[Cyber Akuma]

I have a Version 9/10 PS2 (the fat one) with a Matrix Infinity.

Some of my games have annoying loadtimes. This appears to be a fault of the game itself, not my PS2. Ar Tonelico is a big one that has some annoying pauses in gameplay in order to load.

Since I already have a fat PS2 and all I would need is an official network adapter to attach a HDD to it, I figured I would just start putting the games I play often or have long loadtimes on it.

Now, what I want to know is, I heard the os/bios on the DMS4 includes a type of HDD loader, does the Matrix Infinity have any way to load games like this or would I have to use some sort of bootdisk?

How would I get games to work off my PS2's harddrive with a Matrix Infinity?

I remember hearing about games requiring patches to work on the HDD before with HD Loader, but that product went out of production long ago and is probably outdated now, will I still need to patch my games? Is there a list anywhere of what games and how to patch them?

Will this improve loadtimes? This is the main reason I want to do this.

What is the maximum size harddrive I can use? Would a 500gig one work?

Would enabling/disabling ATAD support (IIRC this makes the PS2 think an unofficial drive is official) cause any problems?

How would I get the games on my harddrive? Is there a way I can just put the disk in the ps2 and copy it over to the harddrive? Thats how I do it on my modded Xbox and the program auto-patches any games that need patching as well.

Would there be any way for me to use GameShark, Action Replay, or Codebreaker with games loaded off my harddrive?

Anything else you think I need to know?

Thanks.