Formatting the HDD

Formatting & Managing the HDD

A freshly connected drive is just raw storage until it carries the partition layout OPL expects. The PS2 uses its own filesystem on internal drives rather than the FAT or NTFS your PC understands, so formatting is done with a homebrew tool rather than on a computer.

Formatting the drive

1. Boot a disk management homebrew such as a current build that includes HDD tools, or use OPL's own ability to initialize a drive.
2. Choose to format or initialize the disk. This writes the apa partition scheme and prepares the area OPL stores games in.
3. Wait for the operation to finish completely before powering off. Interrupting a format can leave the partition table half-written.

Adding games

Game images are installed into dedicated partitions on the drive rather than copied as loose files. You can transfer them in two common ways:

• Over the network using a PC tool that talks to the PS2's HDD across the network adapter's ethernet port.
• On the console by having OPL pull an image from a USB stick or SMB share and write it to the internal drive.

Managing your library

Once games are installed, OPL reads them from the drive automatically. The same disk also holds cover art, OPL's configuration, and virtual memory cards for saves. Keep some free space available so OPL can write these without running out of room, and periodically copy your saves elsewhere as a backup.