Hacking Using 2 USB Drives at the same time

dooceswild · Feb 26, 2017

Hello, I've got 2 of the exact same drive, one for Wii and one for Wii U. They are 500GB WD My Passport drives.

I'm curious how to get them all hooked up. Can I use a powered USB hub? Given that there are only two ports on the back, I'm unsure how to set these up properly. At this point, USBLoaderGX doesn't recognize my WBFS formatted drive from my original Wii, but I'll fix that once I understand how to properly get this all hooked up.

Much thanks!

Wuigi · Feb 26, 2017

The Wii U is too stupid to process two USB HDDs at the same time, you only can use one at a time.

dooceswild · Feb 26, 2017

Interesting. Yesterday someone told me I could leave them both plugged in, in another thread.

Goloki · Feb 26, 2017

Wuigi said:
The Wii U is too stupid to process two USB HDDs at the same time, you only can use one at a time.

Nah. You're plain wrong. I use an HDD for Wii games (formatted to FAT32 with a WFBS folder) and another HDD for Wii U games. You need to use UStealth to hide the Wii drive, so the Wii U doesn't detect two HDDs at the same time, but it can be "seen" by USB Loader GX.

dooceswild · Feb 26, 2017

Goloki said:
Nah. You're plain wrong. I use an HDD for Wii games (formatted to FAT32 with a WFBS folder) and another HDD for Wii U games. You need to use UStealth to hide the Wii drive, so the Wii U doesn't detect two HDDs at the same time, but it can be "seen" by USB Loader GX.

Thank you! I'll look into UStealth and how to do this. Are your HDD's both portable drives or do you use a Y cable? I'm trying to figure out how to physically connect them to my device. Right now, one of mine is formatted to WBFS, so I will need to format that drive to FAT32, which is fine. Can I put Gamecube games on this drive as well? I know I used to be able to with WBFS manager on my original Wii

Ryccardo · Feb 26, 2017

Wuigi said:
The Wii U is too stupid to process two USB HDDs at the same time, you only can use one at a time.

You can use 2 disks in system settings, in fact that's the only official way to upgrade your external drive

(It's also reasonable you can't use 2 disks at once in normal wiiU mode, external has priority over internal for new titles as long as it's connected, but how would you pick between 2 externals in a deterministic and replicable way?)

Worth mentioning that with the latest build of Mocha, you can indeed use a FAT32 disk for WiiU mode: with some significant limitations (for one, you can't directly install apps to it), but Soon! you might not need 2 disks anymore depending on the size of your collection!

Wuigi · Feb 26, 2017

Ok well that's a possibility, but I prefer to have a HDD that is visible to the PC for dolphin etc., using UStealth is a bit unilateral so I didn't think of that.
I once inserted the Wii U formatted and a mixed FAT32/NTFS drive at the same time and it didn't like that.
So probably both have to be Wii U formatted or one is represented as if it was not initialized and this wasn't the question of the OP @Ryccardo .
Wii U is still stupid as it doesn't allow plugging a HDD in while in the home menu without a softreset, so I didn't expect it to be better in that aspect.

Ryccardo · Feb 26, 2017

Wuigi said:
I once inserted the Wii U formatted and and a mixed FAT32/NTFS drive at the same time and it didn't like that.

Yes, in WiiU settings you can have 0/1/2 wiiu format drives for moving apps, or 1 drive (any format) for reformatting to wiiu filesystem
In WiiU menu you must have 0 or 1 drives connected, and if you have one it must be wiiu filesystem because other common partition types will force a format prompt (the whole comcept behind Ustealth)

dooceswild · Feb 26, 2017

Ryccardo said:
You can use 2 disks in system settings, in fact that's the only official way to upgrade your external drive

(It's also reasonable you can't use 2 disks at once in normal wiiU mode, external has priority over internal for new titles as long as it's connected, but how would you pick between 2 externals in a deterministic and replicable way?)

