Hardware What is the largest SD card the Wii can use?

[slaphappygamer]

i use this one. i bought it when it was on sale last year for 60usd. i use it for everything (except emunand, because the wii works great as is and i dont want to break what works fine). i have cfg usbloader, nintendont, and emu galore. i see mention of slow downs when running games from sd slot (as opposed to usb), but i dont see the difference. ive had both.

 

[Diosoth]

I'm surprised the SD slot can read 64GB or greater, Nintendo's official statement is 32GB max with updated firmware. For that matter, if it can read SDXC natively that's a miracle, since some devices need those cards formatted FAT to work.

I bought a Samsung EVO 32GB SD card yesterday and copied all the files form the 16GB card that came with the system(bought a pre-modded console from another member). It gives me some extra room for Gamecube ISOs. Although a 64GB card, if it does work, would let me expand that further and give me more than enough space for Gamecube games. But for Wii games I need a flash drive or SD card/USB adapter, but I suspect even 64GB won't stretch too far given the ISO sizes. What's better in that regard, SD/USB adapter, flash drive or external USB HDD?

 

[Jayro]

I think you need a 2GB or less to initially HACK the Wii if it's less than firmware 4.0, but from there you can use larger, even the largest work fine formatted as FAT32, 32K clusters.

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I'm surprised the SD slot can read 64GB or greater, Nintendo's official statement is 32GB max with updated firmware. For that matter, if it can read SDXC natively that's a miracle, since some devices need those cards formatted FAT to work.

I bought a Samsung EVO 32GB SD card yesterday and copied all the files form the 16GB card that came with the system(bought a pre-modded console from another member). It gives me some extra room for Gamecube ISOs. Although a 64GB card, if it does work, would let me expand that further and give me more than enough space for Gamecube games. But for Wii games I need a flash drive or SD card/USB adapter, but I suspect even 64GB won't stretch too far given the ISO sizes. What's better in that regard, SD/USB adapter, flash drive or external USB HDD?

For my Wii, I personally use a 128GB microSD card and a nano USB-to-microSD adapter, so it doesn't stick out of the back to be broken off. Formatted as NTFS and using CFG Loader, working flawlessly for years now.

 

[Ryccardo]

I'm surprised the SD slot can read 64GB or greater, Nintendo's official statement is 32GB max with updated firmware. For that matter, if it can read SDXC natively that's a miracle, since some devices need those cards formatted FAT to work.

You almost answered it yourself. SD to SDHC was a big change in the protocol, SDHC to SDXC are for most intents and purposes the same.

The standards however are clear:
SD is up to 2 GB (formerly only 1 was guaranteed), must have an MBR partition table and a single FAT16 partition
SDHC, up to 32, FAT32
SDXC, more than 32, ExFAT

Therefore they can't legally claim SDXC support if there's no Exfat support

Why not claim "supports 64+ GB if reformatted"? There actually were off-standard but real 4 and 8 GB non-HC cards (and they worked fine on contemporary IOS if you filled them to not have more than 2 GB free). I guess Nintendo considers most of their customers technical idiots (or pretends to imply so to keep them obscure of how the system actually works), which is probably a good guess

 

[Diosoth]

I obtained a 128GB Samsung EVO which I'll use via USB adapter for the Wii games. I do have a spare 64GB EVO+ which I may use in the SD slot for the homebrew + Gamecube, if it can read a 32GB EVO it'll hopefully read that.

 

[GreyWolf]

I obtained a 128GB Samsung EVO which I'll use via USB adapter for the Wii games. I do have a spare 64GB EVO+ which I may use in the SD slot for the homebrew + Gamecube, if it can read a 32GB EVO it'll hopefully read that.

Why not just get an inexpensive hard drive? Loading any Gamecube or Wii game from the internal slot is going to be painful.

 

[Jayro]

Why not just get an inexpensive hard drive? Loading any Gamecube or Wii game from the internal slot is going to be painful.

He said via a USB adapter, not the native SD slot.

 

[Diosoth]

Well, just loading GC games from SD, the Samsung EVO cards are pretty speedy, so probably working the maximum speed the slot can, and they don't seem to take much time to load through Nintendont. So far I've had no problems playing Metroid Prime 2, loading is as fats as it would be on an actual GC. 128GB for the USB slot is probably sufficient for the Wii ISOs I'd play anyway. An external drive would be bulkier and need to be powered, for me right now the 128 micro SD is a better option.

 

[Lumstar]

You almost answered it yourself. SD to SDHC was a big change in the protocol, SDHC to SDXC are for most intents and purposes the same.

The standards however are clear:
SD is up to 2 GB (formerly only 1 was guaranteed), must have an MBR partition table and a single FAT16 partition
SDHC, up to 32, FAT32
SDXC, more than 32, ExFAT

Therefore they can't legally claim SDXC support if there's no Exfat support

Why not claim "supports 64+ GB if reformatted"? There actually were off-standard but real 4 and 8 GB non-HC cards (and they worked fine on contemporary IOS if you filled them to not have more than 2 GB free). I guess Nintendo considers most of their customers technical idiots (or pretends to imply so to keep them obscure of how the system actually works), which is probably a good guess

It is pretty funny. Some part of "if total capacity exceeds 32 GB = display error message" was too difficult for Nintendo to implement.

