Hacking WBFS conversion is destructive?

[Dogway]

CheatFreak47: I'm going to explain it as if it was to a toddler. There is a thing called collections, they are verified rips done in known ways, so when you use one, you know what to expect. The only way to know if a rip belongs to a collection or not is via hash check, if I modify the image then nobody knows what my file is. This is done to prevent running into issues with modified games, hacked, or simply bad dumps. Have you ever heard about no-intro? there you go.

I know what I have so integrity preservation was only in case one day I wanted to upload back the ISO to someone, so I'm not really annoyed with this, is the community in the end who loses, I'm not a hardcore collector by any means.

W hat: Thank you, that makes sense, that would get the opposite of WIT. LA Machineguns would weight like 4Gb minimum (which is the supposed junk data as seen by the 320Mb compressed size of WIT). I thought decrypted junk data was filled with zeros or something like that. So I think I will go the WIA route and keep all my collection in that format. I will simply write down the converted CRC so in case one day one file gets corrupted, I know it did.

 

[Doux91]

Like everyone here we dont understand why you want the Iso integrity, first if you download a game or you copy and original disc to your HDD throught a loader you are doing something wrong because Nintendo doesnt support the HBC and loader cIOS, or something, theres not online anymore then i cant understand why do want the integrity, till i know a wbfs is an ISO scrubbed just that the wbfs shows the real size no like the ISO, but i guess you could use the option unscrub to get the ISO of 4GB in wiiscrubber, and i think that will be the integrity you want

 

[Dogway]

Everyone not.
I replied above, if you want to know why integrity is important read about no-intro, or this link for image based games: http://pastebin.com/1hbjtw33
This is "something else" and you might not agree but if you like games you have to respect that there's a serious archival and preservation project like those mentioned on link. Between a lossy and lossless compression at the same compression ratio, what would you choose? Did that spark something?

 

[Doux91]

thats too long for read it, and even with the wbfs you wont lose anything or win, the wbfs is a file without the 1 and 0 for complete the game, I have more than 2 years playing wii games, and i've never had trouble using it, lossy... you are not ripping the game just copying you say lossy and lossless like when you copy the wii games you are converting the videos, textures, audios, etcs but you are not, because you just copy the files that you need, but everything i said to you just was a suggestion (sugerencia. however i could say that in english) and i guess you want to burn the game right, and well is your life y no debemos meternos

 

[Dogway]

If you don't bother reading then I don't bother and shouldn't argue with you anymore. I read the WIA thread from top to bottom.

 

[Foxi4]

Here's a thought - don't use WBFS. Use FAT32 and normal *.iso's, it's just a better option. As far as file integrity is concerned, if you're collecting the releases then you should not trim them or delete any of the disc's partitions, if you just intend to use them then you should trim and cut out useless partitions to your heart's content (with a few exceptions that do not work without certain additional partitions).

 

[Dogway]

If size difference wouldn't be so large I would, but with WIA I can save up to 50% of storage at average, that's too much to overlook. This is the first system that I have to alter releases for size reasons, didn't need for GC, PS2, PSP or 3DS, only Wii has this problem.
So I made up my mind already but some people here just like arguing for the sake of it...

 

[Foxi4]

FAT32 has way too many benefits to be overlooked too - native homebrew support, Gamecube support via DIOS MIOS, multimedia support... I said "thanks, but no thanks" to WBFS ages ago and I suggest you do too. You can still trim stuff out when using ISO's anyways, the file size benefits are negligable if you manage the drive correctly. Perhaps you should consider a higher capacity HDD instead of opting for an outdated file system.

 

[Dogway]

For storage I will use WIA, not WBFS. I don't know what you mean with FAT32, when I want to play I convert my WIA image to WBFS and put inside a FAT32 drive, is that what you mean? I don't know exactly what are those benefits, I have some space on HDD but not enough to spare, specially when a 320Mb game needs 4Gb of storage, that broke my heart.