Worth mentioning that with the latest build of Mocha, you can indeed use a FAT32 disk for WiiU mode: with some significant limitations (for one, you can't directly install apps to it), but Soon! you might not need 2 disks anymore depending on the size of your collection!

If you can't directly install apps to it, how do you load apps?

Ryccardo · Feb 26, 2017

dooceswild said:
If you can't directly install apps to it, how do you load apps?

You install them to a WiiU format HDD (mainly for getting the ticket and title in the database), copy the files to PC/SD (or just extract them on PC from the .app files), and copy them to the FAT32 disk

dooceswild · Feb 27, 2017

I did just confirm by using 2 small USB thumb drives, and using U-Stealth that using two USB drives at the same time works fine. Now I just need to figure out how to power them all from the back

godreborn · Feb 27, 2017

remember - the wii u has four usb ports. there r two on the front as well. that's known as usb02 to the wii u. the back r usb01.

dooceswild · Feb 27, 2017

godreborn said:
remember - the wii u has four usb ports. there r two on the front as well. that's known as usb02 to the wii u. the back r usb01.

Yeah, I would love to not have to use the ones in the front. I have a four year old that loves to mess with my stuff. That, and it looks much nicer if you don't have a bunch of cables sticking out the front.

godreborn · Feb 27, 2017

the way I have mine setup is my wii drive (powered) is plugged into the back port. I have a selector to switch between my wii and my virtual wii by pushing a button. my wii u drive (unpowered) is plugged into the front two ports. it's also using ustealth. my gamecube games r on an sd card. with this setup, I don't have to unplug or switch off anything.

Deleted User · Feb 27, 2017

You can do it any numbers of ways. You can use two USB hubs (one for each drive - need to be powered), however my setup just uses 2.5" caddies that have an AC adapter. Those are connected to a smart switch for me so they aren't running 100% of the time. One runs vWii/GC with u-hide, and the other runs WiiU games only.

Works fairly well and with the smart switch it powers on only when the activity activates them.

dooceswild · Feb 27, 2017

gunner007 said:
You can do it any numbers of ways. You can use two USB hubs (one for each drive - need to be powered), however my setup just uses 2.5" caddies that have an AC adapter. Those are connected to a smart switch for me so they aren't running 100% of the time. One runs vWii/GC with u-hide, and the other runs WiiU games only.

Works fairly well and with the smart switch it powers on only when the activity activates them.

So you have to do nothing manually? I had never heard of a smart switch. I'll look into these.

Sdg124 · Apr 20, 2020

godreborn said:
the way I have mine setup is my wii drive (powered) is plugged into the back port. I have a selector to switch between my wii and my virtual wii by pushing a button. my wii u drive (unpowered) is plugged into the front two ports. it's also using ustealth. my gamecube games r on an sd card. with this setup, I don't have to unplug or switch off anything.

Would it be possible to provide a weblink to the usb selector device? thanks!

Kilroy5150 · Apr 3, 2023

Goloki said:
Nah. You're plain wrong. I use an HDD for Wii games (formatted to FAT32 with a WFBS folder) and another HDD for Wii U games. You need to use UStealth to hide the Wii drive, so the Wii U doesn't detect two HDDs at the same time, but it can be "seen" by USB Loader GX.

Yup, i agree, this method worked like a dream and took 10 seconds to make happen.

Jasithis · May 6, 2023

Goloki said:
Nah. You're plain wrong. I use an HDD for Wii games (formatted to FAT32 with a WFBS folder) and another HDD for Wii U games. You need to use UStealth to hide the Wii drive, so the Wii U doesn't detect two HDDs at the same time, but it can be "seen" by USB Loader GX.

Been trying to find a solution for my vWii usb loader gx problem for a while now because I cant have a sd card and a usb drive when using the wii u. Could you tell me how to use UStealth to hide the usb drive from the wiiu but allow the wii to "see" it?

Hacking Using 2 USB Drives at the same time

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