Hacking 3 TB Seagate Works...

[crwys]

I'm trying to make my 2.5tb to work as NTFS or FAT32.
Converting it to MBR then making it use 512 sectors should work right?

 

[PsyBlade]

are you sure that you can actually change the sector size?
I never have seen one that could but it would be possible

first jumper the drive to 512B and then create a mbr will give better results then the other order

 

[crwys]

I used Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 to change the sector size. It however rendered the drive unusable saying "Drive is not formatted, would you like to format the drive now?"

Changing it back made the drive work again.
It is weird though because it seems most partition management software doesn't support my drive. Acronis only says my drive is not formatted and gives errors. I finally found one software that actually showed the state of my drive and allowed me to format it to fat32. Acronis only allowed me to format it to Linux, ext2, ext3,. Not even NTFS ???

I have already used 321GB on my 2.5tb drive so I am going to have to back everything up then see what I can do. I'll be back soon though to report whats going on.

 

[PsyBlade]

changing sector size in software?
sounds unlikely

but on the other hand if you have a backup experimenting wont do harm

 

[crwys]

How else would you go about changing the sector size?

 

[PsyBlade]

I expected a jumper on the drive

 

[crwys]

I am able to change the sector size on my other drives. (Internal hard drive, SD card, USB hard drive 500GB. But it seems my 2.5tb is unsupported because its rather new i suppose. And changing the cluster size is only allowed if the file system is supported. And even though it is NTFS and NTFS is supported, for some reason the program doesn't think it is formatted to NTFS so I can't change the cluster size unless I manually do it.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/191/newhg.png/

 

[azzkikr8502]

Hey all
im a noobie with all this wii stuff but i have successfully modded my wii to play off the Hard drive.Then i decided to buy a Western Digital Elements 3TB drive and the thing wont even format with Wii game manager or WBFS manager.ive been reading through the thread and understand bits and pieces but im still having the same issue.I planned to use the 3tb as an external pc drive with 1tb set aside for the wii.I formatted with Windows 7 and got the same issues as every1 esle.it split the drive into 2 partitions with 1 partition blacked out.did some research and found a program called Easeus partition master.i was able to combine the 2 partitions and make a MBR drive. I then used the program to partition and portion for my wii games and changed it to Fat32 but still no luck.Is it just the drive isnt compatible and im out of luck.i will try later with windows xp but its driving me insane lol

any help will be greatly appreciated

Thanks

 

[serafinyeye]

Hi guys....I just got a seagate Expansion 3TB HDD 2.0 USB, and want to know if this drive works for Wii. Our friend dexter333 said it worked on a seagate 3tb GoFlex but my HDD is Seagate Expansion 3TB

Anybody has a suggestion==????

 

[Elliander]

I think ntfs/fat libs will have to be fixed some time
4KiB drives are the future if we like it or not

if you don't want to go 4KiB+WBFS
take a 512B drive and try either:

A) hybrid MBR/GPT
one small FAT partition for programs (HBC, USB-Loaders, ...) available via MBR+GPT (has to be smaller than 2TiB and has to be in the beginning of the drive)
one big FAT/NTFS/WBFS partition for games available via GPT only (afaik there is a loader (GX?) supporting GPT, but I dont know about hybrid)

What about the Gamecube "Games" folder and the EmuNAND folder for Wii saves and Wiiware games? If I followed the above advice would USB Loader be able to see a FAT32 partition for the purposes of such and also see the WBFS partition seamlessly?

A Follow the above advice, with the programs, games folder, and using the FAT partition If I were to get a 3 TB drive

B) without partitioning
no MBR, no GPT
one big FAT directly on the drive

you can try this out with any 512B drive regardless on its size
if it works it should work with 3TiB drives to

If I instead used a 1.5 TB drive for Gamecube Games, EmuNAND, etc. could I use a powered USB hub to connect it a 3 TB WBFS drive and get USB Loader to see both?

