Hacking 2 connected USB HDDs using UStealth?

snoofly

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i know wiiu only allows 2 hdd connected for data xfer, and my research has pretty much confirmed you cannot use the same hdd for both wiiu and vwii usage.

so, i was wondering, if you had a wiiu formatted drive and a separate ustealth hidden drive with vwii related backups, could they both be connected at the same time. i.e. would the fact the vwii dedicated drive is hidden trick the wiiu into allowing you to have both drives connected ?
 

4gionz

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i know wiiu only allows 2 hdd connected for data xfer, and my research has pretty much confirmed you cannot use the same hdd for both wiiu and vwii usage.

so, i was wondering, if you had a wiiu formatted drive and a separate ustealth hidden drive with vwii related backups, could they both be connected at the same time. i.e. would the fact the vwii dedicated drive is hidden trick the wiiu into allowing you to have both drives connected ?
You need a y cable to power the drives so I don't think this would work
 

dm646

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i believe its even recommended to use hdds with outside power, but ive used both and personally see no performance difference between ones with its own power and ones that just run off one usb port, but maybe ive been lucky *knocks on wood*
 

snoofly

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i figured y cable is only needed for unpowered drives, so using 2 powered drives in the config above i meant.
i will try it out tomorrow in any case but just thought to ask if anyone had tried it.
it'll free up room on my sd card
 

dm646

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i figured y cable is only needed for unpowered drives, so using 2 powered drives in the config above i meant.
i will try it out tomorrow in any case but just thought to ask if anyone had tried it.
it'll free up room on my sd card
ive never tested it, i have no hdds connected to my wii u, but i got one connected to my regular wii and that uses just one usb cord for it.
 

snoofly

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Quick update.

So I did the setup - my original Wii u formatted drive and FAT32 formatted drive (ustealth hidden) for vWii usage and both live happily connected at same time (self powered of course) using the back 2 usb slots. No nag screens etc so all good there.

I made a bare bones SD with just the Wii homebrew including Wiiflow (and all plugins), no games on the SD.
Running Wiiflow itself works great, after refreshing the caches and doing all the setups in the menus for all the sources I see all my stuff, Wii,GC,emulators etc.

Had a few problems port ordering, using cIOS 249, but generally things working good.

I installed USBToggle wii homebrew for when I want to use non UStealth supported stuff - like FBZX and a C64 emu but then figured I may as well leave this stuff on SD as it takes so little room.

My main aim, to be able to offload all the bulkier Wii and GC stuff from SD to a separate drive, but also have it available with the WiiU drive with no fussing appears to be working good.
 

Informix23

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Quick update.

So I did the setup - my original Wii u formatted drive and FAT32 formatted drive (ustealth hidden) for vWii usage and both live happily connected at same time (self powered of course) using the back 2 usb slots. No nag screens etc so all good there.

I made a bare bones SD with just the Wii homebrew including Wiiflow (and all plugins), no games on the SD.
Running Wiiflow itself works great, after refreshing the caches and doing all the setups in the menus for all the sources I see all my stuff, Wii,GC,emulators etc.

Had a few problems port ordering, using cIOS 249, but generally things working good.

I installed USBToggle wii homebrew for when I want to use non UStealth supported stuff - like FBZX and a C64 emu but then figured I may as well leave this stuff on SD as it takes so little room.

My main aim, to be able to offload all the bulkier Wii and GC stuff from SD to a separate drive, but also have it available with the WiiU drive with no fussing appears to be working good.

Could you make a guide for this? I want to do that too, because maybe I'll sell my wii
the first partition is the wii u one and the second one is the vwii (fat32 hidden with ustealth) both are primary partitions?
 
D

Deleted-19228

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i know wiiu only allows 2 hdd connected for data xfer, and my research has pretty much confirmed you cannot use the same hdd for both wiiu and vwii usage.

so, i was wondering, if you had a wiiu formatted drive and a separate ustealth hidden drive with vwii related backups, could they both be connected at the same time. i.e. would the fact the vwii dedicated drive is hidden trick the wiiu into allowing you to have both drives connected ?

