Why?

​You have asked for it, so here it is...

USB Partition

The Wii U only allows you to format whole USB storage devices to use them for expanding the storage to store Wii U games. This stroopwafel plugin changes this. It lets you use a partition on your USB storage device for storing Wii U games. You can for example have one partition to use in vWii with USB Loaders and then a second Wii U formatted partition to store your Wii U games.

There are two variants of this plugin: the standard one (5usbpart.ipx) only mounts the Wii U formatted partition. The sd variant (5upartsd.ipx) allow you to use a FAT32 partition as a SD card replacement.


If you want instead use a Partition on your SD card as USB storage for Wii U games look here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/sdusb-the-modern-way-to-play-wii-u-games-from-sd-at-full-speed.655744/

Wafel Installer

As a alternative to following this manual guide, you can now use the wafel installer. It guides you through installing the prerequisites, partitioning and setting up the plugin. It is also the only way right now of modding your console without a SD card first.
If you want to follow the manual setup, skip to the next section (Prerequisites)

If you are already using Aroma, put the wafel_installer.wuhb into your wiiu/apps folder on the SD. You find the download here: https://github.com/zer00p/wafel_installer/releases
If you haven't modded your console yet, or lost the SD or SD content, just go to https://wafel.xyz on the Wii U web browser (Internet applet) and you can launch the wafel installer directly from that website.

If you don't have a SD, it asks you if you want to use the USB instead, which will setup the SD emulation version of the plugin. Demo
Installing Aroma is optional.
Stroopwafel and ISFShax are required.
If you are already running homebrew from the SD, you can start the setup of the USB Partition from the USB Partition option in the wafel installer main menu.

Prerequisites

​You need two things:

1. a way to launch minute (usually ISFShax)
2. a USB Storage device, like an external HDD, SSD or industrial USB Flash drive.

For 1. the recommended way is to setup ISFShax, for that we have a guide here: How to set up ISFShax
If you don't want to commit to installing ISFShax yet you can skip the "Installing ISFShax" step in the ISFShax setup guide and instead run it manually through the chosen exploit on every reboot.
Instead if ISFShax you can also use defuse, in case you have that already.
If you want to use the SD emulation feature, you need to setup ISFShax to run completely from SLC (as you won't have a real SD card to load the files from)

For 2. you find already enough recommendations and people with strong optinions on what to use and what not, so I won't go into much detail there. Generally flash drives use the cheapest of the cheapest garbage flahs and therefore won't last long, even brand ones. So it's generally advised to avoid them or make sure it is really a good one by checking if it gives numbers for TBW and implements wear leveling.

Setup

​First of all make a Backup. If anything goes wrong, the whole Disk will be formatted and you lose everything* which was previously on it! You have been warned...

*testdisk might or might not be able to recover something if you are lucky, but do not rely on that.

Partitioning the USB disk​

On Windows you can probably use Disk Management with HDDS. If DIsk Management won't work for you or you have Pen drive you can use a third party tool like Minitool Partition Wizard or Easeus, on Linux you can use gparted.

The general rules are: The partition Table needs to be MBR, not GPT. The first Partition (by number, not physical location) is either ignored or used as SD card (depending on which favor of the plugin you use). If you want to use it as SD card, it needs to be primary (not logical) and formatted FAT32. From the other primary partitions only ones with the NTFS (or exFAT) type will be considered. The phsically last one of those will be chosen and used as (wfs) USB storage.

You can either chose from scratch by deleting all partitions and start from scratch or resize an existing partition to make room.
An example setup would be:
two primary partitions on the USB Disk:

1. FAT32 - (in gparted set lba flag). Here goes the vWii games and homebrew if you use the SD variant of the plugin.
2. NTFS - This partition will be seen by the Wii U as "USB", you use to store the Wii U games on (don't assign a drive letter)

Instead of NTFS you can also use exFAT. NTFS won't be the file system the Wii U will be using, it is just there to tell the plugin which partition to use. The Wii U will later format it with it's own file system (wfs).

Installing the Plugin​

Get the latest 5usbpart.ipx (or 5upartsd.ipx for sd emulation) from here: https://github.com/StroopwafelCFW/wafel_usb_partition/releases and place it in your ios_plugins folder. That is either wiiu/ios_plugins on the SD card or /sys/hax/ios_plugins on the slc.

Using the Partition

​If you now boot boot back up, the Partition shows up as a USB device, which needs to be formatted and can then be used as usual. Before you start installing stuff on it, I would recommend you connect it back to the PC and check if it worked and the partitions are still there. After formatting the partition, you can also connect an existing USB storage and copy stuff over.

Caveats with the SD emulation

The SD emulation is only present in the Wii U OS. It won't have any affect on vWii and also isn't available in minute. So you can't use it to load the ios_plugins or do backups to in minute.
It should only be used without an actual SD inserted to avoid potential corruption. The Wii U FAT driver only supports one device. If two are connected the one which is detected later is used. If both are connected during bootup the USB one would win, since USB is detected later than the real SD.

