Hard Disk Drive
The PlayStation 2 Hard Disk Drive (PS2 HDD) was released on July 19, 2001 in Japan (together with the Network Adaptor) and on March 23, 2004 in North America. It requires the Network Adaptor to connect to the PlayStation 2 and to receive power. The HDD has a 40 GB capacity that can be used by games to reduce load time by putting data on the hard drive temporarily, or back up memory card data. Due to MagicGate copyright protection, programs that are bootable directly from the HDD (e.g. PlayStation Broadband Navigator, PlayOnline Viewer, Pop'n Music Puzzle-dama Online) are keyed to the system when that system installs them. The HDD can be transferred to another PlayStation 2 system and files on the HDD can be accessed, but those specific programs cannot be booted without being reinstalled. Contrary to popular belief, a complete reformat of the HDD is not necessary upon transfer of the HDD between consoles, or else it would not be useful to have the HDD be preformatted and have preinstalled software, as is the case with the North American HDD unit. An HDD Utility Disc is included to allow maintenance of the HDD and in North America, Final Fantasy XI is also included. Currently, there are 35 North American games that support the HDD.
Unofficial software called HD Loader and the newer HD Advance allow users to copy entire games to the HDD and run them without the discs. These pieces of software also allows using some standard HDDs (typically used by a computer) in the PS2, however they will not be seen in the browser, or work with games using the HDD. While some argue that this improves performance and protects the potentially fragile discs, especially from young children, others claim that this only encourages piracy as rented games can be copied and kept forever (see rental piracy).
Read more about this topic: PlayStation 2 Expansion Bay
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