So I've heard that storing games on a USB is better than on an SD card, so I'm using my SD card for homebrew and stuff and the USB for games. However, if I try to upload my ROMs instead of downloading them from the console for Wii (vWii) games since there's no hShop/Nusspli equivalent for the Wii, I can't because "The volume does not contain a recognized file system". Do I have to download some sort of special file browser to use a USB formatted for Wii U or do I have to have a seperate drive specifically for my Wii games?
OK then. Also, if you use Wiiflow Lite, and have a good plugin/theme setup or whatever, could you send it because I used to have one but it didn't work and it took like 10 hours to find everything, download it, and put it on my SD card.
To add to this: Running (v)Wii stuff from the FAT32 formatted SD card is fine: The Wii was designed to do this. Running Wii U stuff is what you shouldn't do from flash based media (this is more for USB flashdrives than SD cards through) as the WIi Us properitary filesystem was made for spinning media and treats flash based media extremely bad (killing flash drives fast).
To add to this: Running (v)Wii stuff from the FAT32 formatted SD card is fine: The Wii was designed to do this. Running Wii U stuff is what you shouldn't do from flash based media (this is more for USB flashdrives than SD cards through) as the WIi Us properitary filesystem was made for spinning media and treats flash based media extremely bad (killing flash drives fast).
Yeah, that's what I'm doing. Also, since I only want to use around 20gb of space on my SD card for Wii ROMs so that I still have space left, which games would you recommend? (also I didn't realize this until now, but you made Nusspli? Thanks !)
You can also inject Wii games, among many others, into the virtual console with UWUVCI, therefore storing them on the same USB drive where Wii U games are stored. However, I'd suggest having a separate drive for Wii games (and GameCube ones as well). The rest can go to the SD card.
Running Wii U stuff is what you shouldn't do from flash based media (this is more for USB flashdrives than SD cards through) as the WIi Us properitary filesystem was made for spinning media and treats flash based media extremely bad (killing flash drives fast).
They're fine. Basically they were made to last as long as normal HDD. I ran Western Digital 500gb for awhile for the wii u then switched to Silicon Power. Been running it for couple of years + now. 0 issue. Wii U see almost 0 benefit from using fast SSD so you don't have to buy the expensive model.
I mean, these days everything is using SSD like my mac or ps5 (both m.2 & 2.5 for external), server at my work etc. The old HDD is a thing of the past.
There have been discussions of Nintendo Homebrew discord as well - sone say this will kill the SSD, but I too have had SSDs for years on both my wii and wii u. One of my spinning disks fell a very short distance and stopped reading, so that prompted the change. Plus, a majority of the writes to the disk come from initial game installs, adter that its mostly read with very little writing
IMO, consumer grade SSDs within the last 5-10years have made huge improvements, so I would gamble on that vs mechanical failure from a 2.5 spinning disk.
As said my own guess is this depends on the SSD itself. Or better on the FTL / the wear leveling algos used. For example have a look at this: https://gbatemp.net/threads/wiiu-tiramisu-aroma-cant-install-updates-dlc-or-eshop-games.646714 - I say a Y able is needed there but I'm not entirely sure as the datasheet just tells the peak ampeere of the 10 TB model but the 500 GB model seems to generally need less power. So the linked thread might indeed show a dying SSD, we'll see once the user added a Y cable (in case this still produces errors I'll tell the user to read out S.M.A.R.T. values and in case they don't show any kind of error use tools to detect hardware damages on the SSD).
Game saves, game stats (what did you play at what point in time? How long did you play it? And so on), console stats (when was it powered on last time? What's the current uptime? When was the last standby operation? What has beeen done in standby operations? ...), crypto updates, ... The Wii U does a lot of writes, don't underestimate them. In fact the internal flash memory had been slowed down a lot by Nintendo by adding a SLC cache, so the MLC won't die fast. This SLC then had been protected from fast dying by adding a RAM cache. The USB drive doesn't get these kind of kill-writing protection.
I say a Y able is needed there but I'm not entirely sure as the datasheet just tells the peak ampeere of the 10 TB model but the 500 GB model seems to generally need less power. So the linked thread might indeed show a dying SSD, we'll see once the user added a Y cable (in case this still produces errors I'll tell the user to read out S.M.A.R.T. values and in case they don't show any kind of error use tools to detect hardware damages on the SSD).
I've run into a similar issue with my ADATA SSDs where it turned out that they needed an Y cable or external power source. It didn't help that my SATA to USB cables were of poor quality as well. Also, when I run the h2testw to check those two SSDs of mine, they showed a whole bunch of errors.
In the end, I bought the Y cables and had no issues afterwards. (Other than WiFi intereference they caused, that is.)
To add to this: Running (v)Wii stuff from the FAT32 formatted SD card is fine: The Wii was designed to do this. Running Wii U stuff is what you shouldn't do from flash based media (this is more for USB flashdrives than SD cards through) as the WIi Us properitary filesystem was made for spinning media and treats flash based media extremely bad (killing flash drives fast).
The Wii U only needs to read from the flash media... There's absolutely nothing to "treat it bad". You install the game, then the update, and you're done. Saves are on the NAND of the system, not the flash media. You can't trash a drive that isn't being constantly written to. Install all your games in one fell-swoop if it's a concern to you.
Wrong. Saves are on the same media as the game. Start your Wii U, go to settings -> data management -> USB drive... Now select any title you want and go to details: You'll see the save data right there on the USB drive.
Can I use a Flash/Thumb drive as an external storage device?
Because these devices have a limited number of rewrites and are not suited to long-term storage of important game data, we do not recommend the use of Flash/thumb drives as an external storage device solution.
//EDIT: Also look on the activity LED on your external USB drive while the Wii U is in standby operations (orange LED) : It shows very intense activity. Now ask yourself why it does that... Again: The WIi U is in standby, there is no game beeing loaded... In other words: The WIi U even writes to the USB drive while the console is powered off!
As said my own guess is this depends on the SSD itself. Or better on the FTL / the wear leveling algos used. For example have a look at this: https://gbatemp.net/threads/wiiu-tiramisu-aroma-cant-install-updates-dlc-or-eshop-games.646714 - I say a Y able is needed there but I'm not entirely sure as the datasheet just tells the peak ampeere of the 10 TB model but the 500 GB model seems to generally need less power. So the linked thread might indeed show a dying SSD, we'll see once the user added a Y cable (in case this still produces errors I'll tell the user to read out S.M.A.R.T. values and in case they don't show any kind of error use tools to detect hardware damages on the SSD).
Post automatically merged:
Game saves, game stats (what did you play at what point in time? How long did you play it? And so on), console stats (when was it powered on last time? What's the current uptime? When was the last standby operation? What has beeen done in standby operations? ...), crypto updates, ... The Wii U does a lot of writes, don't underestimate them. In fact the internal flash memory had been slowed down a lot by Nintendo by adding a SLC cache, so the MLC won't die fast. This SLC then had been protected from fast dying by adding a RAM cache. The USB drive doesn't get these kind of kill-writing protection.
thank you for that detailed reply, that was quite informative about internal writes on the wii u. my line of thinking was, the small amount of write to the SSD would be similar to using a web browser or basic navigation on a computer - things such as cached images, temp downloads, apps caching to ssd, etc. this sounds like normal operation to me, particularly things like youtube or spotify, where they are constantly caching data
in the case of external SSD (samsung 870 evo in my case), i'm guessing/hoping it will be a long time before any issues - leaning on the high TBW rating combined with being a well-reviewed SSD nearly 10 years newer
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