questions about flash drives on the wii?

[kaitlin459]

so i have a modded Wii and im getting lots of mixed info on using usb thumb drives? so many forums say that because of the crap loads of read and writes on the wii a flash drive is not recommended any thoughts? plan to load wii games onto the flash drive

 

[morning_glory]

Pending on the make/model of your USB Flash drive ....
Lexar has slightly better success, but the success of USB Flash drives on the Wii can be disappointing.
You will be using several USB loader apps (try) to achieve all games play. You will go through the processes of changing apps settings, only to find it frustrating.

USB Flash drives with Fat32 = Not so successful yet.

Micro sdxc in USB adapter with WBFS partition = You will have to try it to believe it.
A pain for PC convenience & not happy with adding/deleting games. But yeah, it works much betterer.

USB HDD with Fat32 = Easy as pie. Wii happy, PC happy & you happy

Boils down to - You, like all others will prefer ease of use (all round).

 

[Sypherone]

Flash drive pen, USB key, USB stick or flashcard adapter :

• Don`t use a flash drive pen, USB key, USB stick or flashcard adapter. They mostly cause Problems with USB Loaders, same for drive enclosures. Also Nintendo don't recommend them, so best don't use them.
  Note: If wish to use one (this is NO Guaranty!), check for a quality USB-stick from brands like Sandisk or Kingston and not the cheapest on ebay. Especially for WiiU mode.
• Wii/vWii: If your lucky, it might be compatible but specification are subject of change and there is the possibility they not work properly anymore.
  • Possible error indication :
    • Not correct initialized or recognized USB stick.
    • Only or very long black screen until game starts.
    • Low transfer speed, if installing a game from disk to drive.
    • On USBLGX 1280+ auto IOS reload at game change doesn't work.
  • To be sure the fat32 partition starts at the beginning of the drive and there is no space or small partition in front of it. Use win32diskimager to flash zzblank.img to the USB drive (NOTE: It removes everything!), then use fat32formater to reformat.
  • Just a hint: Try WBFS as filesystem on flash drives for Wii games only, but has less or none support of other homebrew. WBFS has to be first and active partition and can formated by Wii Backup Manager.

The cIOS have a d2x patch that modifies the original IOS for homebrew. It has the module "mini EHCI" implemented (fully EHCI module is to big) which adds USB 2.0 (480Mbit/s) as it would only have USB 1.0 (1,5Mbit/s) . But this EHCI modul makes the d2x patch incompatible with a lot of (new) drives. In this case a cIOS setup with base 58 can be tryed as alternativ cIOS setup => Loader IOS > IOS 58 or cIOS 251(base58)|Game IOS -> cIOS 251(base58)

 

[JuanMena]

Meh, all the USB thumbdrives and flash drives I've thrown to my Wii works fine.

I've also used a USB SD adapter and that has worked too.

I've been using generic USB so I'm thinking that branded ones should work just fine.

 

[Sypherone]

Yeah, Yeah... i know also some other guys wich highly prey... Yeah thumb sticks are the best..

Ahh but sorry, i forget they never show if you mention them in a thread with a flash drive problem dont work on USB Loaders.. And i forget to count the threads with dont working flashdrives.. Meeeehhh..

 

[morning_glory]

any thoughts?

For a better understanding & piece of mind - Try them for yourself. It's not that hard.
It may take time & you will get to know what works the bestest (for you).
Not everybody gets the same successful results, but some/most do

 

[Draxikor]

It is not that USB flash drives are bad, but from time to time one is not 100% compatible and that like Nintendo Switch games, SD and SSD use flash memory and this has a more limited lifespan than an HDD that is usually recommended more to use on Wii for its longevity.

 

[kaitlin459]

Pending on the make/model of your USB Flash drive ....
Lexar has slightly better success, but the success of USB Flash drives on the Wii can be disappointing.
You will be using several USB loader apps (try) to achieve all games play. You will go through the processes of changing apps settings, only to find it frustrating.

USB Flash drives with Fat32 = Not so successful yet.

Micro sdxc in USB adapter with WBFS partition = You will have to try it to believe it.
A pain for PC convenience & not happy with adding/deleting games. But yeah, it works much betterer.

USB HDD with Fat32 = Easy as pie. Wii happy, PC happy & you happy

Boils down to - You, like all others will prefer ease of use (all round).

@morning_glory wont sd cards have the same issues as usb flash drives in terms of the wiis constant reads and writes?

 

[Ryccardo]

@morning_glory wont sd cards have the same issues as usb flash drives in terms of the wiis constant reads and writes?

