Many games still need to load and save from the memory card. only some games can be made to save and load gamesaves from the hard drive (using the virtual memory card feature). not all games work from hard drive, but every game I've tried does, and the compatibility is being increased all the time as work progresses on the loading software, you can't play PS1 games like this, PS1 games must be played from the original discs (though this might have changed by now, it's been years since I looked into the matter), I don't even use a disc in my PS2's DVD drive any more when I turn on my PS2 it boots up almost instantly, from the memory card in slot 2, then comes up with a menu on screen allowing me to load any game from hard drive, and whilst I'm playing any game, I can press a certain combination of joypad buttons to reset the PS2 (at any time) and go back to the menu to load a new game. But as said, you want a hdd that is not external, for the usb 1.1 is close to the equvilant of the sd loaders for dreamcast (without the cdda problems).Ī fat PS2 running Free McBoot (which lets you boot up from a memory card) and Open PS2 Loader, a network card, and a normal, IDE hard drive, is fantastic, as thereby you're not only speeding up loading immensely and also stopping all loading errors, but also saving wear and tear on the PS2's DVD drive, as once I've installed the game(s) to the hard drive then I never need to use the game disc(s) again, so I put them away safe in my cupboard. I think any HDD that fits and meets those older standards (not too new, not too high allocation but I really dont know what exact specs) should work. Might be easier if you buy a preinstalled memory card (might be willing to set one up and sell it at the cost I got it if you dont want to mutilate your ps2).ĬD-R and DVD-R are ideal (DVD+R might work but is better for new tech) for swapped games. From there, you can run other elf files (via cd or flash drive) to install open ps2 loader or anything else.

To swap disc, you need a old credit card and cut a little slot to latch on the disc tray to manually open it and close it (once you've done it a few times, its real easy). Just want to say, the way i installed freemcboot was by getting swap magic, take the front part of the disc tray off (where the logo is), and burned the installation disc to install freemcboot on my memory card.

Ps2 hard drive with games