Hacking Will Wii U work without the disc drive attached?

[badesvin]

Reason for me asking is that im thinking about doing a mod where i would remove the disc drive and then fit an USB HDD where the disc drive was located, and run power/USB back out through the device.
I will never purchase a disc based release and want to try and fit everything within the box.

Anyone know how the Wii U reacts without a drive attached?
(i could try myself, i know - just wanted to ask before if it does not work )

thanks!

 

[Ray Lewis]

Try it, lol. Usb drives are not good enough?

 

[Chary]

Reason for me asking is that im thinking about doing a mod where i would remove the disc drive and then fit an USB HDD where the disc drive was located, and run power/USB back out through the device.
I will never purchase a disc based release and want to try and fit everything within the box.

Anyone know how the Wii U reacts without a drive attached?
(i could try myself, i know - just wanted to ask before if it does not work )

thanks!

Honestly, I can't say for myself, but here's an idea;
Go to ebay. Look at the Wii U's that have broken/removed disc drives. Maybe the seller can state whether or not the system functions without it. Thats all i can think of. Sorry I can't help more.

 

[natkoden]

My guess, it won't. You'll need at least the DVD drive motherboard connected.

 

[ddrrmm]

you'd need to alter the firmware.so no this won't work.

 

[rednekcowboy]

how do you plan on connecting the hdd to the wii u? there are no sata ports......

 

[Ray Lewis]

360 had the old "Jumper" trick for SATA port on motherboard. I have never heard of anyone wanting Wii U drive out. It depends on the checks, to be honest. It may look at hardware then stop booting (maybe error code, who knows?), or it may boot then only access when it is needed. The guy who started this thread should try it and let us know. Yeah, a guy mentioned looking on ebay for a Wii U without disc drives. It is so young though, this system, that I have not heard anything about a bad drive and taking it out, lmfao. Rednekcowboy was right also, what is the point if you must still run a USB cable from a port to the drive? UNLESS you want to really pull some crap and try to handle that internally with some soldering, lmfao. I've seen some crazy stuff with other systems, especially the 360.

 

[Rutherford Atlas]

Yeah, I have to say, I'm also not sure I understand what you're going for here. What are you hoping for as an end result even if this does work? Because all I can picture is a huge, Wii U-shaped external hard drive that can play downloaded games

I suppose you could be prepping for the WiiKeU or just making a download-only console, but even then, this seems... extreme.

 

[rednekcowboy]

360 had the old "Jumper" trick for SATA port on motherboard. I have never heard of anyone wanting Wii U drive out. It depends on the checks, to be honest. It may look at hardware then stop booting (maybe error code, who knows?), or it may boot then only access when it is needed. The guy who started this thread should try it and let us know. Yeah, a guy mentioned looking on ebay for a Wii U without disc drives. It is so young though, this system, that I have not heard anything about a bad drive and taking it out, lmfao. Rednekcowboy was right also, what is the point if you must still run a USB cable from a port to the drive? UNLESS you want to really pull some crap and try to handle that internally with some soldering, lmfao. I've seen some crazy stuff with other systems, especially the 360.

But the 360 already had sata ports which makes it extremely simple for someone to install a hdd internally instead of the dvd drive. PS3, all you need is a male to female sata cable and you're good to go as well and providing you have an external power source, there is no soldering needed. However this guy does not sound like any kind of an expert (no offense OP, not meant to insult you) and I was not picking at him in the least as I thought of this as well, however after further investigation, there is no sata ports, therefore no way to connect a drive natively.

This also means that most likely, the OS on the Wii U will not recognize an hdd connected internally even if you managed to frankenstein one in without some sort of alternative code for it. For that you would need a CFW/some other kind of softmod, which is not available yet.

So, OP, I was not being an ar$ehole, I was truly interested as to how you would accomplish something like this and to what end/goal you hope to achieve. Care to enlighten us?

EDIT, just re-read OP. Pretty sure it didn't say anything about a USB prior--sneeky OP

At any rate, if you're going to have cables running back outside to connect to the usb ports, what's the point? It will look absolutely fugly, not to mention voiding your warranty for no advantage. not exactly the brightest thing in the world to do.

You would be better off building a custom case for your external drive that matches the Wii U and using white cables vs black.....

 

[Ray Lewis]

But the 360 already had sata ports which makes it extremely simple for someone to install a hdd internally instead of the dvd drive. PS3, all you need is a male to female sata cable and you're good to go as well and providing you have an external power source, there is no soldering needed. However this guy does not sound like any kind of an expert (no offense OP, not meant to insult you) and I was not picking at him in the least as I thought of this as well, however after further investigation, there is no sata ports, therefore no way to connect a drive natively.

This also means that most likely, the OS on the Wii U will not recognize an hdd connected internally even if you managed to frankenstein one in without some sort of alternative code for it. For that you would need a CFW/some other kind of softmod, which is not available yet.

So, OP, I was not being an ar$ehole, I was truly interested as to how you would accomplish something like this and to what end/goal you hope to achieve. Care to enlighten us?

EDIT, just re-read OP. Pretty sure it didn't say anything about a USB prior--sneeky OP

At any rate, if you're going to have cables running back outside to connect to the usb ports, what's the point? It will look absolutely fugly, not to mention voiding your warranty for no advantage. not exactly the brightest thing in the world to do.

