Hacking FAT32 vs NTFS vs WBFS

[infinete]

Thank you highsteve. I think it is time for me to get with the times too then

 

[ToddofWar420]

go with fat32 ditch the WBFS format on the hard drive. that format has always had problems. back your .wbfs games/iso's to your computer.(just in case). this way if some thing does go wrong you don't have to spend a lot of time redumping. i have yet to have any problems with my hd it's been fat32 for over a year. an still works like the day i got.
@etheboss. how is that a contradiction? some of his games are .wbfs format. (just like 90% of the users on this forum).. an his harddrive is WBFS format.

Its WBFS file format on NTFS/FAT hdd OR a WBFS formatted HDD, it can't be both.

@[member='wii knee']: you are probably right...maybe i am nitpicking a bit, but i just want it to be clear.

My Hdd was all WBFS with iso's saved on it, but now I got it converted to FAT

@Etheboss: Thanks for letting me know. I have Wiiflow and I've tried to use that option but it just tells me it fails everytime I try to load a game

 

[Haloman800]

NTFS all the way

Store virtually an file size (fat32 has limitation of

 

[Etheboss]

[@Etheboss: Thanks for letting me know. I have Wiiflow and I've tried to use that option but it just tells me it fails everytime I try to load a game

Try different revs (preferably the lastest), and also update your cIOS to at least D2X V8...a lot of changes has been done lately to get better results with emunand/save game...thats maybe why it does not work for you.

 

[DwightSchrute]

I'm still a little confused as to what the contradiction was with what I said, but if it helps, I currently have a 1TB external hard drive, but it's in whatever format it defaults to and it only has stuff from my computer on it. I'm currently using an 8GB flash drive to store my 4 Wii games. The flash drive is in .wbfs format and my games are all in .wbfs format because there isn't room on my flash drive to fit the .iso files. The .iso files that i do have for the games are stored on my computer. I wouldn't have cared about formatting my external hard drive and using it to play games, because I was content with the 4 Wii games that I had, but when I found out that I could use a HDD to rip games directly to the hard drive that became the main reason that I wanted to format my hard drive. I hope that cleared things up.

Now, does someone have a link to a simple tutorial that shows how to make multiple partitions on my HDD? I want to have around half of it FAT32 and the other half NTFS in case there comes a time where I have many large files that I want to back up on my external hard drive.

 

[PsyBlade]

.wbfs files are images of WBFS
they do not contain the game directly
instead it does (as the name says) contain a full wbfs filesystem
which then in turn contains the game

WBFS partitions on the other hand do contain the games directly
not other wbfs filesystems

two partitions are created the same way a a single one
you just do it two times (and do not use the maximum size for the first one)

 

[ToddofWar420]

[@[member='Etheboss']: Thanks for letting me know. I have Wiiflow and I've tried to use that option but it just tells me it fails everytime I try to load a game

Try different revs (preferably the lastest), and also update your cIOS to at least D2X V8...a lot of changes has been done lately to get better results with emunand/save game...thats maybe why it does not work for you.

I have just installed the latest cIOS249[56]-d2x-v9-beta(r47), did a full nand dump using Simple FS Dumper 0.42 and place it on the root of SD card, and even changed the path in the wiiflow.ini. And I'm still getting the message 'enabling emu after reload failed!' Would you or anybody else have any suggestions to what I'm missing or just plain forgetting to do? I'm just wanting to be able to save my games without beating up my Wii's memory. Thanks.

 

[Etheboss]

Check this part in your Wiiflow.ini...

[NAND]
disable=
The value behind the = should be "no" (or false, maybe someone can confirm)

 

[ToddofWar420]

I just tried both 'no' and 'false' and neither seemed to work. I don't know what the deal is. Would you happen to have any other suggestions??

 

[Mantis41]

Having experimented with all 3 file systems over the last couple of days on the same drive I am in a good position to answer this.

I have finally decided to update the file system on my WBFS drive. The conversion utility wbfs2fat worked great.

I have found the single FAT32 partition had compatibility problems with Wiiflow, was slower than WBFS when opening the loader, was slower to run up the game and possibly marginally slower in the game than WBFS.

