Quick question: Can the n800 write files to an external hdd formatted to FAT32?

Long story: My Wii's disc drive broke. So now I have a stack of unplayable games, a perfectly functional console minus the disc drive, and my computer is a n800. My Wii could be functional again if I homebrewed it and got a HDD set up with game roms. I will only be downloading roms of games I OWN as backup, I'm no pirate.

If the n800 can write files to a FAT32 drive, I should be able to torrent the game roms to the HD and be in business, I think. Am I incorrect? Any advice on any of this would be just awesome!

P.S. I have $65 to spend on this project, hence not just buying a new Wii. :/

I never owned an N800, but it most probably uses the Mass Storage specification for USB.
If you're torrenting directly to the N800 (and running the apps off the N800), I can't see any reason why this would fail.

The N800, afaik, has USB OTG, so you can connect an HDD to it (but you'll need a powered hub or the HDD needs its own power supply).
You'll need a female-female A adapter to do this (many videos on youtube), it can be bought from places like ebay, and it's very cheap.
Not sure if the N800 has internal storage, but it should be able to use fat32.
Open terminal and type mkfs.v then press tab (wherever that is on the N800) to see if it has mkfs.vfat. If it's there I'm sure it supports it.

Hope this helps.

Cannot quite follow what you're trying to do, but I bet these links will help

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=14509

http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&s...%3A6esxclqviui

Yep, all should goes fine.

My biggest SD card is 2gb, so knowing that the tablet will write files directly to the HDD is important. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is over 6gb, for example. I have no idea why I feared that I would need an SD card 'hub' the size of my download or larger, but that thought kept occuring to me. :P If I had unlimited resources, then maybe it wouldn't matter. But I have to stay within budget, so I want to know exactly what I need to buy.

Thanks for the help.

Only a cable for OTG and a female to female adapter. Should cost less than 10 bucks.
You might need a powered hub too.

These are the two HDDs I've been looking at.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145321

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822242002

I haven't shopped for HDDs for years, so idk if these are the best ideas on the cheap.

Thanks very much for the assistance!