Hacking HDD for Wii U and vWii use?

[jayjay123]

*Edit 11 August 2013 - Solution has been found* - see here:
http://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-u-format-disk-nag-solved.352786/

Original query------------------------------------
I had an NTFS formatted drive for use in vWii with my backups in WiiFlow... all cool. I can't find a way around the 'Do you want to format...' message when the Wii U is booted, so I thought... perhaps if I just let it format the drive, then store the WiiFlow backups on the WBFS partition, problem solved, but it it seems the Wii U partition is not WBFS.

WBFS manager 3.0 on PC doesn't see it. Is this the case? Can a Wii U partition not be used in vWii mode for USB loaders? Has anyone found a way to disable the 'Do you want to format...' message on startup when a non Wii U partition is detected on USB?

TIA!

 

[BlackWizzard17]

There is no way of disabling it because that message is in the section of the wii u mode.
Try formatting your flash drive to fat 32 than putting your games on there and see if you get any more problems. I think the reason is that the wii u can't read a flash drive thats formatted NTSF or WBFS

 

[JiggyEyeJoe]

At the moment, there is no way to use one HDD for WiiU and vWii at the same time. The "format-message" can't be disabled, if you format the HDD to FAT32/NTFS/WBFS.

 

[Cyan]

There's a way to disable it : MBR or GPT partition should be gone.
- Format the drive in WBFS format without making a MBR partition table. (WBFS Starting at sector 0) <-- this will work on computer if the software is compatible with drives without partition.
or
- Alter the MBR MAGIC, and update your loader to support that new signature. <-- This will not work on computer anymore unless you edit the MBR manually.

If no partition table is found, the WiiU doesn't (didn't?) ask to format the drive.
Maybe nintendo changed that behavior and it's not checking the partition table only, I don't know, I never tried to connect a HDD to WiiU yet.

 

[jayjay123]

Thanks Cyan, I'll look into going that route. I'm not sure I understand this line:
"Alter the MBR MAGIC, and update your loader to support that new signature. <-- This will not work on computer anymore unless you edit the MBR manually."

Is Wii U drive able to rip games to USB in WiiFlow at the moment? How do I alter the MBR and how do I update the loader to support the new signature? I'll google in the mean time, but thank you again for your help!

All I really want to do is dedicate my 1Tb external drive to vWii without Wii U asking to format it every time. I would like to still be able to use WiiFlow to rip games to it if possible.

 

[Cyan]

Is Wii U drive able to rip games to USB in WiiFlow at the moment? Yes, you can rip Wii games to USB. just use an USBloader or CleanRip, as usual.

How do I alter the MBR? MBR is the Sector 0 of your Hard drive. To edit it, you need a program which lets you edit the first sector manually (Like an Hex editor on your Computer, HxD can do it). The "MAGIC" is the signature which is used to recognized the presence of something, Here it's the MBR signature (0x55AA) located at the end of the Sector 0 that you need to edit. If the WiiU doesn't find "0x55AA", it doesn't ask you to format the drive because it expect to find either a known partition table or WiiU formated partition table.
Edit it to anything else, but your partitions will not work on your computer anymore unless you put back 0x55AA.

how do I update the loader to support the new signature? You need to edit the sources code of the loader you want to use and replace 0x55AAto the signature you chose. then recompile the loader.
It will work only for Wii games, not for GameCube/EmuNAND/other Homebrew which expect to find a partition table.

It's not recommended to edit that sector without understanding what you are doing, it's dangerous and can result in data loss (if you reformat the drive accidentally, or mess the MBR).
If you don't know how to do this, it's not a solution for you.

Easier solution is to use WBFS partition starting at sector 0 (I think Linux can partition WBFS without MBR, maybe wwt too).

 

[jayjay123]

Excellent, thanks for the helpful post Cyan. It's amazing, with 20 years IT support and development experience, I still learn new stuff every day. I've as yet never had to edit the MBR of any drive so I've never had need of that information. It's great to know.

I think I will go with the WBFS partition (and keep a backup of all my games on spare NTFS partition) since I don't want to recompile WiiFlow every time a new version comes out. I'll see what can create WBFS partitions in the mean time.

Again, thanks for your help, Cyan - I've read many other posts around here and you certainly seem to be the most helpful guy on this forum.

