Hacking Adding Memory?

[P4wn4g3]

Hi,

I'm wondering if there is any way to make a virtual drive into a mounted device on the wii... or what the closest thing would be. There really isn't much space on the Wii, so it would be nice if I can store a bunch of channels on a remote storage space somehow which can be read. I can't buy a 1TB drive to dedicate to my Wii.

Also, is there any way to remotely connect all Wii storage devices, such as USB drives, PC, SDHC cards, SD cards, etc.? Because that would at least simplify things...

Well anyway, thanks for the help.

 

[OverjoY]

You might wanna check out neek2o or uneek

 

[P4wn4g3]

Interesting, so that would require me to run my Wii operating system off of an SD card or USB drive right? I was kind of hoping to maintain full functionality of all peripherals and system processes/access, and to make managing my SD card easier at the same time. Does this program allow all of that?

 

[Lucif3r]

s/uneek just emulates your NAND and redirects stuff from the original NAND to the virtual NAND.
There is little to no difference between emulated NAND and real NAND.

However, dont take my word as fact, since I dont use s/uneek myself. But Im close to 100% sure theres hardly any difference.

Oh, and just because you have an emulated NAND doesnt mean you cant access your real NAND. s/uneek is an app that is launched like any other (It can also be set to autostart, I think).

 

[P4wn4g3]

This doesn't seem like what I would like to do. Let me describe an ideal circumstance:

I'd like to be able to install an unlimited number of channels, save games, etc. on my Wii. The Wii has only 2 GB of HD space however, so I would think that instead of installing all of these on the Wii HD, the more feasible solution would be installing all of them on a large external harddrive, such as an SDHC card, a USB device, or a virtual harddrive or FTP. I am only suggesting this solution based on the need for space and convenience, nothing more.

It would be nice if managing my devices was more convenient. I currently have a 2 GB SD card, a 16 GB SDHC card (my friend has to bring a usb connector for it because mine doesn't support it), a 2 GB USB thumb drive which doesn't seem to work, and my .5 TB external backup drive (which I rather not use for this purpose). This requires me to go to great lengths to get the correct information, file managers, and support on each device, which can take a very long time.

The ideal results of whatever I do would be that I have a centralized location for all of my Wii files that I can easily access with my computer if I need to. This should allow me to run anything from my PC or Wii without me changing anything more than the connection of the HD, though ideally I shouldn't even have to change the physical connection. Further, I would have full R/W access through both connections and in any program I use on this drive or using it. This drive should be large enough that I never have to replace it with a larger drive or multiple drives, and should be able to be used as the only HardDrive I use with the Wii after booting it.

Well I think that describes it in detail. I think that SNEEK/UNEEK sounds like an integral part of what I described, but I don't get the sense that it is the only part of it, and I'd like to know the whole process involved. Sorry if I was misleading in the first place, but what I described above is the end goal that I would like to achieve, as I am sure that a great many people would. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Taleweaver]

You're a bit misinformed: the wii only has 512 MB of hard disk space. This hard disk is usually referred to as "NAND", and contains everything of the wii: the IOS, cIOS, miis, savegames, game settings, channels, VC, wiiware,...everything.

So really: that ideal circumstance is exactly what uneek (or neek2o, which is a mod of it) does. You install it, start it, and then treat a part of your hard disk as your wii hard disk. That stores everything.

Sneek (and the mods of it) run on a FAT32 disk, so it's easily switchable and editable on your pc (installing wads can even be done through the pc).

I can certainly attest this does indeed work, as my wii does exactly that. Thanks to modmii and the neek2o mod, it isn't even that difficult of a process to set up anymore.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

You're a bit misinformed: the wii only has 512 MB of hard disk space. This hard disk is usually referred to as "NAND"

You are kinda misinforming him even more since the wii does not have a hard disk, but it is instead flash memory. I just don't want the OP to get any more confused with this terminology.

Another thing that people use (which I've never used so I can't give much more info) is triforce to load wiiware and VC games off an emulated nand. Another option is to just do things the normal way of installing the games and then transferring them to the SD card through the system menu and then you can keep lots of games on the SD card.

 

[P4wn4g3]

Another thing that people use (which I've never used so I can't give much more info) is triforce to load wiiware and VC games off an emulated nand. Another option is to just do things the normal way of installing the games and then transferring them to the SD card through the system menu and then you can keep lots of games on the SD card.

For some reason, my Wii is having some difficulty with managing files on the SD card in general, especially when they are actual games, saves, or channels. I'm assuming the Wii's file manager is poorly written, although I suspect that my system menu changes have something to do with this as well, as well. Changes were carefully installed though, and though I started the softmodding process with little help (without the use of ModMii or anything more helpful that WikiBrew) and thus didn't take every precaution I could have, I have worked through many problems and know how to undo most of the work I have done, so I'm fairly sure I could easily return the Wii to it's original condition even without formatting the memory. Also I have had BootMii on boot2 and have set up Priiloader, so don't worry about that.

Also I've heard that both of those programs (triforce and the other one whose name I can't remember) can result in R/W access difficulties resulting from an emulated NAND working with the real NAND, and I'm looking for a more permanent solution.

