Hacking New to the wii

[johand]

Hello,


I am completely new to gaming and bought 2 months ago a brand new WII console for my kids, Bougth some 2nd hand games for them.I managed to softmod my wii to be able to make some backup copies of the games i own and to run them of a USB hard disk.

I have a Maxtor USB hard disk of 500Gb formatted as FAT.

When i insert a game disk, i can install it to my USB disk as a single wbfs file. So far so good. I do have some other questions before i rip my whole collection this way.


1. Will a single wbfs file be enough as a copy of my game? If my original CD gets lost or crashed, will i be able to make a new CD with this single file?

2. In the options of installing the game, i also find dump BCA. Should i do that before installing the game? What is it and where is it used for?



Another question, not related to the softmod:.Is it possible to move a WIIware game (Art Of Balance & World Of Goo) from 1 console to another? or is a wiiware game linked to a console?


Thx. J

 

[osm70]

1. Yes, but if your wii is too new you will not be able to play burned disc.
2. You dont need that. I dont know what is it for.
3.Normally it is tied to one console. But you can pirate it.

 

[johand]

thx.


If my new wii cannot play burned discs, i can put my wbfs file on anther USB hard disk, and it will run from here, yes? I can copy /past wbfs file to where i want, they will be enough to have the game?


Another question: If i install a wii game from an original disk to my USB hard drive, no covers are found afterwards. Is the site where the cover reside down or...?


Thx, Johan

 

[Sicklyboy]

thx.


If my new wii cannot play burned discs, i can put my wbfs file on anther USB hard disk, and it will run from here, yes? I can copy /past wbfs file to where i want, they will be enough to have the game?


Another question: If i install a wii game from an original disk to my USB hard drive, no covers are found afterwards. Is the site where the cover reside down or...?


Thx, Johan

Well it can't just be -anywhere-, it has to be in fat32:/wbfs/ (ntfs drives work too, for most things, but it's recommended to go with fat32 because there are some programs that don't work with ntfs)

Usually youd have a game folder inside of the wbfs folder like fat32:/wbfs/Game Name[GAMEID]/gameid.wbf

Use a program like Wii Backup Manager to copy your games to your hard drive, it'll take care of naming everything properly and also scrubbing the ISOs so they only take up as much size as the game files take up.

 

[johand]

My intention was:

1. rip my original games to wbfs on a USB hard drive (with the WII console)

2. Copy the content of that USB Hard drive with the same folder strucutre to my NAS so i have a backup.


Is this a safe approach to have full backups of my games. Can i copy that NAS backup to another (fat32) usb drive, connect it to the WII console and play...? Or if i have an old enough WII console burn the wbfs to a DVD-R and play it from burned disks

 

[Sicklyboy]

It seems I misunderstood what you were originally asking (or I just wasn't paying attention... probably the latter)

Yes, you can rip your games to a hard drive with the Wii. Open any USB loader with your hard drive attached (you may or may not need to create /wbfs/ first. Afterwards, the loader will have an option to rip/install a game - insert your game disk, select this option, and go put on a pot of coffee. I'd say give it a shot, if it doesn't work, plug the drive into your computer and make a folder "wbfs" in the root of your drive and try again.

After that, yes, you can copy back and forth between your NAS and your initial hard drive/other hard drives without an issue, provided the partitions are laid out correctly on any of the other hard drives if you have more than one partition (but that's another issue in itself)

I'd caution against burning them to DVD-R disks regardless of whether your Wii can read them or not. The Wii was never intended to read burned media like that, so it puts extra wear on the laser, resulting in premature failure of the drive. Aside from that, loading off of a DVD-R is also slower than a USB hard drive/flash drive (which is even faster than loading off of the original disk media!)

 

[johand]

Thx a lot