It ignores it. That's the first thing I tried.what does happen if you remove the HPA and attatch it to the WiiU after these steps?
(after the fail with copieing the drive it probably won't work but lets be sure)
step 7 can probably be replaced by removing the MBR + main part table
eg dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=1M count=10
if the permanent lifting of the HPA does not work the temporary lifting can be coded into whatever wants to read the drive
(eg wii HB or the tool (to be created) that is needed to read it on windows,
on linux it could simply be put into a udev script that automatically executed on plugin)
this is more about proving the concept
No. The only way you will ever be able to make partitions on a Wii U hard disk without using HPA is if the Wii U can A) be hacked and B) be modified in such a way that it won't ignore HDDs where it's own file system isn't both the only one present and taking up the entire (visible area of the) disk.Any new progress on this? I'm confused if the steps above can work or not?
I wonder if the Wii U special format can be discovered, then we should just be capable of creating 2 partitions, one for use on our PC's and one for use on our Wii U right? Similar to how WBFS manager can work?
If you have the technique working, I could easily write a windows based app to do this when I have the timeFrom a scientific POV disproving is actually as useful as proving, and you have disproved a lot of my early ideas about this. Thank to all this testing I now plan to write the (linux) software to make using a partitioned WiiU drive almost as easy as using an normal harddrive. With this and it's docs other coders should be able to write software that can do the same on windows, Wii, WiiU-Wii-mode or whatever. I think at least some people should find that useful.