Hacking WBFS Partition and Hard Disk formatting

[wiiiiimiiiii]

Hello, I have a 500 and something GB hard disk and 250GB of it is taken up. I wanted to create a WBFS Partition to play games from it but I saw that you had to format it first. Is there any way not to as I don't want to lose the 250 gigs and I have no where to back it up too. In short I need to get the WBFS partition without formatting. The hard disk is currently partitioned to FAT32.

EDIT* I forgot to say I have searched this for days now with no information on it so PLEASE don't go on about searching it.
EDIT2* I also forgot to mention that it is a Western Digital Hard disk.

Please Help!

Thank you

 

[ToneEQ]

How many partitions are on the drive? If there is only one partition, then you can either:
o Backup data, delete partitions, create 2 partitions, format one to FAT32 and put your data back, and use WBFS Manager to format the second partition to WBFS
or
o You need to repartition your drive using a tool such as GParted, which can resize your existing partition to make space for a second partition. It's risky and it's recommended you backup your data first. You can the format the the second partition to WBFS.

 

[wiiiiimiiiii]

Hmm ur second option sounds good. But does it mean I DON'T have to format my current files??

 

[ToneEQ]

Hmm ur second option sounds good. But does it mean I DON'T have to format my current files??

That's right, GParted will just resize the existing partition and leave the data on it. Don't blame me if the data goes missing, as backing up is always recommended.

I used GParted on my XP SP3 computer to make space for another partition to install Windows 7 RC, worked great.

Going OT now so I'll shut up...

 

[wiiiiimiiiii]

Ok thanks. Wats the risk of something going wrong?

 

[ToneEQ]

Have a read of this:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/faq.php

If you decide to go ahead you'll need the Live CD version:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

 

[h8uthemost]

How many partitions are on the drive? If there is only one partition, then you can either:
o Backup data, delete partitions, create 2 partitions, format one to FAT32 and put your data back, and use WBFS Manager to format the second partition to WBFS
or
o You need to repartition your drive using a tool such as GParted, which can resize your existing partition to make space for a second partition. It's risky and it's recommended you backup your data first. You can the format the the second partition to WBFS.

I'm about to do the samething. I have a 750gb external, with about 400gb used. And I only want to make a WBFS partition about 100gb in size.

I'm on Linux. So just to be sure: I fire up Gparted and make a second partition in FAT32. Then can I hook the external up to the Wii and let the loader format the 100gb partition to WBFS? Or should I format the 100gb partition to WBFS in Linux with an app(Wiithon maybe?)?

Thanks.

 

[ToneEQ]

How many partitions are on the drive? If there is only one partition, then you can either:
o Backup data, delete partitions, create 2 partitions, format one to FAT32 and put your data back, and use WBFS Manager to format the second partition to WBFS
or
o You need to repartition your drive using a tool such as GParted, which can resize your existing partition to make space for a second partition. It's risky and it's recommended you backup your data first. You can the format the the second partition to WBFS.

I'm about to do the samething. I have a 750gb external, with about 400gb used. And I only want to make a WBFS partition about 100gb in size.

I'm on Linux. So just to be sure: I fire up Gparted and make a second partition in FAT32. Then can I hook the external up to the Wii and let the loader format the 100gb partition to WBFS? Or should I format the 100gb partition to WBFS in Linux with an app(Wiithon maybe?)?

Thanks.

You have to resize/shrink the existing partition first, then with the free space create a new partition, but don't format it. You can let the loader format the new partition, sure. I don't use Linux so not sure if Wiithon can do that.

 

[h8uthemost]

Cool. Thank you very much for the info ToneEQ. Been worrying about doing this for a few days now.