Would there be any additional loading problems with either set up? I have always had an issue where self powered drives not powering up when USB Loader GX loads if it was left plugged in overnight so USB Loader would hang and unless I first opened the drive in something else, like a media player. If a drive would be dedicated to Wii games I don't know any shortcuts to get it to come out of powered-down mode and since even the latest revision of USB Loader doesn't have any system in place to first get a response from the drive before loading everything up I am concerned I would have to turn to plug in and unplug the drive each time I want to play, and the last time I did that with a WBFS drive (it was 2 TB seagate) the drive eventually went corrupt.

Also, in regards to a USB hub, if one drive is self powered and the other is powered from a Wii can a hub that is not powered work for this setup?

 

[PsyBlade]

Afaik cios still do not support hubs for connecting drives.
(only for other devices like mics etc)
Yes the hybrid mbr/gtp way should work with gamecube emunand etc stuff.

Partitioning should not change spinup/down or powerup/down behavior in any way.
Meaning e.g. that workaround still would work.
(The media player would still need to spin it up before it can determine that it can not understand the partitioning or filesystem.)

 

[Elliander]

Afaik cios still do not support hubs for connecting drives.
(only for other devices like mics etc)

hmm. Would there be any way to get them to work someday? Otherwise, what about larger drives? I have seen hard drives at 4 TB. (actually, they go up to 8, but those are dual bay which I assume would be the same as using a hub) Not that I need that much for games, but I like watching media on my Wii and like the convenience of having my games and media on the same set up. I know the obvious solution is to swap drives, but I had a really bad experience with that.

 

[PsyBlade]

It would certainly be possible but I don't think that there will be much cios development

most drives >2TiB should handle the same

"multi drives" might work depending on internal setup butI wouldn't bet on it

considered using network for movies?

 

[Elliander]

It would certainly be possible but I don't think that there will be much cios development

most drives >2TiB should handle the same

"multi drives" might work depending on internal setup butI wouldn't bet on it

So in theory if I purchased a 4 TB drive it might work? hmm. I just might test that out over spring break. I need a 4 TB for computer data anyway so if it doesn't work on the Wii no big loss. (I have a personal policy that when I buy a new hard drive I only copy the old files to it and leave the old drives in storage in case something goes horribly wrong which is why I keep needing larger and larger drives)

considered using network for movies?

There is a network option?

 

[PsyBlade]

yes it should

iirc I saw a player that could use smb or ftp

edit:
mplayerCE, mplayerWII and WiiMC all can use at least SMB
didn't check the rest

 

[Elliander]

I have used FTP, but what is SMB?

Does this mean that if I set up a network hard drive I could set it in one place and expect the Wii to access it as easily as my computer? And on that note, could USB Loader make use of a network hard drive?

 

[trumpet-205]

I do not believe that USB loaders are capable of loading games through SMB.

 

[PsyBlade]

SMB is the protocol windows uses to share files (rclick some folder and select "share over network" or similar, I don't remember the wording).
Maybe check wikipedia/google/etc.

I was thinking more along the line of using your PC, but a network hard drive will most likely support smb and ftp too (will be listed in its feture list) and thus will work too.

No, WII/GC loaders do not support loading over network. While possible no one implemented it.
Emulators on the other hand do support it afaik.

 

[ca032769]

Along the lines of working drives, I just bought the new Western Digital 4TB USB2.0/3.0 My Book HDD (Staples $199.99). Works perfectly formatted to FAT32 with Cfg USB-Loader & Wii Flow (don't use the other loaders).

 

[Elliander]

Along the lines of working drives, I just bought the new Western Digital 4TB USB2.0/3.0 My Book HDD (Staples $199.99). Works perfectly formatted to FAT32 with Cfg USB-Loader & Wii Flow (don't use the other loaders).

Thanks for confirming that! Did you format the entire drive to FAT32? Or a mix of FAT32/WBFS? How many partitions?

That is the exact drive I was looking to get, so I am really glad to hear it can work!