The ULTIMATE Guide To Play PS2 Games From A HDD

Ready to play your PS2 games on a Fat PS2 from your hard drive? I'll show you how.

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🌐 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 🌐

Free McBoot / Free Hard Drive Boot Installer

HDL Batch Installer

OPL Manager

Microsofr .NET Framework

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** ITEMS YOU'LL NEED (AS SHOWN IN THE VIDEO) **
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Free McBoot PS2 Memory Card

SanDisk 32GB USB 3.0 Drive (formats in FAT32)

WD Blue 1TB SATA 3.5” 7200 RPM HDD

SATA to PS2 HDD Adapter

USB 3.0 to SATA Dual Bay Dock

** 𝐏𝐒𝟐 𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐔'𝐋𝐋 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄! **

Get HDMI Output From Your PS2 & PS1

Or Get Component Output Here

Awesome Wireless Controllers For PS2

Genuine Sony MagicGate PS2 Memory Card

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I often review or link to products & services I regularly use and think you might find helpful. Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase I may receive a small commission or other compensation.

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#blainelocklair

[PoutingTrevor]

I remember when you did a video like this some time ago and I was very scathing! Apologies if I was unkind in my comment. You've become someone I really trust with this stuff since then. Great work.

[Adam-C]

Wait a second. A full, up to date guide that’s also applicable to 2TB HDDs?! Holy moly, Blaine, you actually did it - I think you’ve just created the only complete (and current) PS2 HDD tutorial on all of Youtube! Nice work, man! 👍🏻

[MrBlank]

Great video! One thing that would make the last part with artwork much easer:

Leave your HDD plugged in and have OPL Manger read the games off of it and get artwork that way. It’s the rightmost option of the 3 options at the top of the app screen. It makes an ART folder inside the OPL Manager app folder. You can then copy that to the PS2 with a thumb drive. Removes the step of cutting ISOs and moving them around on your PC.

There is also an app that will move the ART files files directly to the HDD, but I couldn’t get it to work.

[bradzilla]

Excellent guide, thanks! Appreciate that you go over every step in detail and don't gloss over any detail under the assumption the audience knows what they're doing. Was able to get my PS2 running games in about 40 minutes of watching some sections again to make sure I was doing it right.

[cjones]

I'm sure someone else mentioned it but at 6:23 you have the wrong symbols.

< is less than
> is more than

but you have them in the wrong places.

Should be

< 750GB (Less than 750GB)
= 1TB (Equal 1TB)
> 1TB (Greater than 1TB)

[kmeyer]

You make hands-down the best tutorials on console mods. I had been struggling for multiple days to get my PC to recognize the PS2-formatted SSD I installed until I found this video. Ten minutes later, I'm in business. Thank you for everything you do!

[theultimateninja]

I had trouble formatting the HDD at first. The solution was to format it via the USB FMCB elf file, AND THEN go to MISC to format the HDD to add the +OPL partition. Then go back to the USB elf file thing menu.

[waleedrezeq]

Every time you come up with something new, wonderful and useful. Thank you very much for your great great effort. . all the respect

[barbsfpv]

To people going through this process, be aware that HDL Batch Installer uses its own internal name database to name the game ISOs it uploads to your hard drive.

You can work around this by unchecking the "use database" option, or go into the settings and set the database to "external." It'll download it's internal database to the same folder as the application and you can edit it in a text editor, to name your games whatever you want to show in the OPL game list.

[Aztec]

A question for anyone: we use the HDL Batch Installer to copy .iso files to the ps2-formated hard drive. Then, the next step ~10:49 mark, we use OPL Manager to figure out what artwork to download - and one of the things this program apparently does is rename the .iso files to a name that lines up to the artwork. But how does the art-to-renamed-file work if the files have already been copied to the hard drive? It seems like OPL manager should be run first on the .iso files, rename them if necessary, then use HDL Batch Installer to copy the correctly named files to the hard drive.

[lizardking]

Man you are the best! After using my macho nachos instructions my HDD wasn’t showing the games list. I found this video and got everything working now! You have great tutorials man!

[myopiniongoodyouropinionbad]

*DUDE THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS*
I just want you to know that I followed this to the letter and got it all working. I had everything except a network adapter and I went to a local game shop and the guy was taking one off an old PS2 as I walked up to the counter. I said "Hi, Im looking for...one of those!" He sold it to me for $10 and it was already modified to fit SATA drives and it was an OEM one. I lucked out man.

[maximusthecannabist]

Do not create the opl folder it is an extra step that will cause you to move games around more than you should when youn plug your usb or hdd into the ps2 with freemcboot it creates those folders on your usb or hdd when you open opl and choose a path choose your usb it wont ask you to create the folders because they are already created on your usb just save them directly to that usb or hdd all your art and games that you convert to iso will be on that drive if you already chose the opl folder as your path just slelect thenoption at the top that allowes you to reset the path and just choose the drive your games and opl foldrrs are on.

[anthonyjamesst-aubin]

I'm glad I found your video. I had everything to set up my ps2 project, but when I found out that winhip was no longer supported I was in a stump. Once I saw this video it brought my confidence up to proceed with it. Only downside was that there wasn't any extra steps on putting ps2 games that were on CDs to go with OPL manager. Looking forward to your next video.

[TheIrishAlchemist]

Been wanting to do this for a while and seems like a great use of an SSD I've had laying around. Can't wait to take this on, thanks for the easy to follow tutorial, looking forward to breathing some new life into my 24 year old PS2!

[shoked]

After watching nearly a dozen videos, this one got me up and running with my 2TB drive. Just need to figure out the CD-ROM games. And I have tonyhax on my PS1 but will check out your PS1 USB video next. Thanks so much for your efforts.

[j.a.styles]

I've watched lots of videos about this, and yours is the clearest and easiest to understand. Thanks.

[jakehbbs]

Did this last weekend using this guide and though there was a bit of a hiccup at the end that nearly made the whole process all for not, thankfully everything ended up working out, so thanks a lot!

Quick question: In the case that I want to add more roms to the hard drive, do I just have to use HDL and then OPL for the art like in the initial guide or do I have to do a bit more?

[adamruss]

Great video. Only noticed two things that could be improved. First bin/cue files need to be converted to .iso to get artwork to be found. Second, while the audio is correct about the size of the drive, your on screen text regarding greater than/less than is backwards

[brianstuntman]

To be honest, I didn't think I'd learn much from this video. I was wrong! Adding artwork was something I hadn't even considered until now. Great job👍