PS2 Sanity Check - Copying 2TBs of Games to Internal Drive for OPL

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wongojack

wongojack

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Ok, I'm about to start copying games to an internal HDD on a PS2 Phat. This going to take a LONG time, and I want to make sure that I'm using the best process to do this. I also have a few questions that have popped up since I've done my initial testing with a few games. My console is soft modded with FMCB and my version of OPL is 0.9.3. The 2tb drive I am using has been formatted using uLaunch on the PS2, and I've copied a few games over to it that are tested and working.

NAMES:
So my approach is to use HDL_Dump to copy the games over. I've tested HDL_Dump GUI, HDL_Dumb, and WinHIIP for this purpose. They've all worked to copy the game files over. I'm aware that I can also use the command line, but I haven't experimented with that yet.

How do I get the games to appear with the desired name? HDL_Dump seems to add some of the games with the exact name of the ISO while some others it uses a "short" name that must be a volume label. For some others, it uses the game id. I'm aware that I can specify a specific name for each game as I queue them up in the job list or specify the desired name in a command line script. However, this means I need to add a naming step when adding the game.

I've installed and attempted to use OPL Manager to "rename" games on the PS2 HDD, but as I play around with the tool, it seems that it doesn't really manage game files that are on a PS2 formatted disc. Of course, it can see the disc and download art for all the games, but it doesn't actually rename the files?

So what is the best way to get all of the games onto the internal HDD with their desired names? Do I:
1) Use HDL_Dump GUI to click them one at a time and specify the name I want?
2) Somehow copy them in bulk or with a cmd line script and then rename them later?
3) Configure the names later in OPL? (Is this what the CFG files are for?)
4) Something else better?


ART:
I attempted to copy art over to my internal drive. I followed instructions to:

1) Point OPL Manager at my game list and download all the art.

I was testing with a small group of games and that worked fine. I continued to follow instructions to:

2) Copy the ART folder to a USB stick.
3) Insert the USB stick and copy the ART folder in uLaunch
4) Navigate to the OPL partition and paste the ART folder into the existing ART folder <- failed here

However, I didn't manually create any partitions on this drive, and I can't find the ART folder. The OPL partition isn't visible the way it was in the tutorial I found, and I can't seem to create any new folders in the root partition. I changed some of the OPL settings to enable writes, and I am able to rename and adjust individual settings on the games from inside OPL, so the configuration files required to do this MUST be somewhere. How do I find them?
 
You can rename partitions in HDD Manager in uLE (or at least in uLE kHn).

If You have in mind displaying names in HDD OSD, then You must edit icon.sys (ascii text file, instead to icon.sys for mc which is binary) or by hand in hex editor (partitions starting with ****415041 (****APA), from there skip 1400h and put here content of icon.sys (if there is not enough space just insert symbols but remember to cut the same amount from end of this section filled by zeros (padding))). Remember to not exceed 33 symbols because more will be cut off.

Code: 
PS2X
title0= i.e Gran Tursimo FTW
title1= i.e SCES-12345
 
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Opl manager doesn't edit the names on the disk. It edits a game list file that needs to be copied to your OPL directory, found on a USB drive, internal hdd or memory card.
 
Fin9ersMcGee said:
Opl manager doesn't edit the names on the disk. It edits a game list file that needs to be copied to your OPL directory, found on a USB drive, internal hdd or memory card.
Click to expand...

This is what I suspected, but I couldn't quite figure it out, and I didn't see it in the tutorials that I was using. Is the "game list file" a specific file or is it the data in the CFG folder?
 
wongojack said:
This is what I suspected, but I couldn't quite figure it out, and I didn't see it in the tutorials that I was using. Is the "game list file" a specific file or is it the data in the CFG folder?
Click to expand...

