Hardware WBFS HDD: Not initialized

SpikeBolt

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I wanted to make a copy of my Wii HDD which is in the WBFS format (I know it's outdated but I never bothered to change). I tested it my old Wii and it's working just fine. I loaded a couple of games without any problem.

When I connect it to the windows machine it doesn't mount at all. When I go to Disk Manage it tells me that my disk is not initialized :(

27b37e9105994fddadf27b8953c4ef97.png


Is there any way I can solve this problem without formatting? Thanks
 
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The Real Jdbye

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I wanted to make a copy of my Wii HDD which is in the WBFS format (I know it's outdated but I never bothered to change). I tested it my old Wii and it's working just fine. I loaded a couple of games without any problem.

When I connect it to the windows machine it doesn't mount at all. When I go to Disk Manage it tells me that my disk is not initialized :(

27b37e9105994fddadf27b8953c4ef97.png


Is there any way I can solve this problem without formatting? Thanks
That's how WBFS works.... It's not detected by Windows because it's not a known file system.
WBFS tools will still be able to access it (do not use WBFS Manager though, it corrupts your games)
I would recommend converting the drive using wbfs2fat: https://gbatemp.net/threads/wbfs2fat-py.291320/
It will only take a few seconds and then you'll be able to use things that don't support the WBFS filesystem, such as Nintendont, emulators etc.
 

SpikeBolt

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This time it's different because Windows doesn't assign it a letter. I can't use the WBFS Managers because the disk is not even mounted.

EDIT: the tool you mentioned also requires a drive letter which I'm unable to provide.
 
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SpikeBolt

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Yes. The problem is that windows doesn't even assign it a drive letter, as you can see in the screenshot I provided.

It allows me to "Initialize" but I assume that formats the drive...
 

GreyWolf

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You can't assign it a drive letter. There is no filesystem driver for WBFS. Connect the drive and start Wii Backup Manager. That was probably incorrect. You should be able to assign it a drive letter in disk management. That doesn't write to the drive.

As was mentioned before, don't use WBFS Manager. Either convert it to FAT32 or at least use Wii Backup Manager to manage it.
 
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SpikeBolt

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You can't assign it a drive letter. There is no filesystem driver for WBFS. Connect the drive and start Wii Backup Manager. That was probably incorrect. You should be able to assign it a drive letter in disk management. That doesn't write to the drive.

As was mentioned before, don't use WBFS Manager. Either convert it to FAT32 or at least use Wii Backup Manager to manage it.
The drive letter can be assigned to any partition or drive regardless of the format. The fact the OS doesn't let me assign a letter leads to me believe there is a problem with the partition.

I can't convert it to FAT or use Wii Backup Manager because they can't find my Hard Drive. They can probably acknowledge my HDD's existence but fail to recognize a valid partition.

I'm currently using a HDD RAW copy software to perform and exact copy to a different HDD. If the Wii can read the new HDD then I will attempt to correct this problem without the risk of losing the data...
 

SpikeBolt

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The HHD RAW copy took a long time but it worked okay. The new disk runs perfectly on the Wii. Now I can safely try to figure out what the hell is going on.
 

Cyan

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You can't assign a letter to the partition, because there's no partition table.
the tool you used to create the WBFS partition deleted the partition table (which can define up to 4 different partitions), and your drive is one big partition. Windows expect a table to list the partitions and assign them letters (even if unformated or unknown format).
Some wbfs tools could format a partition from the 4 possible partition and keep the table, other tools was just overwriting the partition table.

I don't know if wbfs2fat works with no MBR (MBR = partition table).
Maybe wwt (Wiimm's WBFS tool) has some option to move the WBFS allocation table and generate a MBR?

there's not a lot of WBFS application to manage drive's partitions :(
wwt and wbfs2fat are probably the only ones.

I'll call @Wiimm here, maybe he knows how to create a partition table on drives with WBFS partition starting at sector 0.

edit :
I don't know enough about WBFS format, but I think the first sector contains the WBFS header (12 bytes) and a disc table up to the end of the first sector.
1 byte = 1 game, 512 bytes/sector = 500 max games, 4096 bytes/sector = 4084 max games.
Then probably a list of allocated blocs for each disc entry, then the game's data.

So, it would require moving few sectors to create a partition table
sector 0 (WBFS header->MBR)
sector 1 (disc info start (lba aligned?)-> WBFS Header)
sector disc_data1 (moved first disc info to the end of the array)
if disc table 1 is used (disc 1 bloc 1->unused sector, set the new LBA in disc info)

that's the shortest method, else it would require deleting (or moving + fixing LBA of the first game) and rewrite the full header sector -> sector+1 using dd.
 
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Wiimm

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Sorry, but I haven't seen the call before (don't know why).

I use WBFS partitions too and had never problems with it since using my wit tools under Linux. But I know, that Wii Backup Manager is also very good (talked much with the author at development time).

When I connect my drive to a Widnows 7 system, it looks like:

wbfs.png


It contains a FAT (G) and an WBFS partition (second). I had removed the drive letter from WBFS to suppress warning messages about an not formatted drive.

Comparing it with the screen shot of the OP: It looks different. The MBR seems to be broken. And without you have not a normal access. However, you can try wit tools to verify it.

After installation open a cmd windows as administrator and use command "wwt analyse"
Code:
... warnings about not readable partitions ...

