Hacking 4 TB Seagate / DIOS MIOS issues

[Oxybelis]

Making hybrid GPT/MBR can make some software confused. It's better to zero first sectors of HDD every time you mess with this. It's pretty easy to do in linux.

 

[Elliander]

And based on eward's post, you won't be able to read anything past the 2TB.
the tests you did proved that you couldn't load data past the 2TB mark.

Actually, my latest test proved the opposite. Sort of. It took me a bit longer than expected to run this test because I had some issues with the Plugable USB Docking Station. It would cut out after a mere 50 GB was written. Thankfully I was able to find out that a "NexStar HX" not only sees the drive perfectly out of the box, it also runs the drive cool after almost 24 hours of near constant file transfers. I used Disc Scrubber to add 2.12 TB of data to the drive. After verifying that the drive was defragmented I then created the wbfs folder on that drive and added a single Wii game. To put it simply, that game is physically located at the 3 TB mark of the drive.

950 GB FAT 32 & 2.7 TB NTFS, with 2.12 TB padding in second partition: It didn't work. Once game data was placed at that point the partition would no longer be recognized by USB Loader GX. I verified that it wasn't just the changed enclosure.

I wanted to make sure it wasn't at least in some way related to formatting, so I converted the first partition to NTFS with a 32k sector size and then merged those two partitions. Then I added a game to the drive when that completed and ran a test.

3.7 TB TB NTFS, with 2.12 TB padding: It worked perfectly in both WiiMC and running Wii games. Obviously didn't work for DIOS MIOS though.

So here's the real question: If it isn't possible to see more than 2 TB in 512 byte mode why am I able to do it in NTFS mode? In any case he's at least correct that when a FAT32 partition is present I cannot see more than a total of 2 TB, and there is no point testing to see what would happen if FAT32 was second because it wouldn't work. Both tests were using GPT of course.

I don't know how much test you did with DIOS MIOS, but sometime you need to do more than one try to check if it's working fine. For example random Wii shutting down is an issue with working drives too.

For most tests I tried 2 or 3 times just to be sure.

I told you to use an old version of USBLoaderGX to do your tests, to prevent the "check" for correct setup, and don't have error messages preventing you to boot DM. (or even don't use it at all, boot GC games using DML Booter).

Which version would you suggest? The later tests actually had more to do with seeing under what setups data would be seen at all, so the exact error messages it gave me for DIOS MIOS were of little concern there. The real problem was that in every single test using MBR DIOS MIOS would load to a black screen with no errors and in every test using hybrid MBR/GPT it produce the DSI Exception Error. If you think an older version could get beyond that error and finish loading USB Loader GX I would be more than happy to try it.

You told "it's asking for primary !! so it's good it didn't tell anything about 512, but strange it didn't tell anything about MBR"
You don't understand how a program is working (sequentially), nor what you are talking about (what primary is).

Primary is one of the MBR partition type.
If you use a GPT, it will NOT be primary anymore.
Primary = MBR
If you set the drive as GPT, of course it will tell you don't have a primary partition anymore.

I do know what a primary partition is, I was just quoting the exact error message USB Loader GX gave me. I didn't know that Primary wasn't used by GPT so that explains the error a bit better.

Spoiler

About this picture :
MBR entry is stored on Sector 0
GPT entry is stored at two different places on the drive : Sector 1 and Final Sector-34 (at the end of the drive)

This picture means either:
1. You removed the GPT, but it only deleted the data located at Sector1 and kept the data on Final-sector
2. You don't have a "GPT partition" type stored in one of the 4 MBR entries, but the GPT Sector1 is still there.
In both case, it means your partition manager is not doing a complete job when you delete GPT.

That makes sense. It made no difference in the results either way though, I was just reporting it to be complete.

To do what you want to achieve, You need a hybrid mode if you want to use all the partitions:

Yes, I am aware of that, but seeing as how I couldn't get it to work at all in Hybrid mode I just ran the tests I could while waiting to see what I should do about that.

in MBR you need to list ONLY the <2TB partitions
in GPT, you need to list the <2TB and the >2TB partitions
the FAT32 partition must be the first one in the MBR table.
Do not create a protective partition (or be sure it's not stored on the first slot of MBR)

2 TB FAT32 Primary (MBR) (& protective) & GPT partition presence information
2 TB FAT32 GPT & 1.7 TB NTFS GPT

No partition can be greater than 2 TB when using Hybrid MBR/GPT. At least when using windows to handle the file transfers. And ya, I made sure to stop creating protective partitions a while ago.