 

[Doux91]

dont take it personally but that text is too longer, im not sure you argue with me you were fighting with the others not with me i just gave you a suggestion but if you dont want, you dont want i cant force you to do something just if i have a weapon and Im infront of you but how i told you its your life

 

[Dogway]

By the way, instead of WIA + external compressor, I used WBSF + external compressor and gained an extra 33% of space. From 320Mb to 200Mb.

 

[W hat]

WIT + WIA will provide the best compression if you know how to use it. The file size difference you see is almost definitely because the WBFS tool you used only kept the DATA partition, and deleted the UPDATE partition. WIT can be told to delete the UPDATE partition if desired. It is a pretty useless partition, containing system updates and updated IOS (system module, not ISO).

WIT + WIA additionally removes hashes from the ISO and computes them again when re-building it. This saves 3% of disc size.

 

[Lumstar]

Easy enough solution for this topic, backup your untouched ISOs elsewhere. Such as an HDD or blu-ray.

The Wii doesn't need immediate access to it.

 

[Dogway]

W hat: This was my procedure, I ignore if by default WIT removes the update partition.
wit COPY --progress --compression NONE file.iso file2.wia
wit COPY --progress file.wia file2.wbfs

For ISO files I would need like almost 3 BD-R DL, while I'm sure that with WIA format I can get away with a single BD-R DL. It's too much of a difference, I can forgive a 20 or maybe 30%, but not a 50 or 60% save of space.

 

[Jayro]

What is Dogway's big issue with wanting to keep the CRC perfectly in-tact? As long as the game plays after compressing the ISO to /wbfs, what's the big deal? There's no need to question the CRC or file integrity unless the game starts locking-up or stops playing altogether.

 

[smf]

I fixed wbfs_file.exe to take all the partitions so that super smash brothers works properly. Another advantage is you can verify that the file hasn't become corrupted. Using either http://code.google.com/p/oowii/downloads/list or wit.

wbfs files on a fat32 partition has the highest compatibility rate & the update partitions are so small that I consider them insignificant.

 

[tswntk]

I understand tosec and the collector's mentality, so no argue over that.

I am not too sure about WIA vs wbfs but:

1. WIA is not a popular format. Does it remove only junk data and not other partition data?

2. wbfs is a popular format, you can run them with USBloader directly.

if you are using windows, there are a lot of GUI tools to help batch convert isos to wbfs (WiiBackupManager comes into mind)
By default, wbfs will remove update partitions but you can opt to keep all partitions and that way it might be equivalent to WIA.

making a WIA then convert it to wbfs seems redundant and I don't know if wit would remove the update partition in the process.

 

[Dogway]

If games are known to show issues without partitions I would rather keep them.
I will check wich of both WIA or WBFS are smaller with partitions untouched and use that. I have no problem WIA being not popular, I copy the program along the images for whenever I want to convert them to another format, conversion is fast too, so no issues there.

For WBFS I need to look for necessary flags: http://wit.wiimm.de/wit/cmd-copy.html
Some file might need splitting, others fake signing? or whatever is required, I better study it before proceed. I would need to either way when I want to play a game a conversion to WBFS is needed, so WIA (storage state) to WBFS (play state) is not redundant at all.

 

[tswntk]

super smash brothers contains multiple game partitions so if it was not converted properly, it won't work. That should have nothing to do with update partition as it only contain updated IOS/system menu for the game to work (aka disc update). They are small anyway.

wbfs are split only to fit the 4GB limit of FAT32. If you are on NTSC, they don't need to be split. There are options to set the split size too. There is no fake signing involved.

I though you said you convert to WIA then to WBFS, compress and store. My bad.

 

[Dogway]

I think I did something wrong getting bigger files with WIA format than WBFS. Mainly because I was using an image converted from the "wdf" command call instead of "wit", with that one I got a 340Mb wdf file, then converted from wdf to wbfs to a size of 200Mb.
Using wit, to wbfs is 1.4Gb (1.4Gb compressed too) and to WIA is the same 1.4Gb and 600Mb compressed, this makes more sense.