You would be better off building a custom case for your external drive that matches the Wii U and using white cables vs black.....

He could find traces for USB port inside or solder to port/cut something so HD is sitting where drive is now. Still, live with plugging it in USB, lol. Troll thread?

 

[Eerpow]

Honestly, I can't say for myself, but here's an idea;
Go to ebay. Look at the Wii U's that have broken/removed disc drives. Maybe the seller can state whether or not the system functions without it. Thats all i can think of. Sorry I can't help more.

The Wii U isn't even a year old and disc drive problems are covered by warranty, so finding a system without one sounds near impossible.
To answer the OP's question, Wii U uses hardware checks and won't work with missing internal hardware.

 

[Ray Lewis]

The Wii U isn't even a year old and disc drive problems are covered by warranty, so finding a system without one sounds near impossible.
To answer the OP's question, Wii U uses hardware checks and won't work with missing internal hardware.

Seriously, source? It is his Wii U, unless there is a source for saying there are hardware checks to prevent booting then it is only your opinion.

 

[blinkzane]

I can imagine you would have to create a boot so the wii u thinks it's booting to a game, and then create hardware to run and read the game files and 01101010101011011011010101011010101010111011011000101010101001010110110110110101010110110101010101010101010101010101101101010101011011011010110110110110110110110110110101010
and that about solves your problem!
and something involving soldering. maybe find out the firmware for the disc drive and work it into the HDD file system. it would be much more complicated than just finding a plug and plugging it in, but i can see where you want to fit the HDD inside of the wii u and use that for all the games that you download, if thats the case than just disconnect and try it out! worst case is you just plug it back in.

 

[Eerpow]

Seriously, source? It is his Wii U, unless there is a source for saying there are hardware checks to prevent booting then it is only your opinion.

It would be stupid if they didn't have hardware checks. What the guys at Wiikey did was reverse the drive authentication, problem is that Nintendo can possibly block the Wiikey drive emulator and change the encryption of the hardware checking process.
Now that I think about it, it is possible that the Wii U only checks the hardware when booting off the disc drive... OP should ask the Wiikey team if it's possible, they probably know the answer. My bet is that it won't though.

 

[badesvin]

Ill try and make a few things clear:

Correct, im not a 1337 hacker (be if software or hardware)

It always mentioned USB: im ONLY trying to achieve not having 2 pieces to carry around when bringing the Wii U over to friends. Thats why i just wanted to see of it was possible to have everything inside the box.
Also i dont care about running a regular USB cable out the back to power/connect it. I just want a single box to carry around and i will never buy a boxed retail game for the system so i dont need the drive at all.
So no soldering, or messing around with connecting a HDD to the disc drive connectors etc.

 

[nukeboy95]

Ill try and make a few things clear:

Correct, im not a 1337 hacker (be if software or hardware)

It always mentioned USB: im ONLY trying to achieve not having 2 pieces to carry around when bringing the Wii U over to friends. Thats why i just wanted to see of it was possible to have everything inside the box.
Also i dont care about running a regular USB cable out the back to power/connect it. I just want a single box to carry around and i will never buy a boxed retail game for the system so i dont need the drive at all.
So no soldering, or messing around with connecting a HDD to the disc drive connectors etc.

i get what your saying
why not just tape the hdd on top or put it all in a mini computer case?

 

[Ray Lewis]

i get what your saying
why not just tape the hdd on top or put it all in a mini computer case?

Lol, then it is one unit, you are not voiding your warranty by opening it either. No mention of you hacking vWii or not. You could do it a few ways as long as you don't cover fan holes. If you are still going to take drive out then please let us all know. I am curious to know if it will boot without it. Wonder if it will work in system menu without it also.

Edit: about 99% certain you try to run a game and it may crash or give error right there, "Disc drive unresponsive contact Nintendo at....". Lol, 360 red ringed without a drive at boot. Later there were patches for nand or a simple jumper on two pins to allow normal use without drive.

 

[Coto]

uhm there are macros that talk with different pieces of gathered hardware connected by a bus or directly between them, those macros are called from the firmware at system bootup. if system boots up or not with those macros returning 1 or 0 , it's entirely dependant on the hardware developer. So you just take it out and see if it boots without the drive connected

 

[rednekcowboy]

Meh, you could always leave the drives pcb attached and connected in order to bypass the checks. Had to do this with the PS3 as well when I installed the hdd internally in order to be able to switch FW's.

I still think it's kind of a silly reason to void the system's warranty but to each his own.

 

[Ray Lewis]

Meh, you could always leave the drives pcb attached and connected in order to bypass the checks. Had to do this with the PS3 as well when I installed the hdd internally in order to be able to switch FW's.

I still think it's kind of a silly reason to void the system's warranty but to each his own.

Wait, do now disassemble the drive and hook up only PCB? Will it need power connected still? Insulate it to avoid contact with metals and hopefully have room for hard drive? Trying to follow your idea. If power is off maybe the Wii U still won't detect drive? Still the same as taking it out. Would work with cables still connected and PCB insulated. I am curious to know what Wii U does with drive only disconnected. Then boot? In menu? When going to run games from a hard drive without disc drive in? Basic trouble testing;-)