I actually did get a single drive working in both but it was a hassle because it had to be plugged into the front for Wii U and in the back for vWii.
 

Chuardo

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Quick update.

So I did the setup - my original Wii u formatted drive and FAT32 formatted drive (ustealth hidden) for vWii usage and both live happily connected at same time (self powered of course) using the back 2 usb slots. No nag screens etc so all good there.

I made a bare bones SD with just the Wii homebrew including Wiiflow (and all plugins), no games on the SD.
Running Wiiflow itself works great, after refreshing the caches and doing all the setups in the menus for all the sources I see all my stuff, Wii,GC,emulators etc.

Had a few problems port ordering, using cIOS 249, but generally things working good.

I installed USBToggle wii homebrew for when I want to use non UStealth supported stuff - like FBZX and a C64 emu but then figured I may as well leave this stuff on SD as it takes so little room.

My main aim, to be able to offload all the bulkier Wii and GC stuff from SD to a separate drive, but also have it available with the WiiU drive with no fussing appears to be working good.
What does USBToggle exactly do? I never used USealth yet because I know that some Homebrews can't use it, is this a workaround to that problem?
I don't see anything on Google about it, so I'm writting this because of that.
 

castdreams

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I have a U-stealth'd drive and a regular Wii U hard drive both hooked up to my Wii U via an externally powered USB hub connected to the back of my console. They'll both work together fine, BUT when I'm installing NUS content on my Wii U drive through WUP installer, I have to disconnect the U-stealth drive.

Other than that, everything on my end works beautifully.
 

OriginalHamster

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My main aim, to be able to offload all the bulkier Wii and GC stuff from SD to a separate drive, but also have it available with the WiiU drive with no fussing appears to be working good.
I tried that too, but gamecube games don't run optimally off a SD card, it's the only road block, I don't care about Wii games really I have all the games I want on disc or Wii virtual console.
 
Last edited by OriginalHamster,

snoofly

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I'll try to give some more details when I have time if needed, kind of busy now but it's fairly straightforward.

I'm only finding it practical for holding Wii and Gamecube backups but that's all I really care about on a HDD as they're the only things that can take out a lot of space of an SD.

I know Not64 wont ever support UStealth as per the dev and I can't be bothered to use USBToggle just for accessing small v64 files so they too stay on the SD along with any stuff used by other non-UStealth compliant homebrew.

castdreams - yes, same here - I get a 0xFFFCFFE9 access failed error with both drives connected. Once I remove the vwii drive, reboot and retry it works fine. It's as minor an issue as they come though as you probably agree, still really happy with the setup working as good as I hoped.
 

castdreams

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I'll try to give some more details when I have time if needed, kind of busy now but it's fairly straightforward.
castdreams - yes, same here - I get a 0xFFFCFFE9 access failed error with both drives connected. Once I remove the vwii drive, reboot and retry it works fine. It's as minor an issue as they come though as you probably agree, still really happy with the setup working as good as I hoped.
That's the same error I was getting, I'm not proud to admit that it took me a good hour or so of scratching my head until I figured out what was happening.

It's really a minor issue though, like you said. It's not like I'm installing new games every time I use the console. Definitely beats having to swap drives all the time.
 

snoofly

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just thought i'd add a little help for anyone else wanting to do this setup as there were some specifics I had to work out along the way. i think my supporting theory is correct.

0. both drives need to be self powered obviously and can be up to 2tb each
1. the ustealth wii drive needs to be connected to the bottom back port 1 when machine lying flat
2. wiiu drive has to be in the top rear port 0
3. wii flow needs to access the wii and gc source partition via cios 251 force ios load in the settings, loaded with the do 53alt cios i think, as this is the only one that allows access to both usb slots, specifically port 1 for the following reason. Nintendont accesses and locks the first drive it finds from usb3 down to 0 in that order so if points 1 and 2 above aren't followed then although the wii flow caches will show all content, the gc game will not load as Nintendont only reads the wiiu drive first and will give a usb cannot be accessed error. I can't remember for sure if wiiflow has same problem with wii games but to get gc and wii to be accessible at same time, only the exact setup stated worked for me.
 

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