PlayStation 2 SoftMod Guide - Run Games from Internal HDD/SSD

Gaming 🎮
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The PlayStation 2 was one of the best game consoles of all time. It has such a huge library of games! But hardware is fragile, and you may want to back up your games and run them all from the internal hard drive to save on disc and drive usage, or speed things up. in this video I walk you through the two BEST methods to run your PS2 games from a HDD (or SSD!) using FHDB and GrimDoomer’s exFAT OPL image, and easily manage them all. Plus, I show you how to keep your MemCardPro 2 in sync with it and how to build a FMCB image on your MemCardPro or other memory card.

METHOD 1: PFS & HDD IMAGES
This is the more old-school way. Some may want to use this method to “do it right” and use the more stable way, but it’s a massive pain in the ass by comparison to method 2. But learning the steps here will help you with method 2.
Gear Required:

  1. Connect SSD/HDD to computer
  2. Open HDD RAW COPY TOOL and select the “__mbr.raw” image as SOURCE, select your connected SSD/HDD as Target
    MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE you choose the correct drive that you wish to use in your PS2, it will ERASE everything on the drive!
    Note: This may error out the first time. That’s fine, just start it again and it should work.
  3. Once done, close HDD RAW COPY TOOL and remove the drive from your PC.
  4. Connect your USB drive to your PC. Make sure it’s formatted as FAT32 and is empty.
  5. Copy the wLaunchELF .elf app, the extracted FMCB Installer folder, and the OPL beta to your USB drive. Make sure you rename the OPL .ELF to just be “OPNPS2LD.elf” without the extra letters/numbers at the end.
  6. Safely remove your USB drive and unplug it from your PC.
  7. With the PS2 powered off, connect the HDD/SSD to the expansion bay and the expansion bay to the back of the PS2 and plug the USB drive into the front USB port.
  8. Power on the PS2. Remove any disc. It should boot to wLAUNCHELF application.
  9. Navigate to “mass:/” (the USB drive) using the Circle (O) button to select it.
    Navigate to the FMCB installer folder and run the FMCB Installer ELF (not the exFAT one).
  10. Hit R1 to open the Options menu in the FMCB Installer and select (with Cross/X this time) the “Format HDD” option and choose OK.
  11. Once done, select the “Install FHDB” option and choose OK.
  12. Once done, let the PS2 reboot. It should now boot into FHDB from the hard drive.
  13. Run the wLaunchELF 4.43x_isr from the menu. (Cross/X to select)
  14. Again, navigate to “mass:/” (Circle/O to select) and find your OPNPS2LD.elf and hit R1 and select Copy. Navigate back (using Triangle) to “hdd0:/” and then the “PP.FHDB.APPS/OPL” folder. Hit R1 and then paste in this directory, overtop the original.
  15. Go back to the main menu (Triangle) and go down to “MISC/” and select “HddManager”.
  16. Using the PS2 HDD Manager, hit R1 and then “Create”. Call the new partition “+OPL” and make it 768MB for <750GB HDDs, 1536MB for >750GB HDDs.
  17. Once done, turn off your PS2 completely and remove the HDD, connect it back to your PC.
  18. Gather your PS2 ISOs (or ZSOs, CHD will NOT work) in a known place.
  19. Run HDL-Batch-Installer.exe. Click “Search PS2 HDD’s”.
  20. Once it finds your HDD, choose “Search games” and select the games you wish to add. Click “Install”. Wait for it to copy your games to your HDD.
  21. Once done, close that. Now navigate to the “PS2-HDD-Art-Batcher-main/HDD_PFS_Batch_Kit_Manager/” folder.
  22. Run “_PFS-Batch-Kit-Manager.bat”, approve the admin prompt, and let it generate folders, then close it.
  23. Navigate to the “hdl_hdd” folder within the current folder, and put your cover art in the “ART” folder, your OPL themes in the “THM” folder, homebrew ELFs in the “APPs” folder, and any cheats in the “CHT” folder.
  24. Go back up a folder and run the “_PFS-Batch-Kit-Manager.bat” again. Choose the numbered options appropriate to what all you wish to transfer, and wait for it to transfer.
  25. Once complete, close everything and eject your drive. Reconnect it to the PS2 and enjoy!

