Hacking Wii backup Manager for Windows

[Joe_B]

Maybe adding GC support?
But yes, all the needed functionality is there.

Yeah, all these functions for GameCube would be awesome... Mainly for the SHA-1 to verify our backups for integrity... Been trying WIT, but I never succeeded in making it work... I think I'm too dumb for command line interface lol

 

[niuus]

Nothing needs updated

Well what else do you need? This program is complete, it doesn't need constant updates.

GCN support and maybe WIT integration would be enough, little ones. It's not about "constant updates". So, it's not nothing.

Yeah, all these functions for GameCube would be awesome... Mainly for the SHA-1 to verify our backups for integrity... Been trying WIT, but I never succeeded in making it work... I think I'm too dumb for command line interface lol

Would be nice to have. But if it doesn't happen, it's not a great loss.

 

[Shadow#1]

Maybe adding GC support?
But yes, all the needed functionality is there.

He already has a tool for GCN

 

[Joe_B]

Another noob question lol!

What do the colors mean (red, green, blue)?

I mean, when doing a SHA-1 check, I usually get green or red, which was pretty self-explanatory in my opinion, but now I have stuff in blue lol!

I added a few games in a folder to do a SHA-1 check, and usually, it takes a while for each game to calculate the SHA-1, and I get the results either in green or red. Now, this time, it was like super-fast, like no-time-to-calculate-anything fast (took like 4 seconds for all the games), and the results were all in blue color...

Also, in the main section, where I see all the game details, they are all in blue, and usually they are in black...

Thanks

 

[Cyan]

I suppose :
green = good
red = bad
blue = not checked

if blue and black mean different things, look in the log tab to get more information and see what happened. there are info, warning and errors logged.


for gamecube games, Fig2k started creating an external tool as beta before including it into wiibackupmanager.
the beta, independent, tool can be found on his website too :
http://www.wiibackupmanager.co.uk/gcit.html

 

[Joe_B]

I suppose :
green = good
red = bad
blue = not checked

if blue and black mean different things, look in the log tab to get more information and see what happened. there are info, warning and errors logged.


for gamecube games, Fig2k started creating an external tool as beta before including it into wiibackupmanager.
the beta, independent, tool can be found on his website too :
http://www.wiibackupmanager.co.uk/gcit.html

Yeah, I thought about checking the log after posting this... For the "progress/status" small window that appears when checking the files, when in blue, the log said "error opening file" or something similar... I rebooted my computer, unplugged/plugged the HDD, and then the error was gone.

For the main section of the program, I haven't found any reason why sometimes the file info would be displayed in black and sometimes in blue... Doesn't seem to be anything suspicious in the logs.

Thanks!

EDIT: For GameCube, I wanted to check integrity for a few games. I did not find any MD5/SHA-1 check in GCIT. However, I found out I could just calculate my checksums with any checksum program and then compare those with redump.org. I found HashMyFiles program, which you don't even have to install and can run as portable. You can open a folder with more than one GameCube backup in it and it's gonna calculate all the checksums for all the backups. By default, it calculates more than required, but you can set it to calculate MD5 and/or SHA-1 and/or CRC, which are the 3 checksums on redump.org. I downloaded the full GameCube list from redump and then I could compare all the checksums for all my backups. In the meantime, I also found out that, directly in Nintendont, I could check the MD5 sum, but it's rather long and you have to do it 1 by 1, so it's not very efficient if you have too many backups...

 

[Badablek]

Well what else do you need? This program is complete, it doesn't need constant updates.

no, it's not "complete". Wii Backup Manager is very bad with fragmentation because files are never preallocated...back in 2012, when the developer was still active, he said he would add preallocation in the next release, which never arrived, sadly. So WBM heavily fragments your HDD with the current (and, sadly, the last one) version. Too bad imagehack has removed my self-explanatory screenshots

https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-backup-manager-for-windows.188295/page-130#post-4207047

(preallocation IS actually very important, because it can affect games which need a lot of HDD speed, like video playback in Metroid Other M for example)
(and fragmenting a new, empty HDD is really lame )

WBM is the best backup manager, but with a big counterpart. Hopefully, WIT is here

 

[Joe_B]

Wii Backup Manager is very bad with fragmentation because files are never preallocated...

Is it ok if I just defrag the disk with the Windows tool after using WBM? Or just use WBM to put the backups in a random folder, and then copy-paste the backups in this folder to the disk that will be read by the Wii?

 

[Badablek]

Any defragmenting tool will do the job, of course, thanks to the standard Fat32/NTFS file system.

For my part I prefer the good old WIT command-line (with preallocation activated)

 

[Joe_B]

Hello!

Any reason why the SHA-1 test would pass in Wii Backup Manager, but the "Verify partition integrity" would not pass in Dolphin emulator?

 

[Cyan]

maybe these are two different tests.
the sha-1 test is verifying if the files on the partition are correct. not if the partition integrity is good.

 

[Joe_B]

Do they compare a hash with an external database, like GameTDB database or Redump?