But even with the hybrid mode, USBLoaderGX will warn you about the GPT type, because GPT is loaded first and the first partition will be "seen" as a GPT even if it exists as MBR too.
if I remove the error message (and make it a warning only for example), it will still boot the MIOS, and DIOS MIOS will check the MBR only and will find the FAT32 partition.

I never got that far. USB Loader always crashes in Hybrid MBR/GPT mode.

FIRST, you need to be sure that the drive is compatible with DIOS MIOS before doing more partition tests, or else you won't know if the problem is the partition or the drive.
Format a single <1TB FAT32 MBR primary partition again, and test DIOS MIOS with any loader.
The wii might shut down, or just black screen, try few times, with different DM version (and if possible with USBgecko).

If it doesn't work more than 10 times in a row, the drive is most likely not compatible, and doing more partitioning tests are useless.

I ran that test a while back just to test that very possibility, and the screen went black. I wasn't sure if it was the version or not though so lacking an idea of which versions to test for I did tests in GPT for a while. If you would like me to test it with specific versions of USB Loader which would you suggest? I have never tried USBgecko. Where would I find that?

Before I do that test though are there any other tests you would like me to do with the 2.12 TB of padding? Because it takes me a good 24 hours to generate.

Making hybrid GPT/MBR can make some software confused. It's better to zero first sectors of HDD every time you mess with this. It's pretty easy to do in linux.

That's worth looking into, but I am not as familiar with Linux based systems and gparted wouldn't work on the drive. Do you have any articles I should look at?

 

[Cyan]

1.
When you merged both partition, did you recreate the padding file?
Or did you only merged an empty partition at the start of the drive (full of available space to store a game) with the second partition (padded with a dummy file)?
In my understanding, you added a game after merging the partition, so the game went in the first sectors, the space used by the first partition, which can be accessed without problem.

When you pad the partition past the 2TB, it doesn't work.

2.
I think you don't need to "pad" the partitions, waiting for a big file creation for hours.
You can make a partition starting after the 2TB sector, and all files on that partitions will be past the 2TB sector address.

3.
I don't think of any other test you could do with the padded sectors.

4.
if you only want to test DIOS MIOS, you should use DMLBooter.
or an old version without any partition check. I added them in r1208, so any version before that.

5.
USBGecko is a device to connect the Wii to PC through USB.
It's a rare device now as production has stopped.

6.
What I could change is detection of hybrid mode, but I don't know if a lot of users will need it (actually, you are the first and only one who want it)

Even if hybrid won't work at all, you could use only the first half of the drive (<2TB), but even with only using the first 2TB it doesn't work with DIOS MIOS which is your first goal.
If you don't having DIOS MIOS working, there's no purpose adding hybrid to the loader.

 

[Elliander]

1.
When you merged both partition, did you recreate the padding file?
Or did you only merged an empty partition at the start of the drive (full of available space to store a game) with the second partition (padded with a dummy file)?
In my understanding, you added a game after merging the partition, so the game went in the first sectors, the space used by the first partition, which can be accessed without problem.

When you pad the partition past the 2TB, it doesn't work.

hmm. I guess there would be space between the end of the data on the first partition and the data placed on the end, but there was also already a game at the end of the second partition from the previous test before the merge and that worked as well. (and by worked, I mean it not only showed up on the list, but I played it for a few minutes to be sure). Besides, the total padding is 2.12 TB which means that no matter how you look at it there is data beyond the 2 TB mark. Still, if you want me to double check it, I can add another 1 TB of padding (more than the size of the old first partition's free space) and check again.

In the event that it doesn't work, I have an idea and I was wondering if it could work: Is there any way to trick the Wii into thinking a later sector number is an earlier one? For example, suppose if the Wii was told that the sector number for the 2 TB mark was the sector number that would normally be the first sector of the first partition. I mean, like a layer between the hard drive and the program to handle the issue of addressing? I know that if that could work it would mean the first partition wouldn't work, but in practice it could mean that maybe USB Loader GX could detect the sector numbers before trying to read data from them (since we know that without trying to read data it will see the partitions) and then maybe have an option to toggle between partitions. One option could be the normal reading of the first partition, with the second blocked from view to protect it even if no data is written to it yet, and then the other option would instead look at the second one. Is that feasible?

