Hacking HDD/SD setup others are using for Wii U and vWii modes

[Olmectron]

I have a 128GB SD card working for Wiiflow and Nintendont, and one of the Nintendo recommended 1TB Seagate drives for Wii U games.

The Wiiflow and Nintendont games load as expected, less than 1 minute between turning the console on, and seeing the game's title screen.

 

[snoofly]

You sure? When I have my both my Wiiu disc and (Unstealth) WII HDD connected (externally powered), Nintedont blacks out/crashes.

My setup is now
- 128 Gb sd card for Nintendont Gamecube games, wii homebrew/emus and some snes roms, emunand for WII used for Wiiware and WII VC, Loadiine for some WIIU e-shop (I still don't want to use regionfree and sigpatch hacks on my wiiu...... ) and some wiiu homebrew
- 256 Gb pendrive for 'brazilian' installed wiiu games (+24Gb Nand = 280Gb = enough for the wiiu specific games)
- 1 TB HDD for WII games (also used to house the Gamecube games which don't work in my setup so moved to sd)

2 Front USB for Gamecube adapter (with wireless Wavebird controller)

More games then time to play :-)

Yep it definitely works fine even tho the Nintendont thread says it's not supported. Been running it for months and played loads of wii and gc games fine. My last post on my own thread on the topic has the specifics.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/2-connected-usb-hdds-using-ustealth.451454/#post-6923113

 

[thorasgar]

Nice.
These things should be highlighted in the vWii definitive guide
- you can hack without a game disc (not sure why wuphax isn't mentioned, or I missed it)
- you can use two hdd for wiiU and vWii connected at all times thanks to Ustealth and with no conflict with nintendont (not sure how that rumor originated)

Another thing to know would be max size for each HDD
- WiiU: 2TB right? (besides, there's little point in more)
- vWii: is it confirmed that 4TB and 5TB (the biggest 2.5" drive currently available) work? There are people on youtube and auction sites with "5TB and 1922 Wii games!!" claims.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Nice setup.
I wonder if a powered USB hub could be used to power two bus-powered HDDs, just for flexibility, with no stress to the WiiU motherboard and just one backport used. (leaving the other one free for the ethernet adapter)

I'm confused about whether Nintendont has problems when 2 hdds are connected at all times.

As for the Y cable, sometimes it's just to keep things tidy and being able to easily move the console. Some people have a lot of stuff under their TV already. Mobile HDDs are also quieter.

This is tangentially related to HDD setups, but I'm torn between setting up vWii or just keep using a real BC Wii.
Avoiding to connect a sensor bar and Wiimotes at all to the WiiU would be tidy. (still unsure about how many WiiU games require Wiimotes for single player)

-Wii U HDD. 2TB can be recognized, of course if what you have on hand is 3TB it will work just with the loss of 1TB.
-Not sure on vWii but I have 300GB and more games than we will ever play. 1TB should be plenty.
-I had no problems with Nintendont with both my drives powered up and connected. Probably a drive specific issue.

Regarding using a powered hub, that might work but personally would still be concerned about stress to the WiiU internals.

A couple of things I am going to try is is just a USB hub since my drives are powered, and if that doesn't work this this USB hub/switch for $9
https://www.amazon.com/Vemont-4-Por...sr=8-1-spons&keywords=usb+switch+on+off&psc=1

I was also was at Costco the other day and they had a 3 pack of remote AC outlet plugs for $7 so I can always use those to shut down the power to the drives from the couch.

@GBA rocks Nintendoland is the only title that comes to mind that uses the Wiimotes but I am sure there are others. Image quality between the two systems seems to be be largely dependent on image processing of your TV. Other factors to consider are available inputs for your TV, wear and tear on the consoles, Game Cube controller connectivity. I personally just used my Wii until recently when it stopped outputting a video signal, then switched to vWii.

 

[GBA rocks]

Thanks.
Scary to hear about your Wii stopping to output video, makes me wanna grab a spare on ebay.
The original bc Wii will always be a nice compact quiet machine with actual GC memory cards and "fallback" GC compability thanks to Dios Mios should Nintendont glitch.
On the other hand, it was great of Nintendo to carry over the analog outputs to a 2012 console, making the WiiU a good candidate even for a bit of CRT retro gaming and a nearly complete substitute of a real Wii.