METHOD 2: exFAT AND EASIER TIME!
This method is less-supported by the PS2 modding community at large, but can make life a LOT easier if your HDD cooperates! With this method, your HDD will be formatted as exFAT, a normal external HDD format that your PC can read - and you can just copy games and art, etc. like normal on your PC. Much smoother! But there’s some quirks to keep in mind and we’ll be using a different OPL build than the previous method. We will also need a FMCB memory card. In the video, I show you how to make your own with MemCardPro.

Gear Required:

  1. If you already have a FMCB memory card, skip to step
  2. To make a FMCB Memory card…
  3. Connect SSD/HDD to computer
  4. Open HDD RAW COPY TOOL and select the “__mbr.raw” image as SOURCE, select your connected SSD/HDD as Target
    MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE you choose the correct drive that you wish to use in your PS2, it will ERASE everything on the drive!
    Note: This may error out the first time. That’s fine, just start it again and it should work.
  5. Once done, close HDD RAW COPY TOOL and remove the drive from your PC.
  6. Connect your USB drive to your PC. Make sure it’s formatted as FAT32 and is empty.
  7. Copy the wLaunchELF .elf app, the extracted FMCB Installer folder, and the OPL beta to your USB drive. Make sure you rename the OPL .ELF to just be “OPNPS2LD.elf” without the extra letters/numbers at the end.
  8. Safely remove your USB drive and unplug it from your PC.
  9. With the PS2 powered off, connect the HDD/SSD to the expansion bay and the expansion bay to the back of the PS2 and plug the USB drive into the front USB port.
  10. Power on the PS2. Remove any disc. It should boot to wLAUNCHELF application.
  11. Navigate to “mass:/” (the USB drive) using the Circle (O) button to select it.
    Navigate to the FMCB installer folder and run the FMCB Installer ELF (not the exFAT one).
  12. Make sure an EMPTY memory card (or fresh MemCardPro virtual memory card) is in slot 1, with nothing in memory card slot 2!
  13. Choose “Install FMCB” and choose your memory card, let it install.
  14. Once done, let PS2 reboot and it will boot to FMCB from the memory card.
  15. Navigate to wLaunchELF. Browse to “mass:/”, find OPNPS2LD.ELF and hit R1, then Copy. Navigate to “MC0:/”, go to “APPS” hit R1 and “Paste” to overwrite the OPL on the memory card with the GrimDoomer exFAT version.
  16. Reconnect your HDD/SSD back to your PC, Right click “This PC” and choose “Manage”. Go to Disk Management and let it initialize your HDD/SSD. Right click it in your drive list and choose “New Volume” and when prompted, choose exFAT as the filesystem. Once done, close this window.
  17. Hit Start and find “System Information”. Navigate to Storage - Disks, and find your connected HDD/SSD and check for a 512 “Bytes/Sector” size. If this is listed as 4k/4096, you CANNOT use it with this method. Some external docks cause this. If it says 512, you’re good to go.
  18. Make folders for “DVD”, “CD”, “ART”, “THM”, “APPS”, “CHT” etc. on this drive. .ISO/ZSO DVD games go in the DVD folder, .BIN/.CUE (or converted CD ISOs) go in the CD folder. Copy all your games, art, themes, etc.
  19. Once done, safely eject your drive, connect everything to the PS2 and boot it up. In FMCB, choose “OPL”.
  20. In OPL, go to settings and enable Block Devices to Auto, HDD On, HDD Auto, and enable Write Operations. Save settings, hit Circle/O to go to your games list and enjoy!

EDIT: FMCB MemCardPro2 Image: 8 MB file on MEGA

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Hi there!