2.
I think you don't need to "pad" the partitions, waiting for a big file creation for hours.
You can make a partition starting after the 2TB sector, and all files on that partitions will be past the 2TB sector address.

lol. Why didn't I think of that? I haven't done a single test starting later in the drive. I can't believe it!

3.
I don't think of any other test you could do with the padded sectors.

4.
if you only want to test DIOS MIOS, you should use DMLBooter.
or an old version without any partition check. I added them in r1208, so any version before that.

OK, on my next day off I will look into DMLBooter and older versions of USB Loader GX. Today I have some blue prints to work through for an extension I am planning and can't really get away from it long enough to focus on the Wii, and tomorrow I have to meet with the city at some point, but I think on Friday I could try it out.

As I recall when DIOS MIOS was still in the early stages of development (before it was integrated into USB Loader GX) and others were getting it to work I could only get a black screen on the drive that now has no problems with it so if it is an incompatible hard drive what are the chances of it ever being able to work? I can justify testing several external hard drive enclosures because if they don't work I can easily return it, but finding a 512 byte sector size is impossible outside the used market these days so it would be a long time before I could test a different drive.

5.
USBGecko is a device to connect the Wii to PC through USB.
It's a rare device now as production has stopped.

I noticed. I tried looking for it and every online store has 0 available. I can find it on ebay, but the starting bids there are over $100.00 which is a bit outside my current price range. How would such a device be useful for in regards to this?

6.
What I could change is detection of hybrid mode, but I don't know if a lot of users will need it (actually, you are the first and only one who want it)

Even if hybrid won't work at all, you could use only the first half of the drive (<2TB), but even with only using the first 2TB it doesn't work with DIOS MIOS which is your first goal.
If you don't having DIOS MIOS working, there's no purpose adding hybrid to the loader.

Exactly why I focused my tests on GPT for a while. There is no point focusing on Hybrid mode if I can't get beyond 2 TB using the formatting that DIOS MIOS would require to begin with. If by some miracle I manage to get it to work in FAT32/NTFS in GPT and if I can also manage to get DIOS MIOS to work at all with this drive then it would be worth getting hybrid mode to work. Outside of that scenario there would be no real use for Hybrid Mode.

I am curious about something: I was in a very early test able to get Windows 7 to see MBR only by converting to GPT then back to MBR. With no GPT present, I was able to get it to see both partitions without any problems. Of course, USB Loader GX didn't like it, but why would that have worked in Windows? It doesn't really make sense to me.

 

[putnam]

I think that if DIOS MIOS supported GPT, this would be no problem. I added a patch to DIOS MIOS to support it, but still working on getting it tested. I can't seem to get it packaged right to save my life, even without patches. As soon as I get it working I'll let you know. It'll still expect the first partition on disk to be fat32 formatted, but it will understand the GPT partition style so you should be able to make a 800GB-1TB Gamecube partition up front (enough for all the USA titles) and use the rest for Wii games. I will keep this thread posted as well if/when this patch gets accepted.

 

[Cyan]

GPT support is not enough, you would need to support 4k sectors too.
GPT with 512bytes sectors are not common use. (and it will not help him, as his drive is not compatible with DM. If I understood correctly it's a faked/emulated 512B, his sectors are still physically 4k)

 

[Elliander]

Sorry I haven't done any more since my last post. Ended up with a really bad case of Strep Pneumonia. I'm going to be doing a few new tests tonight.

If I understood correctly it's a faked/emulated 512B, his sectors are still physically 4k

Not correct. This is a true 512 byte sector size hard drive. It was produced before the 4k standard. The issue I had was that the enclosure it came with interpreted it as a 4k drive - in other words, it faked 4k. Not the other way around. I was able to verify this with other much older SATA drives from around 2004. Every enclosure that interpreted this drive as 4k also interpreted every other SATA hard drive I have as 4k. Meanwhile, the enclosures that correctly display this as a 512 byte drive also display all the other 512 byte drives as 512 bytes and also display my 4k byte drives correctly as 4k bytes. (Not to mention the fact that when this drive is plugged into a computer directly it does show up as a 512 byte drive)

.......

