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Internal HDD

An ATA or SATA drive in the PS2's expansion bay (through the official network adapter or an expansion-bay HDD adapter) is the fastest and most compatible place for games. YAOPL supports two ways of formatting it; use one of them, not both.

exFAT (MBR or GPT) APA
Format on A PC The PS2 (wLaunchELF, the HDD browser) or PC tools
Games are ISO, ZSO and USBExtreme files in CD and DVD HDL partitions
Add games with Any file manager on a PC HDL tools such as HDL-Dump, on a PC or over NBD
Largest disk Any (GPT over 2 TB) 2 TB
In Settings BDM Start Mode, BDM Devices → HDD (GPT/MBR) HDD (APA) Start Mode
Page HDD Games (a BDM page) HDD Games
Also works with — PS2 HDD browser, HDD-OSD launchers

Only one HDD can be used at a time: while HDD (GPT/MBR) is on, HDD (APA) Start Mode cannot be changed, and while the APA page is on, HDD (GPT/MBR) cannot be turned on. Turn one off first.

Both ways have a per-game DMA mode and use Automatic HDD Spin Down from Settings: the drive stops after that many minutes without use (1–20; 0 never stops it).

exFAT

  1. On a PC, create one partition (MBR, or GPT for disks over 2 TB) and format it as exFAT with the default allocation unit size.
  2. Put the drive in the PS2. In Settings, set BDM Start Mode to Auto and turn on HDD (GPT/MBR) under BDM Devices. Save Changes.
  3. Copy games into DVD and CD as on a USB drive, one at a time so that they are not fragmented.

On an exFAT drive the DMA mode of a game can only choose between MDMA modes and "the fastest UDMA mode the drive supports" (up to UDMA 4); a lower UDMA mode is not used.

APA

APA is the PS2's own partition format. Each game is an HDL partition, installed with a PC tool such as HDL-Dump (with the drive connected to a PC, or over the network with YAOPL's NBD server).

  1. Format the drive on the PS2, for example with wLaunchELF (HDD Manager → Format) or the HDD browser.
  2. In Settings, set HDD (APA) Start Mode to Auto. Save Changes.
  3. Install games as HDL partitions. They appear on the HDD Games page.

YAOPL keeps its own folders (CFG, VMC, ART, THM, LNG, CHT, APPS) in one partition, chosen by hdd0:__common/OPL/conf_hdd.cfg:

hdd_partition=+OPL
  • Without that file YAOPL writes it with +OPL and creates a 128 MB +OPL partition. Any partition named there that does not exist is created the same way.
  • If the name starts with +, the folders are in the root of the partition; otherwise they are in an OPL folder inside it (for example hdd_partition=__common uses __common/OPL).
  • Do not enlarge partitions that YAOPL created: that breaks their LBAs. To get more room, delete the partition and create a bigger one with wLaunchELF, then copy its contents back.
  • Cache Game List (HDD) in Settings stores the list of HDL games in games.bin in that folder and shows it at the next start without scanning the disk. The HDD page does not refresh by itself; press SELECT after installing games.

YAOPL loads its APA drivers only when the drive really is APA: on a drive with an MBR or GPT partition table, the APA page stays empty.

Starting an HDD game from another launcher

HDD-OSD launchers (for example OPL Launcher) can start an HDL game directly through YAOPL. YAOPL then uses the game's settings from the OPL partition, the IGR path, spin-down and MMCE settings, without showing its menu.