ANALYZE /dev/sdf    <<<<< the whole drive

ANALYZE /dev/sdf2    <<<<< second partition of my WBFS drive
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                    HD SECTORS  WBFS SECTORS   DISCS       (all values in hex)
           WBFS     total  sec  total    sec  max inode
NAME    magic vrs     num size   num    size  num size  ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HEADER:    ok  1 2db85ff0  200  b6e1  800000  1f4  a00  WBFS header scanning
INODE-TIM: ok  1 2db85ff0  200  b6e1  800000  1f4  a00  2016-07-15 18:18:31 n=500
DISCS:      -  0 2db85ff0  200  b6e1  800000  1f4  a00  76 disc header found
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post the output here.

-----
a PREVIEW is not possible with the text above.
 

Cyan

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Thank you for your help.
I hope he will be willing to do more tests, as he already cloned his drive to another one and maybe is satisfied with what he has now.

@SpikeBolt, it would be great if you can provide information about your drive. very few users have a WBFS without a MBR (but I know there are, I had a request to add such drive support into USBLoaderGX).
 

SwaGoat

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That's how WBFS works.... It's not detected by Windows because it's not a known file system.
WBFS tools will still be able to access it (do not use WBFS Manager though, it corrupts your games)
I would recommend converting the drive using wbfs2fat: https://gbatemp.net/threads/wbfs2fat-py.291320/
It will only take a few seconds and then you'll be able to use things that don't support the WBFS filesystem, such as Nintendont, emulators etc.

This has nothing to do with the question of the thread,but...
what do you mean it corrupts the games? I used the WBFS Manager to load my Wii games on my HDD when it was wbfs,and now I've converted it using the wbfs2fat. The games were loaded while the HDD was on .wbfs format,will I have a problem?

(Really sorry for the random question I was just passing by :P)
 

Cyan

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WBFS manager used an old and buggy wbfs library. It didn't marked the "used bloc" (cluster) correctly and let some used one as free for other game to use.
On next added game, the "supposedly" free bloc was used, overwriting the old and already present game's data.
The old games could either not boot anymore, or boot and freeze at a later date (loading a map, a model, a music, etc.), so you probably have corrupted games without knowing it.

You converted your wbfs partition to fat32, it "should" have warned you if two games used the same bloc. (I think there's a check in place before conversion, but I'm not entirely sure).
You can check your games one by one with WiiBackupManager > Sha1 option.
 

SwaGoat

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WBFS manager used an old and buggy wbfs library. It didn't marked the "used bloc" (cluster) correctly and let some used one as free for other game to use.
On next added game, the "supposedly" free bloc was used, overwriting the old and already present game's data.
The old games could either not boot anymore, or boot and freeze at a later date (loading a map, a model, a music, etc.), so you probably have corrupted games without knowing it.

You converted your wbfs partition to fat32, it "should" have warned you if two games used the same bloc. (I think there's a check in place before conversion, but I'm not entirely sure).
You can check your games one by one with WiiBackupManager > Sha1 option.
I see,thanks for helping me understand
And for the WiiBackupManager too.
 

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WBFS manager used an old and buggy wbfs library. It didn't marked the "used bloc" (cluster) correctly and let some used one as free for other game to use.
wit/wwt ignores the used-block-table completely on reading and scans the map lists of the games to create an internal usage map. On writing a new repaired used-block-table is written.
 

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Running into the same issue. I used WiibackupManager to load all my games into a WBFS formatted drive, but all of a sudden Windows no longer assign a drive letter, and thus make it invisible to WiibackupManager / WBFSManager. Not sure if this was due to my Windows upgrading to 10, but disk manager should be the same.

Now I am following OP's steps in doing a raw copy of the drive to have a backup, hoping to resolve the issue without losing all data.
 

Cyan

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you don't have a letter, or you can't re-assign a letter anymore?
if windows 10 is the issue with detecting and assigning letters to partition, there's maybe a fix.
if you never had a letter and the drive was just a WBFS without a partition table, then it's the same issue than the previous user. unfortunately, he never replied to help us determine the issue and fix or update wwt maybe.
 

Cyan

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only if there is a table partition. if there were a letter before, he should be able to re-assign a letter.
But it's very rare to format WBFS starting at sector 0. usually, command line tools used a partition letter, but on linux you could just give /dev/hdx or /dev/sdx without providing the partition number (ex. /dev/sdx1).
in that case, I think windows can't assign a letter to a partition if there's no partition, the drive is "not activated" states in windows' drive manager. activating it will allow creation of MBR or GPT table.

We asked more information to the previous user, but he never come back one he did what he wanted.

@Fastrooter : could you take a screenshot of your windows' drive manager and show us the partitions on your drive?
if there's really no partition table, are you willing to do some tests ? do what wiimm did in his post above : https://gbatemp.net/threads/wbfs-hdd-not-initialized.432751/#post-6532510
 

Illumini

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Sorry to necro this older thread, but I had the exact same issue and managed to solve this.
I did try the solution @Cyan and @Wiimm suggested, but turned out my partition was already converted to FAT, so "wwt analyse" did not find any wbfs partitions ofcourse.
I found out it was a FAT partition by using the program TestDisk from CGsecurity. (Not sure if linking is allowed/appreciated, but can provide this if needed)
This program found the partition and was even able to restore the partition table, and most importantly all without any loss of data!

Edit: I think my luck was that this was already a converted partition. I have no clue if this program is also able to restore a WBFS partition.
 
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