 

[jayjay123]

I've deleted partitions on the drive and have tried and failed to format it as WBFS. WiiFlow doesn't seem to have that option, I've tried w wt on Windows but I can't find how to create a partition with it. The wwt -FORMAT command won't allow me to do anything. I'll take another look in the morning and perhaps try Linux.

 

[Cyan]

As you seem to be interested, I dumped my drive to explain to you how partitions are working.

I have a drive with 50GB FAT32 + 200GB WBFS partition.
I dumped my MBR and both partition's first sector.

Spoiler: sector's dump

Sector 0 (MBR)
	   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F  0123456789ABCDEF
====  ===============================================  ================
0000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0020  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0030  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0040  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0050  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0060  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0070  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0080  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0090  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00a0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00b0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00c0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00d0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00e0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0100  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0110  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0120  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0130  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0140  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0150  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0160  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0170  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0180  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0190  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
01a0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
01b0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 bc 0b 19 94 00 00 80 01  ................
01c0  01 00 0c fe ff ff 3f 00 00 00 6d 78 d7 03 00 00  ......?...mx....
01d0  c1 ff 07 fe ff ff ac 78 d7 03 d5 cc 44 19 00 00  .......x....D...
01e0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
01f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa  ..............U.

Sector 63 (Little Endian 3f 00 00 00 -> 0x0000003F = 63)
	   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F  0123456789ABCDEF
====  ===============================================  ================
0000  eb 58 90 4d 53 44 4f 53 35 2e 30 00 02 20 20 00  .X.MSDOS5.0..  .
0010  02 00 00 00 00 f8 00 00 3f 00 ff 00 3f 00 00 00  ........?...?...
0020  6d 78 d7 03 70 3d 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00  mx..p=..........
0030  01 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0040  80 00 29 3f 59 08 7c 4e 4f 20 4e 41 4d 45 20 20  ..)?Y.|NO NAME  
0050  20 20 46 41 54 33 32 20 20 20 33 c9 8e d1 bc f4    FAT32   3.....
0060  7b 8e c1 8e d9 bd 00 7c 88 4e 02 8a 56 40 b4 08  {......|.N..V@..
0070  cd 13 73 05 b9 ff ff 8a f1 66 0f b6 c6 40 66 0f  ..s......f...@f.
0080  b6 d1 80 e2 3f f7 e2 86 cd c0 ed 06 41 66 0f b7  ....?.......Af..
0090  c9 66 f7 e1 66 89 46 f8 83 7e 16 00 75 38 83 7e  .f..f.F..~..u8.~
00a0  2a 00 77 32 66 8b 46 1c 66 83 c0 0c bb 00 80 b9  *.w2f.F.f.......
00b0  01 00 e8 2b 00 e9 48 03 a0 fa 7d b4 7d 8b f0 ac  ...+..H...}.}...
00c0  84 c0 74 17 3c ff 74 09 b4 0e bb 07 00 cd 10 eb  ..t.<.t.........
00d0  ee a0 fb 7d eb e5 a0 f9 7d eb e0 98 cd 16 cd 19  ...}....}.......
00e0  66 60 66 3b 46 f8 0f 82 4a 00 66 6a 00 66 50 06  f`f;F...J.fj.fP.
00f0  53 66 68 10 00 01 00 80 7e 02 00 0f 85 20 00 b4  Sfh.....~.... ..
0100  41 bb aa 55 8a 56 40 cd 13 0f 82 1c 00 81 fb 55  [email protected]
0110  aa 0f 85 14 00 f6 c1 01 0f 84 0d 00 fe 46 02 b4  .............F..
0120  42 8a 56 40 8b f4 cd 13 b0 f9 66 58 66 58 66 58  [email protected]
0130  66 58 eb 2a 66 33 d2 66 0f b7 4e 18 66 f7 f1 fe  fX.*f3.f..N.f...
0140  c2 8a ca 66 8b d0 66 c1 ea 10 f7 76 1a 86 d6 8a  ...f..f....v....
0150  56 40 8a e8 c0 e4 06 0a cc b8 01 02 cd 13 66 61  [email protected]
0160  0f 82 54 ff 81 c3 00 02 66 40 49 0f 85 71 ff c3  [email protected]..
0170  4e 54 4c 44 52 20 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 00 00 00  NTLDR      .....
0180  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0190  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
01a0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0d 0a 52 65  ..............Re
01b0  74 69 72 65 7a 20 6c 65 73 20 64 69 73 71 75 65  tirez les disque
01c0  73 ff 0d 0a 45 72 72 2e 20 64 69 73 71 75 65 ff  s...Err. disque.
01d0  0d 0a 50 72 65 73 73 65 7a 20 75 6e 65 20 74 6f  ..Pressez une to
01e0  75 63 68 65 20 70 6f 75 72 20 72 65 64 82 6d 61  uche pour red.ma
01f0  72 72 65 72 0d 0a 00 00 00 ac c2 d0 00 00 55 aa  rrer..........U.