For my next test I am simply going to defragment the 4 TB NTFS partition from the previous test (1.49 TB free of 3.63 TB) to see if file fragmentation was why the games loaded up. That is going to take a while, but it would make sure that any new games added are added after the 2 TB mark. I am just going to be testing Wii games this time. If it doesn't work I will restrict myself to 2 TB and run tests for DIOS MIOS with older versions. If DIOS MIOS still doesn't work I will put the project on the shelf for now. Either way I will know by the end of this weekend.

I am not going to have time to do test various formatting options this time since the next semester is starting soon and any free time is going to be devoted into studying C++ programming since I am going to be getting an Emotiv Insight dev kit in 8 months so I want to make that a bit of a priority.

I think that if DIOS MIOS supported GPT, this would be no problem. I added a patch to DIOS MIOS to support it, but still working on getting it tested. I can't seem to get it packaged right to save my life, even without patches. As soon as I get it working I'll let you know. It'll still expect the first partition on disk to be fat32 formatted, but it will understand the GPT partition style so you should be able to make a 800GB-1TB Gamecube partition up front (enough for all the USA titles) and use the rest for Wii games. I will keep this thread posted as well if/when this patch gets accepted.

Right now the main issue isn't so much the lack of GPT support, but a question of if I can get USB Loader GX to see data placed after the 2 TB mark at all. If it can then it would definitely be helpful to have GPT support even without support for 4k sector sizes, but if it can't then it would mean that USB Loader GX itself wouldn't support 512 byte partitions large enough to make GPT worth implementing without 4k. Either way I agree that 4k sector sizes will be needed considering how difficult it is to find a 512 byte sector size drive.

 

[Elliander]

Success!

After fully defragmenting the drive, I tested it out with the Wii and tested "Fortune Street" and it still worked as before. I then added "Create" to see if it would still work (just to make sure the game is being placed after the 2 TB mark). With that added I tested it on the Wii again and this time it displayed the games perfectly (unlike the Fat32 tests where no games would show up at all). First I tested "Fortune Street" again and it played perfectly. Then I tested "Create", but on load it just went back to the Wii menu. I couldn't be sure of the cause because I reset all settings since I played it last, but knew that "Lost in Shadow" worked with default settings since it was my very first Wii game. I put the original disc for "Lost in Shadow" in the drive and ripped the game fresh to the drive and tested it. It shows up and plays perfectly.

Conclusion: The Wii is perfectly capable of reading more than 2 TB on a 512 byte drive when using NTFS formatting. It is also capable of writing data beyond the 2 TB mark. I am still not sure why it had problems with FAT32, but the important thing is that it works.

My next step is to delete this partition entirely and start over with a single 500 GB FAT32 MBR partition. I will set it up tonight and then over the weekend run tests on different versions to see if I can get DIOS MIOS to work as well.

it is IMPOSSIBLE for all the sectors of your drive to be readable using the read_10 command, which is what ALL wii software uses.

You were saying?

EDIT:

More Success!

First I deleted the NTFS partition using MiniTool, then I converted the disk to MBR using Windows 7 disk management. Then I used MiniTool to create a 500 GB (512001.74 MB) partition: FAT32, Primary, 32k Cluster Size. Then I copied to the drive all files and folders from my old drive except the "games" and "wbfs" and "nands" directories (13.3 MB). Then I copied a single Wii game from "wbfs" followed by a single gamecube game from "games" to the new drive.

Test result without changing version number: It works! First I tested the Wii game, which worked as expected. Then I tested the Gamecube game and it also worked perfectly!

Conclusion: This hard drive is compatible with DIOS MIOS without needing to roll back to previous software versions. I either need to have DIOS MIOS support GPT or I need to have USB Loader GX support hybrid MBR/GPT. Once either is possible I will be able to get this to work.

Any suggestions on how I should proceed?

I think that if DIOS MIOS supported GPT, this would be no problem.

You are correct. I am ready and able to test whenever you have something ready

If you don't having DIOS MIOS working, there's no purpose adding hybrid to the loader.

I have DIOS MIOS working

 

[Cyan]

You finally made it work, both with DM and Hybrid?
I thought you tested many things before (maybe too many and corrupted things?).

So, if it's now working, I can make you a test version with hybrid support.
I'll contact you when I have something ready.

 

[edwardbirkholz05]

I still stand by what I said because your testing methods are still flawed.
What would have actually happened when you supposedly ripped a game to space past the 2TB boundary is that the sector numbers were wrapped to 32-bits and you trashed data within the first 2TB. It didn't matter because you padded it with junk so nothing important was overwritten. But if it had been filled with actual games, some of them would have been overwritten.