Known Problems

Wii VC (including GC) does not work beyond 2TiB. If you are planning to use Wii VC from the eShop or Injects, then don't go beyond 2TiB. The addressing for 4TiB has only be fixed for the Wii U side, but not vWii / HAI IOS.

 

[jeannotte]

( yamaharacer said:
Could someone explain me how I get this to work? I have formated everything like explained.
Used Manjaro partition manager, first partition fat32 primary, second ntfs primary, everything mbr.
Putted the wafel_partition_sd to /sys/hax/ios_plugins shorted the name.

Copyed everything of my sd card to the fat32 partition. The HDD is pluged to the bottom USB port via a Y Cable.

But there is no loading of the hdd. Just starts without loading my aroma files. Tryed 3 different HDDs with different sizes.

What do I wrong? )

Hello,

See this image to connect your external USB hard drive ==>

 

[SDIO]

for the Wii U mode id odesn't matter which USB port you are using. That only matters fr vWii.

Does the Wii U partition work on the HDD? Do you have ISFShax installed and boot the first option?

 

[DerekL0576]

I followed the guide and everything looks to be working except that I get an error message "Failed to write to SD card" on the Wii U menu screen. The FAT32 partition seems to be mounted read-only. Using FTPiiU, I can see the contents of the partition that's mounted as the SD card, but I can't write to it. The drive works fine in Windows, there's no errors that could cause it to mount read-only. The installed apps show up on the Wii U menu too, so the Wii U is able to read the partition OK.

Any idea what the problem is? I'm out of ideas.

Edit: Typical, I spend nearly 2 days figuring this out and 2 hours after I ask for help I find the problem.
It works after redoing the whole SD card from scratch. Probably some files got overwritten with different versions or got corrupted. It was similar to an issue on the Aroma Github. ( Wii u sd card says its write locked #82 - Sorry can't post a link)

 

[L30N]

Hi everyone,

I’m using the latest Aroma + Isfshax with 5upartsd.ipx on my Wii U.

My setup:
- Wii U: [model, e.g. 32GB US]
- 2TB external HDD with 3 partitions:
1st: Primary FAT32 (used as SD / 5upartsd, WUP Installer GX2 installs here)
2nd: NTFS (for PS3 use)
3rd: no drive letter

Games install and launch fine, and WUP Installer GX2 works when I select USB,
but the free space shown in Wii U system settings is always incorrect.
It barely changes even after installing or deleting games.

My questions:
1. Is this simply the specification / limitation of 5upartsd?
2. Is there any way to make Wii U show the correct free space?
3. How are other users managing this kind of setup?

Thanks in advance!

 

[SDIO]

What exactly do you mean by that?

 

[Billy Acuña]

Hi, dunno if this is the right place to ask but I wanted to know if partitioned drives could work on homebrew that has native USB support (i.e. RetroArch) because it seems that RetroArch fails to detect the HDD. I want to avoid the sd variant of the plugin if necessary.

 

[SDIO]

I don't know about retro arch. Does it work with a Wii U formatted HDD or does it use something like a NTFS partition through a Userland driver and FSA Raw calls?

 

[Billy Acuña]

I don't know about retro arch. Does it work with a Wii U formatted HDD or does it use something like a NTFS partition through a Userland driver and FSA Raw calls?

The first partition is a FAT32 format one and the second one is a WFS one (previously NTFS) format with games on it.

 

[L30N]

What exactly do you mean by that?

Simply put, on the Wii U settings screen, the available space for the external HDD (formatted for Wii U) and the SD card variant is not displayed correctly.

 

[SDIO]

What is it displaying and what do you expect to see? How big is the HDD and the partition?

 

[Billy Acuña]

What is it displaying and what do you expect to see? How big is the HDD and the partition?

RetroArch simply doesn't detect the FAT32 partition, I still need to verify if RA can detect FAT32 pendrives (RA users report it working on Aroma builds). The FAT32 partition is 200gb 32k cluster and the WFS partition is 700gb.

 

[SDIO]

sorry, that response was aimed at @L30N , I missed yours.
And yes, Retroarch won't see the FAT32 partition. Only the NTFS partition gets attached like it is the whole drive. The Wii U won't see anything outside that.

 

[Billy Acuña]

I see, I assume that is the main reason you made the sd variant of the plugin.

 

[Unnamedium]

Sorry if this has been asked before but I can't just partition the hdd that is already being used by my wii u, with all of my games on it, right? I have to backup the data, format and partition the hdd, then move the data back?

 

[SDIO]

I have to backup the data, format and partition the hdd, then move the data back?