Like CPUs, most NAND chips are bulk manufactured "best effort" and then tested for quality:

The best go in "industrial" products (note that they're often different in specifications too, though)
The fine ones go in mass market SSDs
The ordinary ones go in memory cards and high performance flash drives
Then someone eventually said "I can't give this even a C grade", that's how cheap flash drives came on the market
Then there are factory rejects, where the concept of reusing being more efficient than recycling is fully recognized and enjoyable on Wish, Amazon, and the like

in other words: under capitalism (everyone wanting the most for the least) something has to give

Anyway... reads are not write cycles (in fact they may be refreshes, depending on the design) and the Wii doesn't write willy nilly to external drives (which no official software apart from Dragon Quest X even supports at all)

 

[kaitlin459]

Like CPUs, most NAND chips are bulk manufactured "best effort" and then tested for quality:

The best go in "industrial" products (note that they're often different in specifications too, though)
The fine ones go in mass market SSDs
The ordinary ones go in memory cards and high performance flash drives
Then someone eventually said "I can't give this even a C grade", that's how cheap flash drives came on the market
Then there are factory rejects, where the concept of reusing being more efficient than recycling is fully recognized and enjoyable on Wish, Amazon, and the like

in other words: under capitalism (everyone wanting the most for the least) something has to give

Anyway... reads are not write cycles (in fact they may be refreshes, depending on the design) and the Wii doesn't write willy nilly to external drives (which no official software apart from Dragon Quest X even supports at all)

@Ryccardo so i assume a sandisk cruzer flash drive will be ok?

 

[Ryccardo]

@Ryccardo so i assume a sandisk cruzer flash drive will be ok?

Try it and see

The thing is, there are probably at least 10 products with that name (and that's without including fakes);
more importantly it shouldn't matter at all in the first place (the USB Mass Storage Class reduces everything to a plain LBA block device), yet lazy/inaccurate implementations (far from being limited to the Wii/U) show that in practice there are differences, but they are not practical to predict given the black box operation of the affected devices

 

[KleinesSinchen]

The hatred for flash drives on the Wii and the Wii U sometimes reminds me on some kind of religious zeal. Anybody must agree on rejecting flash drives on the Wii (U). Hunt the disbelievers down! They are the source of eternal problems!

There have been a lot of problems with incompatible and/or bad flash drives on the Wii for USB loading. Hard to not notice this. The write cycle stuff on the other side is complete rubbish on the Wii. The USB loader doesn't write to the flash drive while playing games (maybe reflash/refresh done by the drive itself which is good). USB loader and cIOS simulate the access to the optical ROM(!) drive. How often does the optical drive write to the original disc? Never. Because it is physically impossible.

On the Wii I encountered a lot of problems with USB various thumb drives. Black screen. Crashes. Inability to write (install game from legit disc). Seeing the common advise I moved on to a classic 3.5" rotating HDD with own power supply. Result? Fail! Black screen on all USB loaders! Another 3.5" HDD worked like a charm. But… the same can be said about the tiny flash drive I now usually use. It is so small it almost disappears in the USB port (and can't break off which is a big plus for clumsy people like myself).
It was a lot of trial and error to find devices that work in a stable manner. Said tiny flash drive corrupted only once: While lying in a box unused for half a year, not while playing the Wii.

About flash drives on the Wii U, where write cycles probably occur pretty often: I wanted to see it myself. The permanently occurring corruption. The sudden early death of flash drives after being in use for short time on the Wii U. So I bought the cheapest 128GB stick some years ago. Slow as a snail . Gets pretty warm while using. Abysmal quality. Stupid thing just won't corrupt and/or die.
Same for another 128GB flash drive (slightly better one)
I failed at getting a flash drive to fail on the Wii U (despite this happened so often looking at various threads)

My personal conclusion: Just try a few devices until something works for you. Corruption and data loss or dying drives might happen any time with any technology. I did not write the somewhat cynical signature just for fun.

 

[morning_glory]

wont sd cards have the same issues as usb flash drives in terms of the wiis constant reads and writes?

Micro sdxc in USB adapters ? = Better compatibility.
Even better results are with using WBFS partitioning. It's harder & inconvenient setup, but once done, it is rewarding.
Have a (long) read of the below. These were my testing results :
https://gbatemp.net/threads/after-modmii-installs-what.620824/page-4

Sandisk USB Flash drives ?? ... That's also stated in the link above.

 

[kaitlin459]

@morning_glory would you mind linking me to the exact sd card adapter you recommend

 

[morning_glory]

On the link I provided, there's pics that illustrate a few things.
I also provided a link on the other thread you started on modding.

Read & keep reading. You will get a greater understanding.
You will get worried, but then you simply ask more here on GBA
Hang in there. One step at a time.

 

[kaitlin459]

On the link I provided, there's pics that illustrate a few things.
I also provided a link on the other thread you started on modding.

Read & keep reading. You will get a greater understanding.
You will get worried, but then you simply ask more here on GBA
Hang in there. One step at a time.

thankies friend i will go educate myself so i can learn

 

[Afeohtan]

My 32GB SanDisk flash drive from 2017 works with all homebrew.

The newer SanDisk flash drives do not work on my Wii, though the 256GB ones work on my PS2.

 

[SylverReZ]

Consider getting yourself a 32GB SanDisk Cruzer Glider. Works very much for everything on my Wii, including my slim PS2 for OPL and Modbo's built-in boot menu.

 

[kaitlin459]

@SylverReZ decided ot just bite the bullet and go for an ssd since they are just as cheap