There is a simple test that can conclusively prove it:
- Create a FAT partition at the start of the disc, 10GB or so. Format it and leave it empty.
- Create another FAT partition starting at exactly the 2TB point (sector 4,294,967,296) of the same size. MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE it is that sector, don't rely on any tools that ask for the starting position in MB/GB.
- USING A PC, place a game on the second FAT partition.
- Try to play the game on the wii. Try ripping other games to it.
- Verify on a PC that the first partition is still empty. Verify the second partition looks like it should. chkdsk both partitions to make sure there's no corruption.

 

[Elliander]

You finally made it work, both with DM and Hybrid?

I don't have Hybrid working, but as two separate successful tests I have:

1.) Both DM and Wii games working on an MBR partition that is kept small
2) USB Loader GX loads Wii games beyond the 2 TB mark even with padding on an NTFS GPT partition. It also has no problems writing to the drive after the 2 TB mark.

I thought you tested many things before (maybe too many and corrupted things?).

I figured out what my problems were.

1.) In some tests there was a gap of less than a MB at the beginning of the drive that MiniTools didn't show which kept DIOS MIOS from loading.
2.) Although Edward was wrong overall, testing his suspicions revealed that for some reason the USB Loader GX can't handle FAT32 placed beyond the 2 TB mark. In most of my tests I used FAT32 which is why they failed. Obviously this presents a problem since DIOS MIOS requires FAT32. I can't be 100% sure that I will be able to get it to read beyond the 2 TB mark with FAT32 on the drive at all, but I also can't be 100% sure that the problem didn't have something to do with something else like MBR and/or GPT. The important thing is that as a proof of concept the drive can do each task separately so there should be a way to do both at once.
3.) I just didn't do enough tests of each task separately from the start. I went right into Hybrid MBR/GPT when I should have taken it slow. I would have saved myself quite a bit of time and trouble if I did things differently.

So, if it's now working, I can make you a test version with hybrid support. I'll contact you when I have something ready.

Thanks! In the mean time I am going to do a few tests to find the upper limit of what partition size will work with DM.

 

[Elliander]

I still stand by what I said because your testing methods are still flawed.

Give it up. You were wrong. Deal with it.

What would have actually happened when you supposedly ripped a game to space past the 2TB boundary is that the sector numbers were wrapped to 32-bits and you trashed data within the first 2TB. It didn't matter because you padded it with junk so nothing important was overwritten. But if it had been filled with actual games, some of them would have been overwritten.

I placed game data before the padding and after padding, and all the game data works. Your suspicions made sense when you were talking about allocating data to sectors, but now you expect me to believe that the data magically overwrote just the data I wasn't working with? I already concluded that there are issues with FAT32 beyond the 2 TB mark, so your testing suggestions would be a waste of time.

EDIT: I will test according to your suggestions anyway, only I will be using NTFS and I don't have a sector based partitioning tool.

 

[edwardbirkholz05]

Dude, I'm not wrong. The evidence (which you don't seem to understand) is in the code - sectors are 32-bits, end of story. If you try to read/write sector no. 4,294,967,296, you'll end up hitting sector no. 0 instead. This is a fact (you can't argue with the source code!) that none of your tests has addressed properly.
You placed game data before the padding and after the padding, but at different offsets. Of course a single game is not going to overwrite the entire first 2TB of the drive! It overwrote a tiny portion of the padding junk which had no noticeable ill effects.
Did you bother to check the partition that you ripped the game to on a PC? I bet any of the pc based game managers wouldn't be able to read the wbfs file, because it wouldn't be where it was meant to be on the disk.

It feels like I'm trying to explain that the earth is round and you keep saying that can't be true because you can travel across it in a car, on a horse, on a train...
If you don't have a sector based partitioning tool you can't be sure where your data is going. Maybe the program thinks a kilobyte is 1000 bytes, maybe 1024. Partitions are defined by their starting and ending sectors, that's what any decent program should use.
If you don't have VERIFIABLE data at the exact same offsets from the start of the disc and after the 2TB boundary, you can't be sure that the wii can tell the difference and your tests are a waste of time.

 

[RyanRDLPS]

After a quick Google it seems the maximum capacity for a FAT32 file system is 8 TB. So you're fine within that area.

