Hardware How do I get a 4TB HD to work for my wii?

[Snaker02]

I have a 4TB WD Elements HD that i would like to use on my wii for gamecube and wii backups but I don't know the best way to make it happen. I had a 1TB formatted to FAT32 and everything was all good. Just needed more space for things. Is there any was to get the whole HD to FAT32 or should I partition it? I have never partitioned a HD before and I don't know which should be primary and if the other partition should be NTFS or both FAT32. I recently modded my a wii I picked up for $5 so all of this is still pretty new to me.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I have a 4TB WD Elements HD that i would like to use on my wii for gamecube and wii backups but I don't know the best way to make it happen. I had a 1TB formatted to FAT32 and everything was all good. Just needed more space for things. Is there any was to get the whole HD to FAT32 or should I partition it? I have never partitioned a HD before and I don't know which should be primary and if the other partition should be NTFS or both FAT32. I recently modded my a wii I picked up for $5 so all of this is still pretty new to me.

It should be FAT32, you can format it with Minitool Partition Wizard or guiformat.

 

[Snaker02]

I tried the guiformat but it partitioned the drive and had an error, then my computer wouldnt recognize it. I had to go to the disk manager and delete the volume then convert it to gtp or gpt, whichever one it was. And I just tried the minitool partition wizard and its limiting the FAT32 size at 2Tb also.

 

[Yvette222]

Hello, Windows cannot format drives and partitions larger than 32GB in FAT32. With some third party partition tool, you can break this limit. But they normally can't help you create a FAT32 partition larger than 2TB.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I tried the guiformat but it partitioned the drive and had an error, then my computer wouldnt recognize it. I had to go to the disk manager and delete the volume then convert it to gtp or gpt, whichever one it was. And I just tried the minitool partition wizard and its limiting the FAT32 size at 2Tb also.

FAT32 is limited to 2TB on a 512 byte sector size. The sector size is hardcoded in the HDD and can't be changed. Most likely you won't need more than 2TB for Wii/GC (actually even 500GB should be plenty if you don't download shovelware), so you can have the second partition as NTFS and use it for other things.

 

[NeMesiS]

Format your drive as NTFS! Wii support this format and you wont have any of the FAT32 limitations...

Oh and you wont have to split your WBFS files if there over 4Gb...

I had a 2Tb drive working on NTFS! Only thing with a drive this big filled with games, is the loading time...

I think 1Tb drive would be optimal for performance but have not tried this yet...

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Format your drive as NTFS! Wii support this format and you wont have any of the FAT32 limitations...

Oh and you wont have to split your WBFS files if there over 4Gb...

I had a 2Tb drive working on NTFS! Only thing with a drive this big filled with games, is the loading time...

I think 1Tb drive would be optimal for performance but have not tried this yet...

Nintendont doesn't support NTFS though. Nor does most other homebrew, other than USB loaders.

 

[NeMesiS]

Nintendont doesn't support NTFS though. Nor does most other homebrew, other than USB loaders.

I wasn't aware of that, still a bit fresh to the Wii...
That really sucks, I should be used to FAT limitations...

Hello, Windows cannot format drives and partitions larger than 32GB in FAT32. With some third party partition tool, you can break this limit. But they normally can't help you create a FAT32 partition larger than 2TB.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/format-large-hard-drive-fat-fat32/

32GB is the file size limit for partitions when formatting with the FAT or FAT32 file system on Windows.

Well, as some of you will know, FAT/FAT32 can actually handle up to 16TB hard drives and up to 2TB are supported in most operating systems. Microsoft has set a 32GB partition size limit for the FAT/FAT32 file system to promote NTFS, which is generally more efficient when working with large partitions.

In truth, this limitation only exists in recent versions of Windows. Moreover, Windows does recognize large hard drives formatted with FAT/FAT32. Finally, you can circumvent the 32GB limit.

Try using a Linux OS... You can download (Free) and run most distros from a USB device, I prefer LinuxMint...
You want to use "Gparted" once you have a distro booted... This should get you past 2Tb if not, nothing will...

Give me 10 minutes and i'll try on a spare 3Tb drive I have...

 

[NeMesiS]

Nope limited to 2Tb...

Personally I'm happy with 2Tb...
Even with a 2Tb drive, loading time was really bad...
I think 4Tb would be crazy slow...

I don't know enough about the Wii but I doubt it could see more than 1 partition...

EDIT: If you were going to a Linux distro to atleast format drive to 2Tb you'll need Balena Etcher to
write the Linux image to a USB Stick...

 

[tech3475]

The other thing to consider is that MBR only supports up to around 2TB.

I know in the past there were workarounds for this, but I can't find any information on if this is still possible.