 

[GerbilSoft]

Nintendo cannot claim support for >32GB if reformatted as FAT32 because of SD licensing. They can only officially claim support for this if they also support exFAT, and thus SDXC.

@Lumstar Explicitly preventing use of >32GB cards formatted as FAT32 would be a dick move. Not sure why you think it's "funny" that they didn't prevent it.

 

[Diosoth]

probably because it's Nintendo, a company notorious for anti-consumer policies like that. Then again, when the Wii came out even the 32GB cards were probably not too common(they were still on 2GB cards at release, of all things) and they never bothered to adjust settings in the firmware. By the time 64-128 became ocmmon and the hacking prevalent, the Wii U was coming out and they probably saw no need to invest time & money into another firmware update for the obsolete console going off the market.

I should point out that SDXC can be reformatted to FAT/FAT32 easily but you need a program to do it(I think the one I used is called GUI Format) because Windows refuses to do so. You may lose some speed of the card, but if your device will not read exFAT you have no choice. My $12 MP3 player can read a FAT32 formatted 64GB card but not exFAT.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

I have a 64GB SanDisk SD card in my Wii right now (formerly a 128GB, but my Wii U has that now), and a 500GB SeaGate FreeAgent GoFlex USB HDD hooked up to it. One of these days I'll move my GameCube backups off the SD and to the HDD, but I've been lazy about it. At the time I originally set it up, running both Wii and GameCube off of the HDD was a bit more of a pain.

 

[GreyWolf]

probably because it's Nintendo, a company notorious for anti-consumer policies like that. Then again, when the Wii came out even the 32GB cards were probably not too common(they were still on 2GB cards at release, of all things) and they never bothered to adjust settings in the firmware. By the time 64-128 became ocmmon and the hacking prevalent, the Wii U was coming out and they probably saw no need to invest time & money into another firmware update for the obsolete console going off the market.

I should point out that SDXC can be reformatted to FAT/FAT32 easily but you need a program to do it(I think the one I used is called GUI Format) because Windows refuses to do so. You may lose some speed of the card, but if your device will not read exFAT you have no choice. My $12 MP3 player can read a FAT32 formatted 64GB card but not exFAT.

Nintendo has to pay for licenses for industry stuff. Homebrew doesn't.

 

[Diosoth]

I formatted my Samsung EVO 128 to FAT32 and transferred my SD card contents to it, working with no problems in the SD slot. Formatting may not have been necessary, but you never know with exFAT compatibility.

 

[GreyWolf]

I formatted my Samsung EVO 128 to FAT32 and transferred my SD card contents to it, working with no problems in the SD slot. Formatting may not have been necessary, but you never know with exFAT compatibility.

d2x and I think the Homebrew Channel don't support exFAT. I'm not sure the system menu does either so it's best to stick with FAT32.

 

[NWwind]

SD/SDHC/SDXC they all work size does not matter, Just be careful what card you buy not all sd cards are compatible with the wii.

Therefore should i buy a 32GB SDHC to play nintendont or wii iso?

 

[Larsenv]

Therefore should i buy a 32GB SDHC to play nintendont or wii iso?

Nice necrobump.

32GB should work fine.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Therefore should i buy a 32GB SDHC to play nintendont or wii iso?

Buy whatever size you want, but older games don't support SD cards larger than 2GB (or 4GB if you can find a non-SDHC card)
You can still play the games from it, just not use any ingame features that use the SD card. Not really a big issue for me since few things use SD cards to begin with.
There's no difference between 4-512 GB as far as compatibility with Wii software goes. The card just needs to be formatted as FAT32.

 

[DinohScene]

I guess if a person is really adamant in NOT having a USB HDD sitting on top of their Wii and prefers to play their games on a SD card. I run my games off an SD Card as well, but not to that big of capacity.

I got a 320 GB HDD inside me Wii.
Sundriver ODE.

I hate having USB HDDs attached to me consoles ;/
Tho I have a 128 GB USB on me Wii U.
Go figure...

 

[ratmandom]

I got a 320 GB HDD inside me Wii.
Sundriver ODE.

I hate having USB HDDs attached to me consoles ;/
Tho I have a 128 GB USB on me Wii U.
Go figure...

SUN DRIVES ARE COOL.. only thing I am thinking is the user interface does not look that well layed out, not for a full collection of gamecube games.

but I am inpressed by the sun drive

It has inspired me to ask people on facebook general discussions about hard mods and ask what top game changing hard mods are there out there any console ? I know a few.

but could you just make a extra case mod attached to the wii and have some Hard disk plugged in so it looks like one console.