Using sfsshell to format and partition 2TB Harddrive for soft modding PS2.

guide.md

Step 1

Ensure your drive has no partitions.

Open up Disk Management and ensure the Disk is unallocated.

Step 2

Get device name. We'll need to this to select the device.

Open Command Prompt in Adminstrator mode and run this command:

wmic diskdrive get Caption,DeviceID,InterfaceType

You wil get a list of devices, likely the drive you are looking for is SCSI if you are using a USB enteral drive like WeMe.

Ensure your Disk number matches what is in Disk Management so you are trying to format the wrong drive.

Step 3

Run the pfshell.exe in Command Prompt in Administrator Mode

Close out all of File Explorer and Disk Management just-in-case (So they aren't holding up the drive)

In pfshell select the device.

eg.

device \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE5

Step 4

Format the drive by typing

initialize yes

While its formatting there should be no output occuring. When it completes you'll see a new line with the input character eg. #

If you are getting read/write bad, make sure you delete the volume in Disk Management to remove any lingering partition and try again.

Step 5

If you go to disk management it will still say unallocated. That makes sense since Disk Management can't read a PS2 partitions

In pfshell with the device still selected you can see if it was succesfull by doing a list:

ls

You will see:

0x0001 128MB __mbr
0x0100 128MB __net
0x0100 256MB __system
0x0100 512MB __sysconf
0x0100 1024MB __common

Step 6

We need to create a partition that we will store our games within.

If we are using a 2 TB drive that means we have 2,000,000 MB (2 million) and 1536 is already being used from the base install.

So we have 1,998,464 to work with.

I ended up using HDL Dump to copy games instead of creating a partition since its easier.

Check compatbility for HDL Loader for your game here: https://www.absoluteanime.com/hdloader/

If you see [Mode 3] is corresponds to Compatibility 3: Unhook Syscalls not the DMA Mode

References

https://www.psx-place.com/attachments/apa-partitioniology-2022-09-25-pdf.38591/