How to Play Games on the PS2 From a Pen Drive

If you have a Sony PlayStation 2 game console, you can prevent a lot of wear and tear of the unit’s optical drive by loading your games from a USB pen drive. USB pen drives, also known as flash drives, are removable storage devices that are small enough to keep on a keychain or in your pocket. With larger capacity pen drives, you can literally store hundreds of PS2 games on a thumb-sized drive. However, loading PS2 games from a USB pen drive does require some preparation and a few third-party software programs.

Download “USB Advance”, then save the application to your computer. Browse to the folder on your PC where you saved the downloaded “USB Advance” file. Right-click the file and then click “Extract Here” in the pop-up menu. Windows will to extract two additional files in the folder.

Download “USB Extreme.” Save the downloaded “USB Extreme” file in the same folder that contains the “USB Advance” file. Right-click the “USB Extreme” file, then click “Extract Here.” Wait while Windows creates additional uncompressed files in the folder.

Highlight all of the extracted files, then press the “Ctrl” and “C” keys simultaneously. Browse to the “C:\” drive in “Computer.” Right-click inside the “C:\” folder windows, then click “Paste” in the pop-up menu. Go back to the folder where you extracted the files and delete the original compressed files you downloaded. Do not delete the extracted files.

Open the CD/DVD burner drive on your PC, then place a blank CD or DVD into the disc tray. Open your disc-burning application, then burn all of the extracted files to the blank disc.

Insert the pen drive into an empty USB port on your computer. Wait for Windows to detect and configure the drive for use with your PC.

Place a PlayStation 2 game disc into the CD/DVD drive of your computer.

Click “Start,” then type “cmd” into the search box. Press the “Enter” key.

Enter “C:\” at the “Command Prompt” to switch to the root directory for the computer.

Copy the PlayStation 2 game to the pen drive by entering the following text at the prompt:

“ul_install [FirstDrive][SecondDrive][NameofGame][DiscType]” at the “Command Prompt.” Change the “[FirstDrive]” parameter to the drive letter for your computer’s CD/DVD drive. Change the “[SecondDrive]” parameter to the drive letter for the pen drive. Change the “[NameofGame]” parameter to the name of the game to copy from the PS2 disc. Change the “[TypeofDisc]” parameter to “CD” or “DVD” depending amount of application game data on the PS2 disc. If the game disc has less than 700MB of data, enter “CD.” If the game disc contains more than 700MB of data, enter “DVD.”

The following is an example of correctly formatted command line syntax: “ul_install D F FunPS2GameName CD”

Open the PS2 disc tray, then insert the “Swap Magic” application disc. Turn on the PS2 console. Wait for the PS2 to load the Swap Magic application and the menu screen to appear. Remove the “Swap Magic” disc after the menu screen appears on your TV. Insert the disc you burned earlier into the disc drive of the PlayStation 2. Close the disc tray, and wait for the “USB Extreme” menu to appear on the screen.

Insert the pen drive into one of the USB ports on the front of the PS2.

Wait for the “USB Extreme” utility to load from the USB pen drive automatically. Press the “X” button on the PS2 game controller to launch and run the game from the pen drive. Play the game as you normally would when using a PS2 game disc.