Edit: I mean, when I want to check a GameCube ISO's integrity, I calculate the hashes with HashMyFiles and then I check if they are the same than Redump's database. Is that what Wii Backup Manager does for SHA-1?

 

[Cyan]

I don't know dolphin enough to tell you whether they are comparing a game to redump.org or not. But that's not what WiiBackupManager is doing.
sha1 is comparing a hash present on the disc itself. (tmd file contain hash for all files used by the game).
the files on that partition can be good, but the partition can be bad, or not properly (trucha)signed. or maybe the partition table is bad.
I think a bad partition table, or a bad partition would crash on the console, dolphin might be more tolerant to errors.

A tool I can recommend is Wit/wwt.
it's command line tool analyzing the game structure. (partition to files)
I rarely use it, so I won't be of any help, but there is an extensive command line help on the official site.

 

[Joe_B]

The message I get in Dolphin is "Integrity check for Partition 0 failed. The disc image is most likely corrupt or has been patched incorrectly."

I will give WIT another chance. I tried to use it a few times and would always get error messages and never figured out how to make it work, even after reading the instructions...

Does WIT check more things than Wii Backup Manager?

 

[Joe_B]

I don't know dolphin enough to tell you whether they are comparing a game to redump.org or not. But that's not what WiiBackupManager is doing.
sha1 is comparing a hash present on the disc itself. (tmd file contain hash for all files used by the game).
the files on that partition can be good, but the partition can be bad, or not properly (trucha)signed. or maybe the partition table is bad.
I think a bad partition table, or a bad partition would crash on the console, dolphin might be more tolerant to errors.

A tool I can recommend is Wit/wwt.
it's command line tool analyzing the game structure. (partition to files)
I rarely use it, so I won't be of any help, but there is an extensive command line help on the official site.

I figured out how to use WIT (finally, lol!) and I scanned a few games, and it appears that WIT is giving the same results as Wii Backup Manager...

So I guess it may be Dolphin's integrity check that is broken. I read on their forums that what Dolphin's integrity check is is that it checks that all the SHA-1 stored internally on the partition are valid... And if I understand everything correctly, this is exactly the same thing than what Wii Backup Manager's SHA-1 test is.

And now for the ones who want to make fun of a noob, or for the noobs who can't figure out how to use WIT like I did, I was trying to tell it to "wit verify", to tell it to verify all the files in the folder, and I was putting my arguments right after "verify", like "wit verify -argument", but I forgot to add a star (*) to tell it that what I actually wanted verified was everything. So you have to say "wit verify * -arguments" and then the magic starts! Noob! (to myself)

 

[Cyan]

thanks for sharing your result, and how to fix the issue you had with wit.
is dolphin refusing to run that game, or it's only a checking result error? the important is that the game works fine, and if 2 other tools said it's good I suppose it is.

 

[migles]

thanks for sharing your result, and how to fix the issue you had with wit.
is dolphin refusing to run that game, or it's only a checking result error? the important is that the game works fine, and if 2 other tools said it's good I suppose it is.

hey cyan is wii backup manager still getting updates from the original dude or are you working to improve it?

 

[Cyan]

hello,

unfortunately, the original developer never released his sources (saying it was nothing special or hard to do), and disappeared without saying anything.
he used to disappear for a year, and coming back with updates, but it's now officially dead and nobody can work on the project anymore.

it's almost perfect, it might have bugs with Smash bros ISO only. Of course the most missed feature is Gamecube support.
he released a beta program and planed to add it to WBM once stable. I never tested it, I don't know how good/stable/feature wise it is : http://www.wiibackupmanager.co.uk/gcit.html

 

[migles]

hello,

unfortunately, the original developer never released his sources (saying it was nothing special or hard to do), and disappeared without saying anything.
he used to disappear for a year, and coming back with updates, but it's now officially dead and nobody can work on the project anymore.

it's almost perfect, it might have bugs with Smash bros ISO only. Of course the most missed feature is Gamecube support.
he released a beta program and planed to add it to WBM once stable. I never tested it, I don't know how good/stable/feature wise it is : http://www.wiibackupmanager.co.uk/gcit.html

thanks for the answer, the way you replied thanking the previous user, i tought for a moment you where involved in the project or keeping it alive.
this reply made it clear about it.

 

[Joe_B]

thanks for sharing your result, and how to fix the issue you had with wit.
is dolphin refusing to run that game, or it's only a checking result error? the important is that the game works fine, and if 2 other tools said it's good I suppose it is.

Yeah, the game is running fine! I am not using Dolphin to play the games. I kinda wanted to double-check my library with 2 different softwares, probably due to paranoia lol... And this is why I was using Dolphin. But now that I did it with both WBM and WIT, I am satisfied.

I have nephews who borrow my original game discs sometimes, and I don't know if you've seen how fast kids can break stuff sometimes... I prefer being sure my backups are fine before lending too many games lol! Plus sometimes it's the console itself that scratches the discs.