If you didn’t already know there’s a hidden menu in the Wii U settings. Basically you need to boot up the Wii U and go to settings. Once you’re there you need to select data management and press down on the D-Pad for half a second. Once you’ve done that press and hold the + and – buttons and keep holding them. You will then see the prompt to disable sleep on your Wii U external hard drive. Here’s why you might want to think about doing it.
Let’s say you are playing a game in where you don’t save often and the drive spins down. Then, an epic cutscene comes up and the game saves before a boss and instead of doing it and moving on, the game gets delayed, possibly even choppy, while the drive is spun up again to save your game. The threshold for some drives is as little as 5 minutes too, and spinning your drive up and down like that over the course of hours for multiple times is very less than optimal.
Thanks, Nintendo Impact Gaming
Thanks guys, much appreciated!!
Wow thank you!!
No prob. We should all thank the Neogaf user. It’s a great feature. Thanks Nintendo for hiding it! -_- lol
Thank you very much for telling me this! I got a 2 TB Toshiba Canvio Desk last year and while it works very well, it does get annoying when it has to start up again every few minutes.
No prob :) Glad I can help in someway!
This will serve well for us superior life forms. I have a 1 TB on mine.
>>>You need 13YB to be truly at the basis of superiority though comrade>>>
I’m just wondering. Is there a way to completely shut down Wii U Gamepad? When I turn it on, it’s always low on battery.
Recently received a complaint letter from my electricity provider that I use too much electricity, I want to cut consumption and save electricity as much as possible.
Don’t use the Big TV then :P Use the Wii U gamepad!
Well. I asked for Gamepad shut down, not an TV. I don’t think TV these days consume too much electricity. My Gamepad always in need of charging for some unknown reason. So your suggestion is invalid.
Again, I’m asking for a way to completely power down Gamepad when not in use, not cutting down TV. I’m not peasant.
Are you actually serious? Do you have any idea how very little power the gamepad requires? One charge is roughly 6 Wh.. your TV will easily eat away that much energy within 3-4 minutes of being turned on and within about an hour of remaining in standby mode… you’ll never notice the costs of charging up your gamepad on your electricity bill.
Additionally I’ve not once had my Gamepad run dry while it was powered off..
But if you think you really need that then buy the snakebyte power pack, it’s got a mechanical off switch.
But with what the battery pack costs you could power your Gamepad for years, decades even..
Even if you charge it daily.
God I really hope you’re just a troll.. I hope that nobody who’s got any responsibilities in life, such as paying bills, is that ignorant of what electric devices actually consume…
I should have stated my point clearly. I honestly don’t care what device is consumping how many watts. I will let my elecricity provider complain as much as they want but I should show some effort to conserve.
My point is that my Gamepad is always low on battery whether it’s on or off. So I was asking how to completely turn it off so it don’t continuously drain battery while not in use. It really annoys me when I want to play a game, I am required to charge my controller. Hanging charger while playing really kills the point of wireless controller.
As for TV, I play almost every game with my family or friends so TV is necessary for them. When I am playing solo and game doesn’t require TV at all, I don’t use it. I should have clarified my gaming environment as well.
But thanks for all your suggestion despite my rudeness. Again, my point is that I am required my Gamepad every six hours depite being used or not and it really bugs me.
Required to charge my Gamepad every six hours*
By the way, I had my Gamepad charger connected to the power wall probably 1000 times more than TV.
My TV is only connected when my family or friends want to play games.
Rarely game solo so that is not an option. My Gamepad requires charging every six hours and that really annoys me.
By the way, this is just a comment to myself so please don’t reply about power consumption.
how about putting the savegame data on the internal storage then?
Doesn’t work for me
This is why I use a flash drive for my wii U :) Got a nice 32 gb one
Doing this also solves the crash on return-to-wiiu-menu experienced after using certain games and apps.
Every time you return, the WiiU tries to read all available data to determine what software to show in the grid.
(Instead of internally storing a quick memo and make the actual check when you try to launch – idiots)
If your drive has spun down, the console would rather hang
(show its logo forever, never doing anything)
than wait .5 seconds for the spinup.
When I start my Wii U, he doesn’t recognize my external HDD. Only when I turn on the HDD while Wii U is on, he recognize my HDD. I dont know why.