My advice is to format the drive (quick or full, doesn't matter) then partition is to the specifications of DIOS MIOS' launcher. The only thing that might be stopping the loader is the drive's priority. In that case make sure whatever partition manager you're utilizing that you set the FAT32 partition as the PRIMARY drive and you should be good to go. Just double check the files/folders of the launcher are all correct and you're golden. I also highly recommend Configurable USB Loader. I feel it's the best available, and has a beautiful UI.

 

[Elliander]

Additional test results:

1.) Placing a 500 GB FAT32 (32k, GPT) partition at the end of the drive with nothing in front of it results in USB Loader GX asking to format, and then not being able to mount it. Looking at the computer shows that it converted it to MBR, but the 500 GB partition remained intact.

2.) Placing a 500 GB NTFS (32k, GPT) partition resulted in something I never saw it do before: It reported "2047.75 GB free of 2047.75 GB" and displays 0 games on the list. It was able to rip games and play them without any problems, but when looking at it in the computer the data isn't anywhere. It seemed to end up in the unallocated space somehow.

It is important to keep in mind that with the results of this test no games appeared at all, whereas in the previous test that worked beyond the 2 TB mark the games before and after the 2 TB mark showed up along with the game ripped from the Wii and that the data showed up when plugged back into the computer. Also in that test it successfully showed the partition size accurately so it's not like this happened specifically because data existed beyond the 2 TB mark.

3.) Deleting everything I created a new 500 GB partition (NTFS, 32k, GPT, no GPT reserved partition) after 1 TB of unallocated space at the beginning of the drive. Then I placed a single Wii game on that partition. The result was similar to the above. USB Loader GX did load, but it displayed 0 games. This time when attempting to rip "Lost in Shadow" it had an error writing path.

In other words, USB Loader GX can't handle having unallocated space at the beginning of the drive - even if the partition is completely within the 2 TB mark.

4.) Two NTFS partitions (first 1.99 TB, second 1.63 TB) resulted in "Exception (DSI) Occurred!" error, but when looking at it later it looked like there was a weird less than 1 MB space at the beginning and end of the drive unallocated so I suspected that to have been the cause, but after trying again without those the same error appeared. It seems like there are just a few formatting combinations that doesn't work very well.

5.) To confirm, I created Two NTFS partitions (GPT, 32k, no GPT reserved partition) of 750 GB each at the beginning of the drive and left the rest unallocated. I placed a single game on each partition and both loaded which verified that the issue of multiple partitions only exists when a second partition is placed beyond the 2 TB mark. One partition will work with data beyond 2 TB, but there is an issue with multiple partitions.

6.) To further verify the previous results I added a third partition - this time 1 TB - and placed a single game on it such that no data exists beyond the 2 TB mark, but that partition information exist beyond it. The result was another "Exception (DSI) occurred!", but when I resize that third partition down to 400 GB so that it ends before the 2 TB mark the third partition shows up without any problems and all 3 games work perfectly.

In other words, it doesn't seem to matter if the data is beyond the 2 TB mark at all. It was the size of the third partition that caused problems - not the sector location of it's data.

7.) Deleting all partitions, converting to MBR, and then creating a single 2 TB FAT32 partition then copying a single GC and Wii game on the partition resulted in a successful test of both Wii and Gamecube games.

After a quick Google it seems the maximum capacity for a FAT32 file system is 8 TB. So you're fine within that area.

Do you know of a good program that will work? Both MiniTools and EaseUS limits me to 2 TB for FAT32, and "FAT32 GUI Formatter" doesn't like 512 byte drives. With a 4k drive I have no problems formatting 4 TB to FAT32, but I have yet to find a program that will format a 512 byte drive to FAT32 beyond 2 TB. I don't see why it shouldn't be possible, but the issue is finding something that will do it.

EDIT: I found "Verbatum FAT32 tool" and it did format the entire drive (or so it says), but Windows 7 doesn't recognize it. It sees it as "other". Fortunately VMware running Ubuntu could see it, but unfortunately it lags horribly trying to view it so I am thinking it was a bad format job.

EDIT 2: Another FAT32Formatter found here was promising, but it also failed to format the entire drive. It will say it completed successfully, then spit out errors and the end result is a 1.63 TB FAT32 partition with a 64k cluster size.

EDIT 3: Also tried Swissknife, but it won't even see more than 2 TB.