Been using the OPL Method to run games and ran into a snag. I have been ripping the games from my own discs or decrypting them from my extracted PS2 Classics from the PS3. But I have run into a problem! I can only get 4 of my games to show up… Very strange. My SSD is a Samsung V-NAND 870 EVO 2TB and I’ve set everything up as done in the video (and others like it) including ensuring it’s in exFAT and Bytes/Sector is 512. Nonetheless, I can only get half my games to show up via OPL. What can I do?

To be clear: one of the games is a patched iso from an archive (Boku no Natusyasumi 2), two of them are CD based games ripped from encrypted PS2 Classics on PS3 (Maximo and Chulip), and another is my own rip of a game I own physically (Final Fantasy X). The other half are PS2 Classics that I decrypted (GTA Vice City, Operation Winback, and Katamari Damacy).

Can we troubleshoot this somehow?

Sincerely,
Syteal

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Heya! Sorry to hear you’re having issues. If you’ve got some games showing up, then it’s not a SSD formatting issue, for sure.

For CD-based games, I actually had an error in the guide. You can’t use .BIN/.CUE with OPL anymore, apparently. They need converted to ISO with a tool like this, and then put in the CD folder on your OPL drive.

I have no experience (yet) decrypting PS2 Classics, my only guess is something wasn’t right in the conversion process.
I’d first test and see if they load in PCSX2 (emulator). If they don’t, they weren’t converted properly somehow.
If they do, perhaps try patching with ESR Patcher? This step isn’t usually needed, (it was for HDLoader instead of OPL) but I’m just trying to think of something that might stabilize/normalize the ROMs.
If nothing else works, I’d just [acquire] publicly-available ISOs of the games to use, since you legitimately own the originals and tried making backups yourself, no harm no foul lol.

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UPDATE: CD based games are working now through effort of OPL Manager ISO conversion however the same trick did not work for DVD based games

I am still looking for a DVD Game Based Solution

I will see about the tool you mentioned to try and get them working!

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UPDATE: looks like it’s all groovy now with DVD based games! Thanks for the advice. My process was this:

  1. Decrypt the BIN.ENC from PS2 Classics GUI
  2. Patch the decrypted BINs using ESR Pro Disc Patcher
  3. Use ISO conversion tool in OPL Manager by mounting the DVDs in Daemon Tools Lite (or other virtual disc drives work I’m sure like Clone CD, etc.)
  4. Drag and Drop into the exFat drive!
  5. Play using the grimdoomer beta OPL

:slight_smile:

Step 3 is key because it can’t handle the DVD images directly and must be mounted on a virtual disc drive. Always gives me an error about an unhandled exception otherwise and forcing the conversion doesn’t succeed.

The one game I still can’t get to work is Capcom vs SNK 2! It just shows a blank white screen and never loads… However, I’ve got the Dreamcast version as well and prefer that and the original arcade version on Fightcade to it.

Please pass this information along to anyone who may be having issues with decrypting their PS2 Classics from PSN (Specifically the PS3 Store versions)!

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Aha! Wonderful, thank you for the update!
Who knows with Capcom vs SNK. Occasionally there’s just a game that doesn’t load for me for some reason, sadly it’s not perfect.
I’m very glad you got things figured out! I’ll have to explore dumping PS2 classics on my PS3 sometime and cover this - I’ll reference your posts here for people figuring it out!~

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I wanted to know, is there a reliable or easy way to launch PS1 games thru the hard drive? I have a ton more PS1 classic releases from PS3 than PS2

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“easy”? no. it’s relatively complicated, as OPL/etc. actually use the PS1 CPU to load games from HDD, and you have to use a pirated copy of the PS1 emulator Sony developed for PS2 to make it happen. It’s doable, though.
There’s a guide here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ps2homebrew/comments/1ajbwjt/is_there_an_uptodate_tutorial_for_pops/

1 Like
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Understood! Thanks so much for all your help!!!

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Hello! Im Loading my iso files that play perfectly on pcsx2, but when I load them here they just show the ps2 logo and then dont boot anything. All My files are good. Any ideas what could be happening?