Hacking Converting a WBFS hard drive with games on it to FAT32

[Nealla30]

I have a 500 Gb HDD - WBFS - that has been working fine with USB Loader Gx until recently. I want to switch to using Configurable Loader or WiiFlow or whatever, but have been unable to successfully run any programs to convert it to FAT32 without having to extract 200 ISOs onto another hard drive first!!
Is it possible to convert it to FAT32 while keeping everything intact? WBFS2FAT just fails and will not run.

 

[Cyan]

that's the only tool available to convert.
It fails to launch or fails to convert?

To convert, you need a clean partition without error. You can try Wit to fix/check the partition first. Maybe you have corrupted games. You need to remove them first.

You can also use the manual method : extract all games one by one with WiiBackupManager (but some games might already be corrupted, WBFS partition has that problem).
You can use the Sha1 option in WBM to check the game's integrity.

 

[Nealla30]

Cyan - Thank you. The WBFS2FAT won't even start. When you hit SCAN on the appropriate Drive it says PERMISSION DENIED. (and, yes, I have logged in as a local administrator in many ways on the laptop!) So won't even start the conversion. My drive is only 1 partition - all WBFS. Only thing on the drive is 200 odd games.
BUT I wonder.......I wonder if some corrupt games on my drive is the entire reason USB Loader GX isn't working anymore in the first place!
SO with that said - I have never used WiiBackupManager. Can I use that to check the drive without having to extract all games? I'll go download WBM now and try it.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Cyan - Thank you. The WBFS2FAT won't even start. When you hit SCAN on the appropriate Drive it says PERMISSION DENIED. (and, yes, I have logged in as a local administrator in many ways on the laptop!) So won't even start the conversion. My drive is only 1 partition - all WBFS. Only thing on the drive is 200 odd games.
BUT I wonder.......I wonder if some corrupt games on my drive is the entire reason USB Loader GX isn't working anymore in the first place!
SO with that said - I have never used WiiBackupManager. Can I use that to check the drive without having to extract all games? I'll go download WBM now and try it.

Did you go to Start->All Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt and right click->Run as administrator? I find that sometimes it's needed to specifically run something as administrator even though I already am logged in as an administrator and I have UAC disabled as well.

 

[Nealla30]

The Real Jdbye - yup! Had tried that too. Still failed.
@ Cyan - Thank you! Running WBM SHA 1 under VERIFY DATA now. Will take a while to run BUT if colors are any indication, sheesh - for every game that is checked that comes back green, there are 2 coming back red! Thanks! Seems I may need to delete a LOT of games off the drive.
Another question for you - I ALSO have another 500 Gb HDD that is empty. Formatted in FAT32. Does WBFS Manager allow you to copy games from a WBFS drive to a FAT32 drive? I am thinking I need to copy my good games right over to the new drive!

 

[The Real Jdbye]

The Real Jdbye - yup! Had tried that too. Still failed.
@ Cyan - Thank you! Running WBM SHA 1 under VERIFY DATA now. Will take a while to run BUT if colors are any indication, sheesh - for every game that is checked that comes back green, there are 2 coming back red! Thanks! Seems I may need to delete a LOT of games off the drive.
Another question for you - I ALSO have another 500 Gb HDD that is empty. Formatted in FAT32. Does WBFS Manager allow you to copy games from a WBFS drive to a FAT32 drive? I am thinking I need to copy my good games right over to the new drive!

WBFS Manager and Wii Backup Manager are two different apps, just so you know.
I'm 99% sure Wii Backup Manager will allow you to do that, it certainly allows copying games between drives as well as converting between formats.

 

[Cyan]

WBFS manager is probably the one who messed your games (overwriting clusters already used by another game, incorrectly marking un/used block etc.)

Wii Backup Manager works with WBFS, FAT32 and NTFS partitions.
You can copy games from one drive to another (you have two "drive" tabs, load two partitions at the same times then select the games from one and use the "transfer to..." option)

It will be long if you have 500GB of games, but it's maybe a solution if wbfs2fat refuse to work.


About the corrupted games:
It can be only a little part in a game which is bad, so the game works fine when you play it as long as you don't try to access the corrupted part.
Checking the SHA1 is the best choice to check if the game is good. There's another command line tool (Wit) to do it but it has the same results.
When using FAT32 or NTFS, adding a new game won't corrupt old ones anymore.

 

[Nealla30]

Thank you both. (yes, I used the wrong term - I am very aware that WBFS Manager and Wii Back Up Manager are two different tools. Up until this week, I only used WBFS Manager and I do realize that it is probably what caused problems!)


Do either of you know how to interpret the Log from WBM? I mean, at this point, I am going to use Wii BackUp Manager to copy games all my games (either from WBFS format and/or iso) over to the new cleanly formatted FAT 32 hard drive. Thank you!

BUT out of curiosity - it took about 3 hours to run that "SHA-1 Hash - Verify All " tool. And when it was done, I am not sure what I was looking at.
It was a list of all the games on there that it checked and literally half of them were in RED and half were in GREEN. Are all the red ones corrupt??
I have the Log File in HTML or Text format. It's long and I have no idea what all the FAILS mean!

 

[Cyan]

I can take a look at your log if you want, but it's probably what you think. Red is bad

either it's the partition which are missing (should happen with Smash bros if you didn't dump the additional partitions), or your game is corrupted.
The text written on the log should give a hint at what's wrong.

 

[Nealla30]

Thank you. I know - this drive is shot. BUT I guess what I am wondering is if it is worth hanging onto AS IS for now and when I get the FAT32 drive done, any games not on there, if they are on this WBFS bad / corrupt drive, but are GREEN and still salvageable, could I at least copy the green, non corrupt games onto the FAT32 drive? Or is the entire drive shot and should totally be wiped and reformatted in FAT32! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!
I uploaded the log file - just an FYI - I mounted the drive, it found all the games, I did that VERIFY tool, then unmounted. And did the entire thing again. JUST to be sure! So the log is double. THANK YOU!!

 

[cracker]

How do you know it is 'shot'? Did SMART say so?

 

[Cyan]

I don't know if the the Cyclic redundancy is the name used by WiiBackupManager to tell the CRC failed, or if it's the result returned by the drive itself when reading the data.

in both case, I can assume the data read doesn't match the expected data (the drive keep a CRC of the sector to verify if the read data is correct or bad, and it's probably corrupted or unreadable).
So, I hope for you it's only corrupted, and not a dying HDD.
Does it make ticking noises when using it?

 

[Nealla30]

Nope. No ticking / clicking noises. I now have a FAT32 hard drive with over 220 games on it. SO I am reformatting this corrupt drive to FAT32 and we'll see if it's still good. I have a feeling it is. Like you said, I am pretty sure the drive is fine. It is just all the corrupt games on there!!

So, with the FAT32 drive and games, I do NOT want to use USB GX Loader anymore I presume! Configurable USB Loader seems like the one everyone likes. You agree? If so, what files do I need on the SD Card to get that loader to work?
THANK YOU !!!!

 

[Nealla30]

THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH!!!! I found the Wiki Guide on this site for the USB CFG Loader. Got all the updates I needed! THANK YOU!!!!! THANK YOU!!!! SOOOO appreciate all this. Thank you!

 

[oggzee]

All top loaders supports FAT32 including GX, WiiFlow and CFG of course.

 

[Cyan]

all loaders have the same compatibilities (more or less, depending on settings).
The loader you want to use is only a visual preference.
Wiiflow has plugin system which let you list/launch ROMS from other emulators directly from the loader's interface.

You should check this comparator:
http://gbatemp.net/threads/backup-loaders-comparison-chart.333364/