EDIT 4: Seagate DiscWizard is also unable to format beyond 2 TB, but it has an interesting thing for MBR discs called "Disc Extender" to have more than 2 TB viewable in MBR for 512 byte discs, but of course it gave me an error when trying to use it. Besides that, it formatted to 64k... and I have run out of ideas for programs to try.

My advice is to format the drive (quick or full, doesn't matter) then partition is to the specifications of DIOS MIOS' launcher. The only thing that might be stopping the loader is the drive's priority. In that case make sure whatever partition manager you're utilizing that you set the FAT32 partition as the PRIMARY drive and you should be good to go. Just double check the files/folders of the launcher are all correct and you're golden.

Oh, I always make sure to set it to Primary and 32k.

I also highly recommend Configurable USB Loader. I feel it's the best available, and has a beautiful UI.

I haven't checked out that loader yet.

EDIT 5:

8.) When formatting the first partition to FAT32 (2 TB, 32k, GPT) and the second partition to FAT32 and loading one game on each partition USB Loader GX only sees the first partition, but when changing the second partition to NTFS I get a "Exception (DSI) Occurred!" so

It seems that so far the only configuration that seems to work beyond 2 TB is a single 3.7 TB NTFS partition. Unless DIOS MIOS can be made to support NTFS, or unless I can get a single FAT32 partition to be larger than 2 TB, even Hybrid mode won't be enough

 

[RyanRDLPS]

Sounds like you're still crunching on it. If I were you I would fully format the 4TB HDD to a fully raw partition. Then I would use any manager, even Windows built in system one, to parition off 500 GB, in a 32K cluster for the Gamecube ISOs.
Once that's complete format another sector in the WBFS format using the WBFS Manager. A quick google should bring that up. I think if you try that, it might get you a bit farther. If not then you're running into issues with the 4TB drive I'd imagine.

Good luck!

 

[Elliander]

Sounds like you're still crunching on it.

Ya. I am trying at least. If I don't get it figured out before school starts up again I won't be giving up. I will just shelf the hard drive to look into later. At this point it's a war between and the hard drive. If I even get 3 TB of it working I will consider it a victory.

If I were you I would fully format the 4TB HDD to a fully raw partition.

Do you mean a full format, rather than a quick format? I haven't done one of those in a while.

Then I would use any manager, even Windows built in system one, to parition off 500 GB, in a 32K cluster for the Gamecube ISOs.
Once that's complete format another sector in the WBFS format using the WBFS Manager. A quick google should bring that up. I think if you try that, it might get you a bit farther. If not then you're running into issues with the 4TB drive I'd imagine.
Good luck!

hmm. I did look into WBFS a while back without much luck, but I think it is worth looking at again. I will run some tests tomorrow to see if a combination of FAT32 and NTFS would work. The only problem is that if it does work I won't have enough game data to pad the WBFS partition to confirm if anything goes wrong beyond the 2 TB mark, but then again my tests have indicated that the 2 TB mark is more an issue for the partitions than any data on the partitions.

Ideally I would prefer to get about 900 GB to work with the first FAT32 partition at least since that would be more than enough to in theory support two emuNAND (one for uneek and one for USB Loader GX) and every gamecube game ever made. Not that I have that many games, but the reason I picked the 4 TB to work on is because it would be more than enough for anyone. The downside of going with WBFS for the second partition is the wasted space. There is no way to fill it all even if I had all the Wii games.

Good luck!

Thanks!

 

[Cyan]

I checked the sources, and USBloaderGX should already be compatible with hybrid drives.
It's checking if the partition is already present before adding a new one, so if a partition located on MBR is already added to the list, the same partition defined in GPT will not be added again.

The partitions are added in the order of encounter, so starting from MBR then checking if the partitions are primary or extended or GPT.

 

[ca032769]

Just found this thread and find it disappointing that there seems to be a conflict in program support getting a 4TB HDD working for both Wii & GameCube games in the same partition.

I'd also like to have all of the Wii, GameCube, WW & VC on the same drive, a WD MyBook 4TB.

The previous post here goes back to August 2013. Has there been any developments in program updates or formatting procedures to allow this??

 

[Cyan]

DIOS MIOS is not updated anymore, so there's no (and won't be any) development progress.
If you want homebrew to play gamecube games which supports 4k drives, you can use Devolution or Nintendont.

You can't format the drive to make it compatible. it's either compatible or not based on the sector size at manufacturing time.