Another solution to turn off powered HDDs would be one of those master/slave powerstrips that turn slave devices off as soon as the master device (WiiU) goes to a off (or extremely low power) state.

 

[GBA rocks]

I've just read in some thread that the gamecube adapter actually need just one USB port, the added power of the second port is needed just to enable rumble. This changes everything for Wavebird users (who renounced rumble anyway), unless the wireless transmitter requires the extra power as well.

So in a no-GC-rumble setup, the port count would go like
- 2 ports for Y cable HDD for WiiU
- 1 port for GC adapter (no rumble)
- 1 port for ethernet adapter or for usb thumbdrive for vWii/NGC

There are some thumbrives that actually house a fully functional SSD (vs cheap nand not suitable for intensive use), like the Corsair Voyager GTX 2, could be interesting to test those with vWii/NGC.

Also I'd like to thrown in the idea of right angled USB extensions for a neater cable management of the front ports.

 

[sevo]

Can I use a powered USB 3.0 hub to connect 2 portable 2.5" USB HDDs?

It's not letting me post a link, but I'm looking at "Sabrent 4-Port USB 3.0 Hub with Individual Power Switches and LEDs included 5V/2.5A power adapter (HB-UMP3)" on Amazon.

Looking to connect a 2TB vWii USB 3.0 drive for Wii/GC/WW/VC + 1TB Wii U USB 2.0 drive.
Also, will the drives automatically power on/off when the Wii U turns on/off?

 

[Olmectron]

Can I use a powered USB 3.0 hub to connect 2 portable 2.5" USB HDDs?

It's not letting me post a link, but I'm looking at "Sabrent 4-Port USB 3.0 Hub with Individual Power Switches and LEDs included 5V/2.5A power adapter (HB-UMP3)" on Amazon.

Looking to connect a 2TB vWii USB 3.0 drive for Wii/GC/WW/VC + 1TB Wii U USB 2.0 drive.
Also, will the drives automatically power on/off when the Wii U turns on/off?

If both are connected via the same USB cable, no. It won't work.

Not sure how the Wii U would recognize them, but the most possible thing is it will recognize only one of them. Just my opinion, though.

 

[sevo]

If both are connected via the same USB cable, no. It won't work.

Not sure how the Wii U would recognize them, but the most possible thing is it will recognize only one of them. Just my opinion, though.

Hm ok.. how about the powered USB hub powering the Wii U HDD in port 0, and the vWii HDD connected to port 1 (in the back) with a Y-cable (secondary USB plugged into the same powered hub for the additional power).

Alternatively, can you just connect both hard drives with 2 Y-cables (one in front and one in back)?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Deleted-351540]

Hm ok.. how about the powered USB hub powering the Wii U HDD in port 0, and the vWii HDD connected to port 1 (in the back) with a Y-cable (secondary USB plugged into the same powered hub for the additional power).

Alternatively, can you just connect both hard drives with 2 Y-cables (one in front and one in back)?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Your first setup is exactly how I have my Wii U setup. Wii U HDD is plugged into port 0 through a powered USB 3 hub. My vWii HDD is plugged into port 1 with power being supplied by the USB 3 hub. My GC adapter is plugged into the front of the Wii U (with rumble, because not only Smash uses the friggin rumble feature and it was nice on other games).

 

[cFmisfit]

Just use injection and put everything on one drive. I'm running a 500gb externally powered HDD and it has nes, turbo grafix, snes, n64, GC, GB, Wii, and Wii U games on it.

 

[Totobriac]

@cFmisfit I think it's the way to go. At least for me. Gonna inject N64 Wii and GameCube. All the rest on retroarch running in a sa card.

 

[DaTank45]

Latest version of nintendont supports two hdd’s plugged in at the same time. Even with ustealth. No need to run games off sd card.

 

[Totobriac]

Question: are every GameCube and Wii games injectables?

 

[cFmisfit]

For the most part. I have had one or two games that inject but the Wii U won't recognize it. Like Phantasy Star 1&2, I was hoping it would take to see if online would take. You also run into silly issues with Super Mario Sunhine for instance. The game plays great but the shoulder buttons on the gamepad are not the same. There are ways around it though. Other than that I cant think of any other game for any other system that has given me grief yet.

