Problem with external HDD on Wii U?

[realpoketendonl]

I know I'm a tad paranoid, but I just want to be as careful with this as possible. recently got a Wii U. It is an 8gb model, so I needed to connect an external HDD drive. I still had one laying around. Only a few months old, once put some files on it, never used it much or actively, 1Tb in size, no external power supply (though I got a USB-Y cable for it).
I decided to take the files off it, and format it on the Wii U. Before the HDD I had a standard 16Gb USB-stick connected to hold me over. I copied all the files from the stick to the HDD, disconnected the USB-stick (in the recommended way of course) and booted up the console again. Everything seemed to be fine. I then booted up Smash, went to the trophy gallery, left, and the system crashed. It gave me an error message saying that there was a problem with the HDD.
I rebooted the console and started Smash again. This time, I wanted to test whether I could trigger another error (that way I could be sure there was a problem). I went into 8-player Smash, loaded nothing but characters that were on the HDD (DLC and Miis), battled, won, nothing happened. Then I went to the eShop and decided to download the Starfox Guard demo, since I heard the eShop gives issues with broken HDDs as well. However, it's downloading just fine right now with no issues.
Naturally, I'm a little worried now. I don't want to continue using this HDD if it may end up giving problems. Has anyone ever had anything like this? Could the problem be with Smash? Or is this just a coincidence?

UPDATE: Never mind about Starfox, I just got an error message, the HDD apparently can't handle any new data. Please help!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Just tried to install a smaller demo (Word Puzzles by POWGI). That one installed fine. I'm completely lost as to what's going on here. Please help!

[ignition365]

Honestly, you may want to use the USB-Y cable or whatever to provide constant power to the hard drive and then test if it keeps giving you the error.

If you really want to be paranoid.  I'll throw this little bit of info out there.  It's a dominant thing that happens world wide.  You order a hard drive online, you think you are fine, you open up the enclosure and find that all it has in it is a bunch of rocks and a thumb drive.  Or Micro SD cards, or something.  I'd doubt that is your problem, but if it is, that could explain it as that type of memory is usually very volatile and aren't made to last forever.

Possibly, the hard drive could be failing, but it doesn't sound that old, but I've had that happen before.  I think when you format the hdd for Wii u it makes it so a PC won't read it anymore.  I've never tried to plug in my Wii U ext hdd into my PC to verify that statement, so I'm not sure.

Me personally, I only store applications on the external drive, save data is always stored on the system itself if I can manage it.

[turf]

Nintendo recommends using a powered USB HDD. There's your problem. I know this because I don't did the same thing.

[realpoketendonl]

Nintendo recommends using a powered USB HDD. There's your problem. I know this because I don't did the same thing.

I know that, but I read on multiple forums and even Nintendo's official website that an external HDD with a USB-Y cable works just fine too, so I don't think the power supply is the problem unless the brand new cable I bought is busted. I wouldn't know a way to check that though...

[aliensstudios]

Nintendo recommends using a powered USB HDD. There's your problem. I know this because I don't did the same thing.

I know that, but I read on multiple forums and even Nintendo's official website that an external HDD with a USB-Y cable works just fine too, so I don't think the power supply is the problem unless the brand new cable I bought is busted. I wouldn't know a way to check that though...

I use an old laptop HDD with a Y-cable. While the Wii U can power it, it has had problems in the past, so I have the data portion of the Y-cable plugged into the Wii U, and the power portion plugged into a USB iPhone brick, and I haven't had issues thus far. I really wish I had a 32gb model (but I got such a good deal on the 8gb one back when they were phasing them out) since almost everything I own on the system I own physically, but I'm looking to get a solid state drive for the system to ensure my DLC and save data lives on a good while.
Congrats on getting a Wii U!

[realpoketendonl]

Nintendo recommends using a powered USB HDD. There's your problem. I know this because I don't did the same thing.

I know that, but I read on multiple forums and even Nintendo's official website that an external HDD with a USB-Y cable works just fine too, so I don't think the power supply is the problem unless the brand new cable I bought is busted. I wouldn't know a way to check that though...

I use an old laptop HDD with a Y-cable. While the Wii U can power it, it has had problems in the past, so I have the data portion of the Y-cable plugged into the Wii U, and the power portion plugged into a USB iPhone brick, and I haven't had issues thus far. I really wish I had a 32gb model (but I got such a good deal on the 8gb one back when they were phasing them out) since almost everything I own on the system I own physically, but I'm looking to get a solid state drive for the system to ensure my DLC and save data lives on a good while.
Congrats on getting a Wii U!

Wait, using a seperate phone plug actually works? I read it could cause various problems (worst of all a short circuit) because the phone plugs aren't designed to provide voltage for an HDD. I'm a little worried it isn't going to be a very good solution for the HDD in the long run, but am I wrong on that? Thanks for the congrats btw

[aliensstudios]

Nintendo recommends using a powered USB HDD. There's your problem. I know this because I don't did the same thing.

I know that, but I read on multiple forums and even Nintendo's official website that an external HDD with a USB-Y cable works just fine too, so I don't think the power supply is the problem unless the brand new cable I bought is busted. I wouldn't know a way to check that though...

I use an old laptop HDD with a Y-cable. While the Wii U can power it, it has had problems in the past, so I have the data portion of the Y-cable plugged into the Wii U, and the power portion plugged into a USB iPhone brick, and I haven't had issues thus far. I really wish I had a 32gb model (but I got such a good deal on the 8gb one back when they were phasing them out) since almost everything I own on the system I own physically, but I'm looking to get a solid state drive for the system to ensure my DLC and save data lives on a good while.
Congrats on getting a Wii U!

Wait, using a seperate phone plug actually works? I read it could cause various problems (worst of all a short circuit) because the phone plugs aren't designed to provide voltage for an HDD. I'm a little worried it isn't going to be a very good solution for the HDD in the long run, but am I wrong on that? Thanks for the congrats btw

I don't know, I've encountered several problems with both internal and external storage on the Wii U. Originally, I had both ends of the Y-cable plugged into the back ports of the Wii U, but I noticed in Super Mario Maker, the game would freeze whenever I tried to save a level I created, but the problem didn't occur when I had the y cable split up. Two games won't save at all to the hard disk whether both ends of the Y cable are plugged in or just one, so I had to move the data to the internal hard drive, it freezes when saving either way. The games are Skylanders Superchargers and Devils Third.
I've never had any problems short-circuiting. This is the USB brick I use:

Like I say though, this works for now but I'd like a solid state drive because it will last much longer.