don't need any dedicated PC apps for putting games. PS2 cannot boot from it and you need keep your disc images and/or VMCs defragmented. Nearly none of PS2 apps supporting it (because BDM drivers are quite new thing, so so far only OPL and NTR can read PS2 games from it).
Click to expand...
So just to confirm that I understand correctly:

If the required system files for exFAT support are installed (BDM Assault) and you're using an OPL build that supports exFAT, you can simply format the HDD as exFAT, generate the folder structure with OPL Manager, and then copy your raw ISO games into the DVD folder ?

After that, you just use OPL Manager again to assign proper OPL-compatible filenames to those ISOs - and that's it, right?

This is how I manage ISO games on my USB devices, but every HDD tutorial uses different tools and formats, which makes the whole process hella confusing.
 
OPL will not use BDMAassult because it doesn't use any external modules. BDMA are workaround only for applications which can load externally USBD.IRX (and that works with eg. FMCB and POPStarter but will not with eg. uLE/wLE even when they using USBD). Just FYI. Do not threat PS2 as platform with operating system, each app control PS2 on his own. Some can use shared resources like eg configs in "mc0:/SYS-CONF/", some aren't.

Answering to your question: yes.

"HDD APA" needs dedicated tools because it using custom logic structure, exclusive to PS2. "HDD BDM" not need, because it using exFAT on MBR, GPT or no partition table, which all currently widely used operating systems on PC supporting.
 
Berion said:
BDMA are workaround only for applications which can load externally USBD.IRX (and that works with eg. FMCB and POPStarter but will not with eg. uLE/wLE even when they using USBD).
Click to expand...

I am not sure if I understand this correctly?
wLaunchELF does not fully support BDMAassult?

I tried BDMAassult with wLaunchELF and everything was fine.
A thumb drive with exFAT file system is being recognized correctly and I am able to browse it.
Without BDMAassult the same thumb drive with exFAT file system is not being recognized.

Additionally from GitHub:
old wLaunchELF versions
  • bdm_assault.irx must be pasted into the path you configured for USBD.IRX
  • usbd_bd_assault.irx must be pasted into the path you configured for USBHDFSD.IRX
Click to expand...
https://github.com/israpps/BDMAssault.
 
jolek said:
I am not sure if I understand this correctly?
wLaunchELF does not fully support BDMAassult?

I tried BDMAassult with wLaunchELF and everything was fine.
A thumb drive with exFAT file system is being recognized correctly and I am able to browse it.
Without BDMAassult the same thumb drive with exFAT file system is not being recognized.

Additionally from GitHub:

https://github.com/israpps/BDMAssault.
Click to expand...
Or you can use the latest version of this fork https://github.com/israpps/wLaunchELF_ISR
and it will read ExFat out of the box.

They also have this cool website where you can get the version you need by just pressing check boxes : israpps.github.io/projects/wlaunchelf-isr
 
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