Hacking 3TB, 4TB, 5TB, or 6TB+ drives with vWii, USB Loader GX, Nintendont

[CheatFreak47]

Why would you need over 2TB? Are you like, trying to cache the whole Wii and Gamecube Library or something? I thought I went overboard with space at a 1TB drive, but geez.

Yeah sorry guy, there's not any real way to make what you want to do possible without a ton of work on the developer side of things. Tough luck there.

 

[element6]

Try switching the driver letters. I know when I had 2 partitions my Windows 7 computer would always list the partition for GCN games first (unless that letter was taken). As I highly doubt you have so many things that it's forcing the drive to the Z: then that may be the cause. If it's loading the WBFS partition as the higher drive in the computer then the Wii U is probably doing the same.

Thanks for the reply but windows drive letter assignments have no bearing on the order that a Wii or vWii will mount the partitions on an external drive. The drive letters are used by Windows and Windows only. The Wii/vWii is mounting them in the order that they are in on the disk.

The problem in this thread was already resolved.. It lies with USB Loader GX.

Until USB Loader GX is updated to recognize that GC Games can be launched from a GPT FAT32 partition just the same as an MBR FAT32 partition, we won't be able to do what I had hoped to do with a 4TB drive as I had it set up in the first post.

 

[sroemr]

That's odd, since it had issues when I changed the driver letter and tried it before switching to an all FAT32. But, hey, why ask for assistance if you're just going to tell everyone they're wrong! A+!

 

[JohnathanMonkey]

I had a 4tb Fantom Drive powered hdd formatted to fat32 with a 32k cluster connected to my Wii U and I was able to use Wiiflow and USB loader GX without issue. I would start by using only 1 partition and see if that works. I can point you to the website to download the fat32 formatting tool as well if you would like.

 

[lordelan]

It's not a piracy issue that someone wants really big drives. I (for example) have several Mario Kart Wii, NSMBW and Smash hacks as separated ISOs (or WBFS files) on my drive. Okay ... NSMBW never reaches 1 GB each but the MKW and Smash hacks are big and it's not piracy to patch your ISOs to these hacks.
However ... when the IOSU exploit will be out (maybe in winter 2666) a lot of people will rethink which drive size and setup would be the best to store

• GC games
• Wii games
• WiiWare games
• Wii VC games
• Wii U games
• Wii U eShop games
• Wii U VC games
• Roms for homebrew emulators
• even movies and TV shows if a media center app like KODI or Wii(U)MC comes out

 

[Redirr]

Long time ago i used to have a seagate 3tb fat32 full of wii and gc games

But the usbloader gx was freezing when i open search option or other option. But read all the games and runs.

And i remember i had a 4tb fat32 hdd working well with my ps3.

 

[lordelan]

Any news here? I don't wanna wake up the sheeps but an IOSU exploit seems to get around a little bit earlier than winter 2666 so a big drive would be of interest.
Reading through the pages the "only problem" seems to be the lacking GPT FAT32 support in USB Loader GX for Nintendont (which on is own is already capable of handling GPT).
@Cyan: Are you able to tell us any news on this?
Also: Is it still the case that WiiWare/VC, GC and then Wii games have to be copied in exactly this order to accomplish max compatibility? That would suck as I'm still getting GC and Wii games from flea markets in no particular order.
I hope the only thing I would have to be careful of is that WW/VC and GC are within the first 2 TB which means doing the same partioning as OP to make sure it's within these 2 TB no matter when I copy it over to the drive is all I gotta do.

 

[Cyan]

there's already a fix (but not official)
I posted it few times in USBLoaderGX thread, usbgx r1261 mod01
it supports launching nintendont with games on a GPT and logical partitions.
no ExFAT support (will never be added)

Also: Is it still the case that WiiWare/VC, GC and then Wii games

it has never been the case.
Maybe you mix it with partition order, where most gamecube doesn't have a partition selected, and thus only the first partition is used.
Sneek also used the first partition.

Wii can be anywhere.
channels run from cIOS can be anywhere.

 

[Redirr]

I used to have a 3Tb MBR fat32 seagate expansion with wii games. But usbloader gx doest work verywell with so many games. Will not let you searh for games with search tools. But i could use normal if i just select fame from menu.

MBR Fat32 with 3tb. 4tb e 5tb its possible with old seagate hdd case ( usb 3.0 ). The new case hdd from backup plus and expasion the support was abandoned.

Old hdd case has a special sata to usb 3.0 that suport mbr more then 2tb because of windows xp

You can read more here.