 

[cpdavis120280]

I have skimmed through the posts and I don't think I have seen the setup that I am proposing. 2 external drives. I have one 2tb with a y cable so far for wii u and vc games. I plan on using a gc adapter up front. So using the front usb won't work for me. So here we go. Will this work.

Drive one (uStealth) connected to y cable and pluged into top usb
Drive two connected to y cable plugged into botton usb
Both of the power only sides of the y cables plugged into a usb charger
GC usb adapter plug into the front.

Would this setup work?

 

[Jfwell]

yes HDD (WiiU) SD (NGC/Wii) that is my setup.
i use a 32gig for my NGC/Wii kind of suffices haha.

I use injections a lot so you could also go for a 2 tb hdd for wiiu Games (and every other consoles available

Basically the top setup would be

2TB hdd with Y cable to back USB ports for WiiU (wiiU romset from one region doesn't exceed 2TB I think)
5TB with external power supply and Ustealth connected at all time for the crapton of Wii software (retail+vc+eshop)
1TB sdxc (when they're out like next year) for Nintendont GC games (not sure is enough for whole NGC romset though, even from one region)

Damnnn thats one Killer setup!

Im doing a bit differently from you. Sort of hybrid injections and emulation. A 256gb sd card with all the emulation games + a few loadiine Games of the wiiu I couldnt find. And a 2tb hdd for all the usbhelper stuff + every injection game.

I have found that I can fill my 300 allowed ui squares before having my 2tb full. I injected pretty much all my favorite and more. Then I added some more on the sd card.

I really like how you can customize your injections with HD banners and icons , plus have a custom gamepad banner and a 6 seconds wav sound is great. Looks so neat, just like when you launch a wiiu title.

I started to create a library of all that and will probably download every game back to inject them HD style.

 

[PurifiedCrystal]

I have two HD's

1 with WII U Games = WII U HD
1 with WII / GC games = WII / GC HD

I use Ustealth to hide the Wii / GC Drive under WII U Menu.
Works fine, I can boot with two HD both plugged in under WII U environment

However, when I load USB loader GX under vWii, I have to get up and fumble through my setup to unplug the WII U HD
because if I have ANY other port plugged with an HD ( Port 0 is reserved for my USB Loader GX ), the USB Loader GX will load with "USB not initialized"

so.. I have two problems that occurs
1
USB Loader GX will not recognize port 0 when any of the 3 other ports have another HD plugged in.
2.
Ustealth under WII U sometimes still detects the drive... when I apply ustealth, it says write to boot sector fail, but it still does to hidded mode.. so I test it on Wii U which works .. until it doesn't anymore..


Does anyone have the fix?

 

[Quincy]

My HDD setup, oh geez that's not a pretty solution but it functions I have just one hdd, any vwii content I want to play gets injected for install to wii u. It is an old 300 gig 3.5" IDE drive with an sata/ide2.5/ide3.5 to USB bridge (without an enclosure, the power is coming from an old PC cpu which I rigged so it will run while not plugged into a motherboard).

I have two HD's

1 with WII U Games = WII U HD
1 with WII / GC games = WII / GC HD

I use Ustealth to hide the Wii / GC Drive under WII U Menu.
Works fine, I can boot with two HD both plugged in under WII U environment

However, when I load USB loader GX under vWii, I have to get up and fumble through my setup to unplug the WII U HD
because if I have ANY other port plugged with an HD ( Port 0 is reserved for my USB Loader GX ), the USB Loader GX will load with "USB not initialized"

so.. I have two problems that occurs
1
USB Loader GX will not recognize port 0 when any of the 3 other ports have another HD plugged in.
2.
Ustealth under WII U sometimes still detects the drive... when I apply ustealth, it says write to boot sector fail, but it still does to hidded mode.. so I test it on Wii U which works .. until it doesn't anymore..


Does anyone have the fix?

This might sound stupid, but have you tried swapping the two ports (and any related settings)?

 

[PurifiedCrystal]

yes I have tested and tried multiple ports as there are 4 ports.
Problem is that USB Loader GX wants to use port 0 so pretty much that has to stay there.. and no matter what, if anything else is in the other ports it gives that error