Hacking Best Wii Clean Dump Database

[PityOnU]

I've been using CleanRip to dump clean *.iso's of my Wii games. However, for two of my games (Last Story and Kirby Anniversary Edition) their hash is not included in the *.dat file downloaded by CleanRip.

Is there a better or more complete Wii *.dat file available?

 

[themanuel]

Clean rip uses the redump database, which is arguably the best. Gametdb.com has hashes for some games, which you can use to supplement. Finally, if you are concerned about the integrity of the image, simply run an SHA-1 hash on the game using Wii Backup Manager. All Wii discs have their hash numbers stored inside, allowing you to verify their contents, even after trimming the ISO to save space or converting to WBFS.
I no longer keep track of the original MD1 hash of the image after I dumped it. I converted all my images to parsed ISO's and verified them with the internal SHA-1 hash.

 

[PityOnU]

Clean rip uses the redump database, which is arguably the best. Gametdb.com has hashes for some games, which you can use to supplement. Finally, if you are concerned about the integrity of the image, simply run an SHA-1 hash on the game using Wii Backup Manager. All Wii discs have their hash numbers stored inside, allowing you to verify their contents, even after trimming the ISO to save space or converting to WBFS.
I no longer keep track of the original MD1 hash of the image after I dumped it. I converted all my images to parsed ISO's and verified them with the internal SHA-1 hash.

Thanks for the info. I managed to verify the content of the .iso's using the SHA-1 as you recommended. Looks like the rip worked in that sense.

I also got ahold of the GameTDB CRC database like you recommended. They seem to have a lot more titles available over Redump. However, I am having a lot of trouble importing that database into RomCenter 3.7.1. The GameTDB database is in .xml format, whereas RomCenter uses some proprietary .dat formatting. I tried converting formats using the Logiqx DatUtil program, but everytime I convert I get a bunch of errors that causes it to get rid of all of the CRC's, making the output datfile pretty much useless. Exact errors below:

C:\Users\Kent\Downloads\dutil246>.\datutil.exe -o romcenter.dat -f romcenter2 ".
.\wiitdb\wiitdb.xml"
===============================================================================
DatUtil v2.46 (13 April 2009) - using DatLib v2.36 (13 April 2009)
Written by Logiqx (http://www.logiqx.com/)
===============================================================================
Processing ..\wiitdb\wiitdb.xml:
  Loading the file into memory (first 8.0KB)...
  Identified the file as being 'Generic XML' format.
  Specified the save format as being 'RomCenter 2.50'.
  Loading the file into memory (21.39MB)...
  Calling the 'Generic XML' pre-parser/tokenizer...
  Storing the tokenized dat within the actual dat structure...
Processing complete!
 
Loaded 6772 games (0 parents, 0 clones, 6772 others) and 0 resources.
 
Note: There are some warnings for the processing (see datutil.log for details).
 
Note: Fixes were applied to the data file (see datutil.log for details).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saved romcenter.dat in RomCenter 2.50 format.
 
Note: Some game information could not be saved (see datutil.log for details).

And the log file:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warning Summary
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Game warnings:
 
    Duplicate Name
    Duplicate Description
    Duplicate CRC (i.e. all ROMs match another game)
 
ROM warnings:
 
    Missing Size
    Missing SHA1
    Size Conflict
    CRC Conflict
    SHA1 Conflict
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fix Summary
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Game information that was changed:
 
    Description
 
ROM information that was changed:
 
    CRC
    SHA1
    Status
    Duplicate
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Features that were lost by saving in RomCenter 2.50 format
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Emulator has been lost entirely!
 
ROM information that has been lost:
 
    SHA1
    Status (may have used zero and complemented CRCs instead)

Any suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong here?

 

[Yepi69]

I think you should use USB Loader GX to rip .iso of your Wii games.

Thats what I do anyways.

 

[PityOnU]

I think you should use USB Loader GX to rip .iso of your Wii games.

Thats what I do anyways.

Is USB Loader GX able to rip full .iso's? I thought it automatically trimmed everything. Granted, I've only ever used it with a WBFS formatted drive, so maybe I'm totally off the mark.

For clarity, I want to end up with 1:1 copies of the original disks, garbage data and all.

 

[Yepi69]

No sorry, USB Loader rips and trimms, I don't understand why would you want an ISO with garbage data.

 

[PityOnU]

No sorry, USB Loader rips and trimms, I don't understand why would you want an ISO with garbage data.