Spoiler

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/006125en?language=en_US

 

[lordelan]

there's already a fix (but not official)
I posted it few times in USBLoaderGX thread, usbgx r1261 mod01
it supports launching nintendont with games on a GPT and logical partitions.
no ExFAT support (will never be added)


it has never been the case.
Maybe you mix it with partition order, where most gamecube doesn't have a partition selected, and thus only the first partition is used.
Sneek also used the first partition.

Wii can be anywhere.
channels run from cIOS can be anywhere.

So I would be good to go with a primary FAT32 partition for Sneek/Emunand+WW/VC and GC and a second for everything else.
Thanks for the hint, I'll look for that r1261 mod01!

Edit: Oh, according to this a single FAT32 partition with a size bigger than 2 TB is possible. Wasn't aware of that.
So it doesn't matter in which order I put WW, VC, GC and Wii stuff on it, right?

 

[Neouni]

Well if it supports ext3 and ext4 as op says, I would try ext2fsd and just format the linux way

 

[lordelan]

Well if it supports ext3 and ext4 as op says, I would try ext2fsd and just format the linux way

USB Loader GX, Nintendont, Emunand/Sneek are all supporting Ext4? Can't believe this.

 

[Cyan]

sorry, wasn't present this past week.

Edit: Oh, according to this a single FAT32 partition with a size bigger than 2 TB is possible. Wasn't aware of that.
So it doesn't matter in which order I put WW, VC, GC and Wii stuff on it, right?

yes, the max partition size depends on the sector size and the cluster size. you can partition FAT32 up to 16TB with all the best settings.

But you can make two partition if your drive is not detected as 4k, and if you don't want to edit the "512 byte emulation mode".

There's no restriction or limitation in the order you add your games.
just remember to defrag the partition from time to time if you remove/add lot of games very often.
if you only add and never delete, you don't need to defrag.

USB Loader GX, Nintendont, Emunand/Sneek are all supporting Ext4? Can't believe this.

USBLoaderGX supports ext2/3/4, but only for Wii games.
I don't think EmuNAND or Nintendont support it (FAT32 is and will always be the best format for ALL homebrew from ALL consoles, PS2/PS3/Wii/WiiU/etc.)

Nintendont added ExFAT recently, but no other homebrew are compatible, so USBGX wouldn't even list the games to use with nintendont.

 

[ca032769]

yes, the max partition size depends on the sector size and the cluster size. you can partition FAT32 up to 16TB with all the best settings.

But you can make two partition if your drive is not detected as 4k, and if you don't want to edit the "512 byte emulation mode".

There's no restriction or limitation in the order you add your games.
just remember to defrag the partition from time to time if you remove/add lot of games very often.
if you only add and never delete, you don't need to defrag.

Yes that's how I'm doing it, one single partition on my Western Digital 8TB My Book USB 3.0 HDD. I had to set it to 64k clusters in order to use the entire drive because when I tried 32k clusters only 4TB showed up. Been playing Wii & GameCube's off it without any problems using USB Loader GX & Nintendont.

My setup if it helps anyone:
-Original Nintendo Wii (Not Wii U)
-Western Digital 8TB My Book USB 3.0 HDD
-One 8TB MBR Partition set as ACTIVE & PRIMARY
-FAT32 Formatted
-4k Sector
-64k Cluster

 

[lordelan]

Thanks Cyan and ca032769, that helped a lot!
@ca032769: Since my drive will only be at a size of 4 TB I can go with the usual 32k clusters since they have a bigger compatibility for everything as far as I know, right?
Can't wait for my drive to report back.
Also thanks to Cyan and sorry I didn't understand you completely the first time you told me that the order of everything really doesn't matter at all. That's fantastic to hear.

I'll go with a big continuous 4 TB FAT32 partition for everything once my drives arrives.

 

[Cyan]

I think you will still need 64k/cluster if your drive is detected as 512e (emulation mode).

sector + cluster = size
512 + 32k = 2TB
512 + 64k = 4TB
4k + 32k = 8TB
4k + 64k = 16TB

well, just try and see how much you can partition and format.

a little technical info about max theoretical/possible size.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/quick-newbie-questions-here.155449/page-127#post-4759621

 

[lordelan]

Oh okay. But I remember 32k being recommended for Emunand/(s)neek + WiiWare.
However, I'll find out then. Thanks again. You're always of big help.

 

[aquelopaso]

This solution worked for me, I hope it will be helpful to you.

