Hacking Accidentally initialized wiiu’s HDD, any chance to recover saves?

[videogames14]

Hello! So I recently plugged my USB hard drive I used for my wiiu into my PC, and initialized before I remembered what it was for. I followed some guides online to try to recover the saves, but it hasn’t worked.

I’ve dumped my SEEPROM and OTP files, and used WFS-extract to try and get it to dump the hard drive through an admin command prompt.

It returns the same error: “Didn’t find directory at expected location, either the /usr dir is also corrupt or the keys are wrong”

I’ve checked many times that the drive specified in the command line is the correct drive, I’ve checked the OTP and SEEPROM files, I’ve unspecified the dump path to try and get the entire drive and nothing has worked

Is it over for me, or is there anything I can do from here?

Command line I used:

cd /D C:\Users\myname\Desktop\New folder
^(Where OTP, SEEPROM and WFS extract are stored)

wfs-extract —input \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3 —type usb —otp otp.bin —seeprom seeprom.bin —dump-usr-dir—output dumped —dump-path /usr/save

I’ve tried omitting —dump-path /usr/save a few times.

Any help is appreciated!

 

[CMDreamer]

Looks like you should research what does a hard drive initialization does to the data. And considering the Wii U harddrive is unique to a console, it gets even worse.

 

[videogames14]

Looks like you should research what does a hard drive initialization does to the data. And considering the Wii U harddrive is unique to a console, it gets even worse.

Oh, my bad. I only thought formatting erased everything, I didn’t know what initialisation did.

Well that’s my bad. Sorry

 

[mariob0y]

Can you please explain how you actually initialized it? Just so future morons like me don’t accidentally repeat it
I want to backup wii u hdd and this is what I fear the most

 

[videogames14]

Can you please explain how you actually initialized it? Just so future morons like me don’t accidentally repeat it
I want to backup wii u hdd and this is what I fear the most

I’m not entirely sure how backing up would work, but here’s what I did to ruin my data:

Plugging in the HDD can ruin the partitioning even just like that, so find some solution online for that part

After you plug it in, it’ll ask to format so you can use it, obviously say no, but it may have a second pop up asking to just initialize it, (usually if you open disk management)

If you just avoid letting your computer do anything to the drive then it shouldn’t erase anything. Do not plug it in though until you have a method for backing it up, otherwise you may have to dump the entire drive.

 

[Technician]

Can you please explain how you actually initialized it? Just so future morons like me don’t accidentally repeat it
I want to backup wii u hdd and this is what I fear the most

Just use the Wii u's built-in data management system to transfer data from one hdd to another. Never ever plug it into the pc

 

[CMDreamer]

Initializing a hard drive involves partitioning and formatting it with a file system. The first step creates partitions depending on the chosen partition style: GPT or MBR. While formatting creates a file and folder management system.

By just plugin the drive into a computer that doesn't recognize it's partition scheme, the drive doesn't get initialized unless you accept it to do so. Once initialized, a formatting is required to be able to use it (store content on it).

There are some programs that deal with lost partitions, such as testdisk, but I'm not sure it supports the one from the Wii U.

You should try researching for a tool that allow partition recovery that also supports the Wii U, unless you have already formatted the drive, which will greatly reduce the possibility of recovering useful data from it.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

The word initialize basically means "to make like new" or "to start over". You goofed, unfortunately. CMDreamer has the best advice but it's most likely a goner.