I then converted the FAT32 to NTFS and created a small FAT32 partition on the same drive for homebrew. This I found had a lot less compatibility problems and was a lot faster in all aspects than FAT32 and WBFS.

My recommendation for best compatibility and speed is NTFS for games and a second very small FAT32 partition for homebrew.

*If you have any problems with the loaders starting or detecting the drive I would recomed deleting your old setup from the APP and root of the drive and starting a fresh. This solved lots of problems for me after I had wasted some time trouble shooting various problems*

 

[Etheboss]

good choice, but if you use emunand, make the FAT32 partition bigger.

 

[snakepliskin2334]

na man stick with ntfs that way you can also put movies on your hard drive and use wiimc to watch em and you can store music to !!

 

[shortz1994]

na man stick with ntfs that way you can also put movies on your hard drive and use wiimc to watch em and you can store music to !!

? i have 2 fat32 drives 1 for games only, an the second is for movies/music. wiimc works regardless. plus it's cool cause i don't use wiimc all that much any more seeing my tv has a usb port, an i didn't have to redo the hard drive. and messing around with doing a different format.(plus i can just plug it in to the computer an use it with out problems.)

 

[Mantis41]

good choice, but if you use emunand, make the FAT32 partition bigger.

Should the fat32 be at the start or end of the drive? I currenty have mine at the end after the NTFS partition.

Edit: I made the Fat32 about 8GB. Do you think it needs to be bigger?

 

[PsyBlade]

Should the fat32 be at the start or end of the drive? I currenty have mine at the end after the NTFS partition.

iirc HBC only can read from the first partition

(well the first entry in the partition table to be exact
while generally this is the first on disk too, it does not need to be,
it is quicker change that if you know how to do it, as opposed to copying the data around
but some tools change it back without asking)

 

[Mantis41]

Should the fat32 be at the start or end of the drive? I currenty have mine at the end after the NTFS partition.

iirc HBC only can read from the first partition

(well the first entry in the partition table to be exact
while generally this is the first on disk too, it does not need to be,
it is quicker change that if you know how to do it, as opposed to copying the data around
but some tools change it back without asking)

HBC seemed ok but most utilities failed to write once run, for example syscheck ran but would not write the check file. I'll shuffle it around and see what happens.

UPDATE: Placing the FAT32 at the start of the drive has fixed the write issues. All is working ok now.

 

[DwightSchrute]

I'm a bit confused now. What all can NTFS do better than FAT32 besides load things faster? Is it possible to rip games to the FAT32 partition and then use my computer to transfer them to the NTFS partition to make them run faster? Also, and sorry for all of the questions, but what is nand emulation exactly? I've looked around for info on it, but I still don't really understand it.

 

[Mantis41]

I'm a bit confused now. What all can NTFS do better than FAT32 besides load things faster? Is it possible to rip games to the FAT32 partition and then use my computer to transfer them to the NTFS partition to make them run faster? Also, and sorry for all of the questions, but what is nand emulation exactly? I've looked around for info on it, but I still don't really understand it.

Fat32 is an old file system. It is prone to fragmentation and slow downs and is generally not the most efficient way to store data on a HDD. NTFS is better and appears to be quicker when used on the Wii.

Nand emulation uses a nand copy on the HDD instead of using the Wii internal memory. The internal memory you are limited to 512MB to store saves, wiiware and channels. Using NAND emulation you can have a lot more installed without having to swap it to and from the SD. You can basically have as many saves, channels and Wiiware as you like.

If you are thinking of using NAND emulation you will need 2 partitions, one for backups and the loader and the other for the nand emulation and homebrew. You can use the SD but it is too slow to be useful.

Edit: Also with nand emulation you don't need to worry about installing a bad wad and bricking the system.

 

[ToddofWar420]

Is there anyway to convert from FAT32 to NTFS without losing any of my games?? I tried to do it with Windows Command but it fails everytime and I do it exactly but its says convert failed when done. Is there like a program out there that can do this without the hassles? Thanks.

 

[DarkShinigami]

Is there anyway to convert from FAT32 to NTFS without losing any of my games?? I tried to do it with Windows Command but it fails everytime and I do it exactly but its says convert failed when done. Is there like a program out there that can do this without the hassles? Thanks.

try doing a format that should be a choice of the format type(i think)