 

[ratmandom]

Yes that's how I'm doing it, one single partition on my Western Digital 8TB My Book USB 3.0 HDD. I had to set it to 64k clusters in order to use the entire drive because when I tried 32k clusters only 4TB showed up. Been playing Wii & GameCube's off it without any problems using USB Loader GX & Nintendont.

My setup if it helps anyone:
-Western Digital 8TB My Book USB 3.0 HDD
-One 8TB MBR Partition set as ACTIVE & PRIMARY
-FAT32 Formatted
-4k Sector
-64k Cluster

so if i get a 8tb usb HDD that one how do i setup it up and this is for the wii u + its vwii
how does this work is it sectioned off in different parts IDK NOOBIE but wants a set up
MAX IT OUT MAN
and this will work with the OG wii ?
and how is it does it work with every thing ?

 

[lordelan]

so if i get a 8tb usb HDD that one how do i setup it up and this is for the wii u + its vwii
how does this work is it sectioned off in different parts IDK NOOBIE but wants a set up
MAX IT OUT MAN
and this will work with the OG wii ?
and how is it does it work with every thing ?

Don't get confused about that Wii U part.
On the Wii U there's four ways to play games:

1. Install them with WUP Installer GX2 to USB (or nand if you want)
2. Play them from your SD card using the homebrew Loadiine
3. Play them from your FAT32 USB drive with Loadiine using the FAT32 Mocha CFW build
4. Play them from your FAT32 USB drive installed with WUP Installer GX to a none FAT32 place (either NAND or a Wii U formatted USB drive) and move them over to a FAT32 drive using your PC and ftpiiu everywhere, then use FAT32 Mocha CFW build again to use that drive for your Wii U.

The only good solution in my opinion is 1.
You would need an extra drive for that, that is only being used by the Wii U, not the (v)Wii, as it has to be formatted into the Wii U filesystem. Also keep in mind that 2 TB is the absolute max size for that drive. You can use bigger drives but that would be a waste as the Wii U can only use 2 TB and the rest of the space would be unusable.
With method 1 you have full compatibility which means every game runs without any issues and in full speed.
Method 2 was the main method until the WUP method (also known as Brazilian Exploit btw) came up. The problems are obvious: You can't store many games on a SD card, it's slow and due to the way Loadiine works it has some issues (cutscenes in Twilight Princess are buggy) and not every game works (One Peace Unlimited World Red and a few others). You'll have long loading times also.
For method 3 there's a special build of Mocha CFW that supports FAT32 drives so from the moment where you launch that Mocha build, you're Wii U uses an attached FAT32 drive as its SD card. So everything that could be done with a SD card before (including method 2) can be done from USB now. You would however have the same issues as in 2 as it's still Loadiine after all.
Method 4 sounds promising but it's the worst one, really. Don't do that ever.
It's tricky, buggy, takes a long time to set up (ftpiiu is slow) and the biggest downside: You're still limited to 2 TB even on your FAT32 drive. So the big advantage that you could use your FAT32 (v)Wii drive for your Wii U games too turns into a disadvantage as there's only 2 TB in which everything for your Wii U, Wii and GC (Nintendont) has to take place. Also loading times are as slow as in Loadiine due to the shitty Ninty FAT driver.

For the Wii or vWii (both are technically the same when it comes to hard drive usage) you can use any drive size. 5 or even 8 TB are completely fine (although I don't know why you would need 8 TB lol). Just be sure to format it into one big FAT32 partition and use MBR instead of GPT.
If you don't know how to do that formatting magic, write back here and I'll try to help you.
There are however three things you should know when using a drive on the vWii:

1. Using 2,5" drives is only possible with an Y cable as the Wii U doesn't offer enough voltage on the USB ports where the good old Wii did. So a 2,5" drive takes up an extra USB slot (two in sum). You could use an active USB hub though.
2. Some drives go in sleep mode and some apps like USB Loader GX are not able to wake them up properly with standard settings so you need to use a workaround (changing USBLGX's IOS, using another homebrew first which doesn't have that issue like WiiFlow to boot into USBLGX or put USBLGX on the USB drive only and relaunch the forwarder channel for it until it launches)
3. If you attach a FAT32 drive to the Wii U it would complain about it with an annoying popup so you might want to "hide" it from the Wii U by using the PC tool UStealth. Almost all vWii homebrew apps will still be working fine with that.

So if you ask me for the "perfect setup" to date:
Use a 2 TB drive for the Wii U (method 1) and a FAT32 drive of any size for the vWii, hidden with Ustealth.