I can't remember specifics. But when you first fire up OPL Manager, you are asked to select your games folder, or OPL folder.... This can just be a folder on your PC, but when your done with naming etc, you copy the contents to USBdrive/mem card
 
Ok, thank you to those who responded. What I was looking for was a sort of "best practices" for sorting, unzipping, and installing games to an internal PS2 HDD. Here's what I ended up doing:

  1. I got the estimated available size of my drive in MB after OPL and had been configured to use the HDD
  2. I estimated the amount of space required for all of the unzipped files + the zipped files together
  3. I sorted through the PS2 library to choose X# of games that fit under the available space on the drive
  4. I spent the better part of 2 days unzipping around 650 PS2 games
  5. Once unzipped, I made sure all the files were in the same place and I used HDL Batch to install all the games
  6. Finally, I used OPL Manager to download the art for the .ISOs and copied over to the drive

Solutions to my original questions
Names - I think what was giving me problems about the names was something about the way that HDL_Dump GUI was naming the files. It wouldn't use the filename. Instead it was using some other name from somewhere. I stopped using that tool.

Art - The thing that was tripping me up about the ART folder was that OPL did not create its partition like normal. This only happened on the 2tb drive. I have other 1tb drives where the partition created successfully. All I had to do was create a partition called +OPL and OPL put its folder structure in place on the partition the next time I started the app.

Other gotchas I discovered
  • HDLBatch will install Bin/Cue CDs without the extra step of first converting them to ISOs. However, OPL Manager doesn't seem to see these and doesn't collect art for them
  • Don't use a really old POS thumbdrive to copy your art to the PS2 and plug it into the bottom USB slot - it will corrupt
    • Use a high quality thumb drive and plug it into the top USB slot (on the PS2)
  • The ART folder (any folder?) on the PS2 HDD seems to have a max file limit #. I had over 2100 pieces of art and thought that I copied them over. The copy finished, but some games didn't have art. Through testing, I discovered that I simply couldn't add any more files to the ART folder. I had to delete some to add others.
 
wongojack said:
Ok, thank you to those who responded. What I was looking for was a sort of "best practices" for sorting, unzipping, and installing games to an internal PS2 HDD. Here's what I ended up doing:

  1. I got the estimated available size of my drive in MB after OPL and had been configured to use the HDD
  2. I estimated the amount of space required for all of the unzipped files + the zipped files together
  3. I sorted through the PS2 library to choose X# of games that fit under the available space on the drive
  4. I spent the better part of 2 days unzipping around 650 PS2 games
  5. Once unzipped, I made sure all the files were in the same place and I used HDL Batch to install all the games
  6. Finally, I used OPL Manager to download the art for the .ISOs and copied over to the drive

Solutions to my original questions
Names - I think what was giving me problems about the names was something about the way that HDL_Dump GUI was naming the files. It wouldn't use the filename. Instead it was using some other name from somewhere. I stopped using that tool.

Art - The thing that was tripping me up about the ART folder was that OPL did not create its partition like normal. This only happened on the 2tb drive. I have other 1tb drives where the partition created successfully. All I had to do was create a partition called +OPL and OPL put its folder structure in place on the partition the next time I started the app.

Other gotchas I discovered
  • HDLBatch will install Bin/Cue CDs without the extra step of first converting them to ISOs. However, OPL Manager doesn't seem to see these and doesn't collect art for them
  • Don't use a really old POS thumbdrive to copy your art to the PS2 and plug it into the bottom USB slot - it will corrupt
    • Use a high quality thumb drive and plug it into the top USB slot (on the PS2)
  • The ART folder (any folder?) on the PS2 HDD seems to have a max file limit #. I had over 2100 pieces of art and thought that I copied them over. The copy finished, but some games didn't have art. Through testing, I discovered that I simply couldn't add any more files to the ART folder. I had to delete some to add others.
Click to expand...
why are the games zipped up? can they run that way?
 
The files were all zipped because I downloaded them and they were compressed from the source.

<scratches head>, I can't remember specifically trying with a.zip or .7z, but I believe that the files need to be in either .iso or .cue/bin format to be installed by HDL_Dump. That's the exact kind of thing that I need a sanity check on . . . I might need to get really drunk or something if you tell me I could have just left them zipped.
 
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