Sector 64452780 (little endian ac 78 d7 03 --> 0x03d778ac = 64452780)
	   0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F  0123456789ABCDEF
====  ===============================================  ================
0000  57 42 46 53 19 44 cc d5 09 16 00 00 01 01 01 01  WBFS.D..........
0010  01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01  ................
0020  01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01  ................
0030  01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01  ................
0040  01 01 01 01 01 01 01 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01  ................
0050  01 01 00 01 00 00 01 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01  ................
0060  01 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0070  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0080  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0090  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00a0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00b0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00c0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00d0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00e0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0100  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0110  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0120  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0130  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0140  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0150  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0160  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0170  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0180  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
0190  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
01a0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
01b0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
01c0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
01d0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
01e0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
01f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................

Spoiler: detail about the MBR

Sector 0 is the MBR, starting at "0x01be" it can contains 4 primary partition definitions (16 bytes each), followed by the Magic word (0x55 0xAA) (or AA55 as it's in fact in little endian).

Partition table :
Active flag (0x80=Active)
first usable CHS (cylinder/Head/Sector)
Partition type 0x0c = FAT32, 0x07=NTFS
End sector (of the drive? or it's screwed up in my mbr, they both share the same one)
Partition's first sector in LBA
Partition length in number of sectors

FAT32: 80 | 01 01 00 | 0c | fe ff ff | 3f 00 00 00 | 6d 78 d7 03
NTFS: 00 | 00 c1 ff | 07 | fe ff ff | ac 78 d7 03 | d5 cc 44 19

My WBFS partition is marked as "NTFS" (0x07), because the tool I used to partition to WBFS didn't set 0xBF in the MBR. USBloaders are checking partition headers instead of relying on the MBR's Partition_type.
The second partition is starting at LBA : "3f 00 00 00" (64) + "6d 78 d7 03" (64452717) = "ac 78 d7 03" (64452780)

Spoiler: About the WBFS partition

WBFS Table
Magic (always "WBFS")
Number of HDD Sectors in the partition
HDD Sector size (2^x)
wbfs sector size (2^x)
2 padding bytes
Game table [1 byte each up to the end of the sector]


First 4 bytes = WBFS (magic word), it's this magic word that USBLoaders are using to check if WBFS is present.
partition size : 19 44 cc d5 (big endian), 217056913920bytes (200GB)
HDD Sector size : 2^9 = 512 bytes
(virtual) WBFS sector size = 2 ^16 = 0x40 000 = 4194304 byte
Game table : each byte set to 0x01 means there's presence of 1 game.

HDD with sector size of 512byte, WBFS partition can hold up to 500 games and the last two bytes are used as Game's presence too.
You can see that last two byte doesn't contain 55AA, while FAT32 partition does. FAT32 use the same Magic than MBR.

I don't know if you will find that information useful, but it's always interesting to learn new things

 

[jayjay123]

That's great info, thanks Cyan! I'll keep you posted if I come right.

 

[jayjay123]

Ok, I had empty GPT partition to start with and formatted WBFS using CFG loader. I'm a bit confused about how to create WBFS without GPT or MBR. Is there any way in Windows to initialize a disk without partition? Can I remove GPT or MBR somehow? Perhaps in Linux with gparted or similar?
Thanks again!

 

[Cyan]

I found this thread, with linux tools : http://gbatemp.net/threads/formatting-to-wbfs-in-linux.193948/
http://code.google.com/p/linux-wbfs-manager/wiki/Usage
but it doesn't seems to let you choose the starting sector.

I'm sure there's a program out there to do it.
I even added support to drives without MBR to USBLoaderGX few weeks ago because a user had such a drive.
I didn't do a lot of research, but I know it's possible.

I don't know linux well.
Maybe you can specify a drive instead of the partition ? /dev/hda instead of /dev/hda1 ?