So if I were to use *NEEK (whatever version is most versatile), would I be able to use the drive I install it on to emulate my system, run/edit system files, run/edit HomeBrew files and apps, run/edit game backups, find IOS files, run things from the Wii's Disc Drive, and essentially do all operations that can be expected of the Wii otherwise?

Also, what is the fastest working SNEEK program, and what does it run on (i.e. SDHC, USB2.0, etc.) and will I be able to use all of my ports when using SNEEK/UNEEK?

 

[junkerde]

i remember some idiots on wii ds-scene were arguing with me that only 256mb was available as hard drive space in the wii and that the other 256mb was taken up by the system files. though i installed about 400mb of wads. there is really no way to add space only with a sd card.......

 

[person66]

Another thing that people use (which I've never used so I can't give much more info) is triforce to load wiiware and VC games off an emulated nand. Another option is to just do things the normal way of installing the games and then transferring them to the SD card through the system menu and then you can keep lots of games on the SD card.

For some reason, my Wii is having some difficulty with managing files on the SD card in general, especially when they are actual games, saves, or channels. I'm assuming the Wii's file manager is poorly written, although I suspect that my system menu changes have something to do with this as well, as well. Changes were carefully installed though, and though I started the softmodding process with little help (without the use of ModMii or anything more helpful that WikiBrew) and thus didn't take every precaution I could have, I have worked through many problems and know how to undo most of the work I have done, so I'm fairly sure I could easily return the Wii to it's original condition even without formatting the memory. Also I have had BootMii on boot2 and have set up Priiloader, so don't worry about that.

Also I've heard that both of those programs (triforce and the other one whose name I can't remember) can result in R/W access difficulties resulting from an emulated NAND working with the real NAND, and I'm looking for a more permanent solution.

So if I were to use *NEEK (whatever version is most versatile), would I be able to use the drive I install it on to emulate my system, run/edit system files, run/edit HomeBrew files and apps, run/edit game backups, find IOS files, run things from the Wii's Disc Drive, and essentially do all operations that can be expected of the Wii otherwise?

Also, what is the fastest working SNEEK program, and what does it run on (i.e. SDHC, USB2.0, etc.) and will I be able to use all of my ports when using SNEEK/UNEEK?

Yes, to all of it. Except loading right from discs, I am not sure of that, however, NEEK does let you load backups on your USB/SD drive right from the disc channel.

The speed of it depends on the speed of your SD card or USB drive, but in my experience, it is generally just slightly slower than the regular system menu.

 

[techboy]

Except loading right from discs, I am not sure of that,

You can use discs instead of the USB loading feature by building *NEEK without the +DI.

 

[SanGor]

i remember some idiots on wii ds-scene were arguing with me that only 256mb was available as hard drive space in the wii and that the other 256mb was taken up by the system files. though i installed about 400mb of wads. there is really no way to add space only with a sd card.......

Actually that is somewhat true, though I think around 128MB are reserved, usually the system menu, games or the shop channel install channels and they have code to leave some space.
If you install your .wads via other tools they obviously don't even look if there is enough space, so via them you can install everything until your NAND is full.

And about the space issue, updating to 4.0 and higher and using the SD card feature is the only way to have more storage.

Kinda funny that homebrew offers a better solution than nintendo does, since they still copy the channel to NAND before running it.

 

[snikerz]

You can also do this: http://hackmii.com/2008/06/dual-nand-flash-hack/ and add a larger NAND chip.

 

[obcd]

Actually, you can't add a larger nand chip, as every chip has some specific id's that are checked.
The hack you describe simply has 2 nand chips soldered in place. Either the one or the other is selected. (don't take simply litteraly)
I don't think it's the kind of hack p4wn4g3 is looking for..

 

[Lucif3r]

I think thats little over what the average person can do
I sure as hell couldnt anyway lol.

But what obcd said is true, regarding the sizes of nand chips. In many, if not all, cases the nand chips are bigger than what is promoted. But the additional blocks are often broken and/or disabled.
Re-enabling them can be done, but more often than not the blocks are beyond repair and not worth the effort.

Anyway, the best, fastest and easiest solution to get bigger "NAND" is *neek. Everything else is both unnecessary and pointless (other than e-peen factor, obviously lol)

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Actually, you can't add a larger nand chip, as every chip has some specific id's that are checked.
The hack you describe simply has 2 nand chips soldered in place. Either the one or the other is selected. (don't take simply litteraly)
I don't think it's the kind of hack p4wn4g3 is looking for..

Technically, you can add a larger chip. There is a 1GB Hynix chip that you can put in place and it does give the right ID's that the wii is looking for. The only reason why this works is because the chip has 2 banks of flash memory, each having 512MB, and it has 2 CE pins. So, basically what you do is cut the CE trace, wire in a switch and having the switch leading to the 2 CE pins on the chip. Unfortunately, you can only use 512MB bank at a time, you can't use the whole 1GB at once, but this is still a working solution that I was going to do, but it's near impossible to find those chips anymore.