For me, it's important to have a 1:1 copy for situations in the future. I'm young(er) now, but maybe one day I would want to share these games with my kids or something. Sharing a copy that isn't exactly the same as the original in and of itself completely eliminates the possibility of whoever I share it with having the same experience that I did. Obviously, it can be argued that there are no fundamental differences between a 1:1 and a trimmed Wii game, but based simply on principle I'm sure you can see where I'm coming from.

There's also an historical appreciation behind making 1:1 backups. For example, in the not-to-distant future, I can see mechanical media such as hard disks, CD's, and DVD's disappearing entirely. If a 1:1 copy of the original disk is maintained, it can serve as an educational exercise for future intellectuals. "See little Timmy, back in the day when everything was so slow, data had to be aligned properly on disk to reduce seek times, necessitating the need for padding data." Similar to, do you remember the last time you defragmented your hard drive? I don't (I have a SSD).

Finally, if I have a 1:1 copy it (should be) relatively easy to compare it against the original to verify it is a clean rip, and it will allow me to trimmed, modify, hack, etc. it in the future as if I had the disk right there. Doing the same is not always so easy with trimmed or modified data because who is to say the data in my trimmed version matches the data in your trimmed version? Especially when each were potentially created at different times, locations, or using different tools.

 

[Yepi69]

For me, it's important to have a 1:1 copy for situations in the future. I'm young(er) now, but maybe one day I would want to share these games with my kids or something. Sharing a copy that isn't exactly the same as the original in and of itself completely eliminates the possibility of whoever I share it with having the same experience that I did. Obviously, it can be argued that there are no fundamental differences between a 1:1 and a trimmed Wii game, but based simply on principle I'm sure you can see where I'm coming from.

There's also an historical appreciation behind making 1:1 backups. For example, in the not-to-distant future, I can see mechanical media such as hard disks, CD's, and DVD's disappearing entirely. If a 1:1 copy of the original disk is maintained, it can serve as an educational exercise for future intellectuals. "See little Timmy, back in the day when everything was so slow, data had to be aligned properly on disk to reduce seek times, necessitating the need for padding data." Similar to, do you remember the last time you defragmented your hard drive? I don't (I have a SSD).

Finally, if I have a 1:1 copy it (should be) relatively easy to compare it against the original to verify it is a clean rip, and it will allow me to trimmed, modify, hack, etc. it in the future as if I had the disk right there. Doing the same is not always so easy with trimmed or modified data because who is to say the data in my trimmed version matches the data in your trimmed version? Especially when each were potentially created at different times, locations, or using different tools.

Oh i see, didn't thought of that the way you put it.

 

[themanuel]

For me, it's important to have a 1:1 copy for situations in the future. I'm young(er) now, but maybe one day I would want to share these games with my kids or something. Sharing a copy that isn't exactly the same as the original in and of itself completely eliminates the possibility of whoever I share it with having the same experience that I did. Obviously, it can be argued that there are no fundamental differences between a 1:1 and a trimmed Wii game, but based simply on principle I'm sure you can see where I'm coming from.

There's also an historical appreciation behind making 1:1 backups. For example, in the not-to-distant future, I can see mechanical media such as hard disks, CD's, and DVD's disappearing entirely. If a 1:1 copy of the original disk is maintained, it can serve as an educational exercise for future intellectuals. "See little Timmy, back in the day when everything was so slow, data had to be aligned properly on disk to reduce seek times, necessitating the need for padding data." Similar to, do you remember the last time you defragmented your hard drive? I don't (I have a SSD).

Finally, if I have a 1:1 copy it (should be) relatively easy to compare it against the original to verify it is a clean rip, and it will allow me to trimmed, modify, hack, etc. it in the future as if I had the disk right there. Doing the same is not always so easy with trimmed or modified data because who is to say the data in my trimmed version matches the data in your trimmed version? Especially when each were potentially created at different times, locations, or using different tools.

I used to think just like you and went through some discussions with Fig94 about it (the WBM guy), but ended up convinced there was not point in keeping 1:1 copies, when you can verify the hashes. As Yepi said, Wii games fill up the unneeded disc space with garbage data. For example, Wii Play has 94 MB worth of game data and the rest of the 4.3 GB is garbage. Since I was never sold on permanently storing the images as wbfs files, I settled for sparse ISO's, which retain the exact original format but eliminate the garbage data. As such, Windows reports the full size of the image but size on disc shows up as the real space they take up in the hard drive.
If hard drive space doesn't bother you, then it's no big deal but all the games I have average 2.6 GB in size including the big ones (Metroid Prime Trilogy and Other M, and Smash Bros.).