Posted by Jurassosaurus [148.64.23.91 - vsat-148-64-23-91.c050.t7.mrt.starband.net] on 24 June 2004 at 21.14.54 ZuluTime:

For those people who've acquired the Sony HDD for their PS2, and were disappointed at the inability to save entire games to it, one company has come up with a solution.

Officially announced a few days ago, this HD loader not only allows for entire games to be stored on the HDD, but also gives users the option to put in other, bigger, hard drives into the machine.

According to IGN PS2's product review; while storing entire games on the HDD is a neat novelty, the biggest bonus is the greatly decreased load times.
     
     

In our tests, loading times with the loaded games were two to three times faster than the unloaded disc-based originals. Loading up Vice City normally takes around 70 seconds while gamers are forced to look at the same old character art. By reading the hard drive, this time gets cut in half to 35 seconds. While this is a one-time load, it's really the hundreds of other loads during the game itself which can really add up.

In Vice City the screen often goes black for loading while moving from the outdoor environments to indoor or vice versa. These wait times run about nine to 12 seconds each normally. Off of the hard drive, these are dropped down to four seconds, a similar amount of speed up as has been seen on Resident Evil: Outbreak when it was loaded onto the HDD. With these seconds cut off of loading times, Vice City had a faster, more seamless pace to it. Sly Cooper had a more impressive effect with quick access to different parts of each level via the hub.