Any suggestions on a good external harddrive for the wii u. Going to pick one up for my kids and they destroy and lose game disc so im all for this all digital era of gaming. So my question is should i shell out the money for a 7200 rpm usb 3.0( though i know it cant currently use usb 3.0) beast or a cheapo, people keep saying they can get one for 80 bucks but i havent seen any 2tb external 7200rpm for less than 150.00.

you're not going to find 2 Tb for $80...those are just nintendo fans trying to downplay the need to the extra money needed to be spent on wiiU peripherals. that said, for $80 you should be able to get around 1Tb which is probably good enough for most.

i was quite happy with my western digital. if you are dedicating it to your wiiU i'm not sure why you'd pay a dime extra for usb 3.0 when wiiU doesn't support. i'd have to double check but if you only have usb 2 data transfer rates i don't believe 7200 rpm is really needed either. well, let me put it this way ... when i upgraded my ps3 i did my research and was told over and over again the extra rpm did nothing to affect game loading rates. ..so i didn't spend the extra cash.

see if you can find a 2tb 5400 one for cheap

2TB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136471

You're welcome

Wii U only supports USB 2.0 so a USB 3.0 is not needed. Also, USB 2.0 only has a 60 MB/s theoretical max so I suggest a 5400 rpm drive. You can get a 7200 but it will be noisier, more power hungry without any actual performance benefit.

Well someone just provided a newegg link for one that is for under $110.  So I assume that you can get almost any 2 TB external for under 80 in about 2 years at most.

Just don't get USB 3.0, no need as it's not supported (but it is compatible).

Damn I got my 2TB for 80bucks ... but that was before the flood which killed most of the HDD factories :(
so yeah it will go there someday ... hopefully sooner than later.

Yea, I am sure you can find one under 80 this holiday season on sale somewhere.  If you were to just buy one without looking around much you probably wouldn't drop more than 100-120.  I was just trying to say the overall price will drop within a year or two due to not being a proprietary storage.  I don't remember too many complaints about the people that bought 360 Arcades and having to drop a lot of money for a few GB if they wanted to upgrade their storage space.  Even now they have 360 250GB hard drives on Amazon for 90 dollars (with a 40 dollar savings).

I purchased my 2TB Seagate Go-Flex Desk from Costco last year this time for $69.99...I use that on my business desktop and wouldn't need that much for the Wii U anyway, but there are pleanty of real good deals on 500GB+ drives out there.