Good luck on finding a solution, and once done please let us know if the wiiU still prompt to format the drive.

 

[jayjay123]

OK, I think Active@ Disk Editor can do what I need it to do. I'm testing now.
http://www.disk-editor.org/

So here's my drive, it still sees it as MBR partitioning 'style'

If you look at the boot sector (starting at 0x1BE) it's all 0's:

I'm going to see if it's still seen by Wii in a minute

*EDIT*
OK, the good news is Wii U doesn't see the disk. The bad news is, neither does CFG Usb loader, so I can't create / format a WBFS partition. I'll try restoring the MBR, formatting WBFS, then zeroing the boot sector and seeing what happens...

 

[hippojay]

I've done this for my wiiU and used it over the last few weeks and it works fine.
1. Use HxD (http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/) to update boot signature to 55AB
2. Recompiled cfg USB loader to use 55AB as the boot signature (I also tried wiiflow which worked too)

My wiiu now no longer complains about two drives or non-wiiu drives being connected. It's pretty straight forward, as long as you are careful when directly editing the drive.

It's pretty stable, but it does mean that closed source apps (such as devolution) can't run with the USB drive. I've had to put all of this on a 32gb SD card.

 

[jayjay123]

Thanks for the reply Hippo J - where am I looking in the source for the bit to edit (sorry, I haven't looked yet, I'll take a look shortly). Oh, I'm using WiiFlow... did you do CFG Usbloader?
That's very helpful info and I think it's the easiest solution by far from what I've tried.

 

[hippojay]

No problem - it's these two lines for wiiflow:

./source/devicemounter/PartitionHandle.h:38:#define MBR_SIGNATURE                       0x55AB
./source/devicemounter/PartitionHandle.cpp:404: else if(*((u16 *)(buffer + 0x1FE)) == 0x55AB)

For CFG (this change should allow both normal and modified drives):

./source/partition.c:337:      if (buf[0x1FE] == 0x55 && ( buf[0x1FF] == 0xAA ||  buf[0x1FF] == 0xAB ) ) {

 

[jayjay123]

Excellent, thanks Hippo and Cyan. I'll document the whole process in my opening post when done in case it's useful to anyone else.
Very cool

 

[jayjay123]

Hmm... any idea why I'd get this error on compile:

c:/devkitPro/Source/WiiFlow/resources/wiiflow_game_booter/source/videopatch.c:216:3: error: 'TVPal574IntDfScale' undeclared here (not in a function)
Nothing has changed in that file or related .h's afaik.

Ok... I had to get another libogc for devkitPro from here
https://code.google.com/p/open-wiiflow-mod/downloads/list

Once I got that it's fine... going to test shortly

*EDIT*
OK, so Wiiflow is now seeing the partition with 55AB in boot sector, but it crashes and I get stack dump when I try to launch a game on the partition
I edit the boot sector and write 55AA and all is fine. I'll see if I have an issue with my code and try again later.

 

[Cyan]

If you delete the MBR completely (all 0x00), then the loaders can't format the drive as they are looking for existing partitions and can't find any.

Libogc is now using TVPal576IntDfScale (576 instead of 574. It was a typo)

What's best is to edit the source to allow both 55AA and 55AB, so you don't need to recompile or restart another version of the homebrew to swap HDD.


I thought we could add a feature in USBloaders to alter/restore the MBR signature, it would prevent user to edit their MBR on computer. But I don't like the idea to edit partition table casually. I prefer that users who understand the risk/problem are doing it themselves.

 

[jayjay123]

Yeah, I agree, Cyan. So I added option for both 54AA and 55AB into the WiiFlow code but missed one more variable - EBR_SIGNATURE. I'm not sure if that's the issue, but I'm compiling now to test again. I'll test with CFG as well.

WOOHOO! Problem solved, EBR_SIGNATURE variable was the trouble. I'll share the details for anyone else wanting to do this in the opening post shortly.

What do you guys recommend - I'd ultimately like the original source for CFG / WiiFlow to include this option. I'll write a windoze program to toggle the boot sector 55AA / 55BB for anyone wanting to hide / show it and share with the community as well. Who do I contact to include these minor adjustments in the code? Should I contact the wii-flow-mod guy or the original dev?

I can't seem to get the CFG source - the url mentioned here
https://code.google.com/p/cfg-loader/source/checkout
doesn't exist:

http://cfg-loader.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cfg-loader-read-only