Yes

 

[NoneName]

I followed all the instructions, formatted my HDD with FAT32 (with LBA) and NTFS on MBR in GParted, but the Wii U format the whole drive instead. Note: when I don't put the LBA flag on the FAT32 partition, the Wii U fails to format.

 

[SDIO]

Then you are probably not loading the plugin. Make sure you put it in the reight location, from where you load the plugins

 

[SpaceGhost1993]

Why?

​You have asked for it, so here it is...

USB Partition

The Wii U only allows you to format whole USB storage devices to use them for expanding the storage to store Wii U games. This stroopwafel plugin changes this. It lets you use a partition on your USB storage device for storing Wii U games. You can for example have one partition to use in vWii with USB Loaders and then a second Wii U formatted partition to store your Wii U games.

There are two variants of this plugin: the standard one (5usbpart.ipx) only mounts the Wii U formatted partition. The sd variant (5upartsd.ipx) allow you to use a FAT32 partition as a SD card replacement.


If you want instead use a Partition on your SD card as USB storage for Wii U games look here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/sdusb-the-modern-way-to-play-wii-u-games-from-sd-at-full-speed.655744/

Prerequisites

​You need two things:

1. a way to launch minute (usually ISFShax)
2. a USB Storage device, like an external HDD, SSD or industrial USB Flash drive.

For 1. the recommended way is to setup ISFShax, for that we have a guide here: How to set up ISFShax
If you don't want to commit to installing ISFShax yet you can skip the "Installing ISFShax" step in the ISFShax setup guide and instead run it manually through the chosen exploit on every reboot.
Instead if ISFShax you can also use defuse, in case you have that already.
If you want to use the SD emulation feature, you need to setup ISFShax to run completely from SLC (as you won't have a real SD card to load the files from)

For 2. you find already enough recommendations and people with strong optinions on what to use and what not, so I won't go into much detail there. Generally flash drives use the cheapest of the cheapest garbage flahs and therefore won't last long, even brand ones. So it's generally advised to avoid them or make sure it is really a good one by checking if it gives numbers for TBW and implements wear leveling.

Setup

​First of all make a Backup. If anything goes wrong, the whole Disk will be formatted and you lose everything* which was previously on it! You have been warned...

*testdisk might or might not be able to recover something if you are lucky, but do not rely on that.

Partitioning the USB disk​

On Windows you can probably use Disk Management with HDDS. If DIsk Management won't work for you or you have Pen drive you can use a third party tool like Minitool Partition Wizard or Easeus, on Linux you can use gparted.

The general rules are: The partition Table needs to be MBR, not GPT. The first Partition (by number, not physical location) is either ignored or used as SD card (depending on which favor of the plugin you use). If you want to use it as SD card, it needs to be primary (not logical) and formatted FAT32. From the other primary partitions only ones with the NTFS (or exFAT) type will be considered. The phsically last one of those will be chosen and used as (wfs) USB storage.

You can either chose from scratch by deleting all partitions and start from scratch or resize an existing partition to make room.
An example setup would be:
two primary partitions on the USB Disk:

1. FAT32 - (in gparted set lba flag). Here goes the vWii games and homebrew if you use the SD variant of the plugin.
2. NTFS - This partition will be seen by the Wii U as "USB", you use to store the Wii U games on (don't assign a drive letter)

Instead of NTFS you can also use exFAT. NTFS won't be the file system the Wii U will be using, it is just there to tell the plugin which partition to use. The Wii U will later format it with it's own file system (wfs).

View attachment 438632

Installing the Plugin​

Get the latest 5usbpart.ipx (or 5upartsd.ipx for sd emulation) from here: https://github.com/StroopwafelCFW/wafel_usb_partition/releases and place it in your ios_plugins folder. That is either wiiu/ios_plugins on the SD card or /sys/hax/ios_plugins on the slc.

Using the Partition

​If you now boot boot back up, the Partition shows up as a USB device, which needs to be formatted and can then be used as usual. Before you start installing stuff on it, I would recommend you connect it back to the PC and check if it worked and the partitions are still there. After formatting the partition, you can also connect an existing USB storage and copy stuff over.

Caveats with the SD emulation

The SD emulation is only present in the Wii U OS. It won't have any affect on vWii and also isn't available in minute. So you can't use it to load the ios_plugins or do backups to in minute.
It should only be used without an actual SD inserted to avoid potential corruption. The Wii U FAT driver only supports one device. If two are connected the one which is detected later is used. If both are connected during bootup the USB one would win, since USB is detected later than the real SD.

After doing all this, I've noticed some people are having an issue where if their hard drive is plugged in they don't load into aroma but if they unplug it it loads fine.

What could cause that? A problem with the payloader?

 

[SDIO]

They are probably using the version with the sd emulation and don't have aroma on the FAT32 partition of the HDD. If they want to use the real SD, they should use the one without SD emulation.

 

[Coffee16]

Duplicate reply. Sorry!