Hacking Something is corrupting my Wii and GC games

[Tetsuo Shima]

I need some serious help here. My Wii and Gc games on my USB drive are randomly being corrupted, and I have no clue of why this is happening.
The only thing I'm pretty sure of is that my Wii console never had this kind of issue and I didn't made any mod to it for a long time.

Months ago, some of them suddenly stopped working.
After that it didn't happen again so I thought I was safe, until these days. Dozens of games aren't working anymore (black screen or stack dump), sometimes their banner is missing or corrupted.
what is it? Thanos decimation?

- I'm using Wiiflow Lite on a USB hard disk (Toshiba 1Tb HDTB310EK3AA Canvio Basic) which I bought about a year ago. I used it only for the Wii, I can't believe it's already dying.
- I'm using usb port 1 because port 0 is busted, but my syscheck is ok and the games never failed before.
- Wii and GC games are on the same partition, formatted FAT32, 32k cluster size.
- Folders and file names are correct, as everything worked before.
- If I replace the non-working games with another copy of them, they work but they can eventually be corrupted after some time.
- I'm using Wiixplorer a lot, working on WFL themes, I heard some time ago that it was responsible for some file corruption.
- I'm using my pc with ubuntu linux to transfer files to the hard disk and QWBFS Manager to convert some files to .wbfs

 

[Deleted User]

it is definitely the drive. sorry get a new one (NOT A PEn drIVE OR FLSH DRIVE PLEASE; THISE THINGS WILL DIE IN A WEEK)

 

[fledge68]

questions:
are wii and gc games the only things on your usb hard drive?
is wiiflow lite and its files on SD?

do you have backups of all your wii and gc games and if so have you ever totally reformatted your usb hard drive and copied all your games back?

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

I don't use SD, I have everything on the same partition on USB: Wii, Gc, Nands, and apps.
The HD has 2 partitions of 500Gb each, the 1st one is fat32 and it's for the Wii, the 2nd one is NTFS and it's empty.
I haven't got backups for all my games, but I'm planning to copy the working games on the 2nd partition to avoid to lose them too. But I don't know if that's a good idea, if the HD is damaged they would not be safe. Unfortunately I don't have any other storage device bigger enough to store them all.

 

[tswntk]

I use my hdd for games only as they are huge and can't afford a corruption/weakened media.
I keep everything else on SD so the hdd is essentially for "read" only, no write access to minimize chances of corruption, wear and tear.
The SD is only 16G and far from fully utilized so it is easy to make regular backups.

just my 2 cents.

 

[fledge68]

I agree with tswntk. it's best to have only your wii and gc games on USB HDD and your apps and everything else on SD. this way your USB HDD is mostly read only and if anything written to SD mucks it up its easier to reformat it and copy everything back.

I've lost a USB HHD for my wii a few years ago do to corruption. Having to restore all those Gigabytes of wii and GC games is a pain. to fix and restore an 16 or 32gb SD card is so much easier.

And I really don't guarantee wiiflow or wiiflow lite isn't to blame for your corrupted games. especially when using emunand on USB HDD.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

Thanks @tswntk and @fledge68 for your precious adivices. I didn't think about the wear and tear of the HDD.
I feel so stupid.
But how to setup emunand with neek2o on SD? I remember trying it without success some time ago, I always thought that it was best to use hdd over sd for nand backups.

However, now I have to think about what to do with my hdd, is there any hope to fix things in some way or should I buy a new one? Given that the 2nd 500Gb partition has never been used, can I assume that at least half of my hdd is in good condition? Should I try merging the 2 partitions and reformat the whole hdd to fat32?

 

[tswntk]

I have lost quite a few HDDs on my PC over the years and that's why I keep backups or try to minimize writing to HDD (of course, not possible on a PC)
If the HDD is corrupted due to "bad" app activities, you can simply reformat the HDD. But if you want to save the good games while having no spare space, you will have to buy a new HDD anyway.
If its wear and tear, the corruption will come back sooner than later (weakened areas will stay weakened).

IMHO, Having multiple partitions on a PC's HDD and concentrate all installed programs and setting files on one partition will help minimized wear and tear and reduce access time or else Windows will create files all over the places. Doing that for a drive used solely for Wii won't help much apart from looking better organised.

 

[baco81]

- I'm using Wiixplorer a lot, working on WFL themes, I heard some time ago that it was responsible for some file corruption.

I use that app from time to time just to copy small files from usb to sd or from sd to sd and I have found out that is prone to corrupt them (at the least, the ones I try to copy).
I don't recommend WiiXplorer (nor FTPs ones btw) to perform intensive file tasks.

 

[Deleted User]

I don't use SD, I have everything on the same partition on USB: Wii, Gc, Nands, and apps.
The HD has 2 partitions of 500Gb each, the 1st one is fat32 and it's for the Wii, the 2nd one is NTFS and it's empty.
I haven't got backups for all my games, but I'm planning to copy the working games on the 2nd partition to avoid to lose them too. But I don't know if that's a good idea, if the HD is damaged they would not be safe. Unfortunately I don't have any other storage device bigger enough to store them all.

the hdd is damaged

 

[IC_]

it is definitely the drive. sorry get a new one (NOT A PEn drIVE OR FLSH DRIVE PLEASE; THISE THINGS WILL DIE IN A WEEK)

I'm using a flash drive on my wii for almost 2 years and no problems

 

[Deleted User]

I'm using a flash drive on my wii for almost 2 years and no problems

then it must be superior quality. could you take a picture of it and send it to me?

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

One thing that makes me wonder is... why only Wii and GC games were corrupted?
Every plugin emulator is running perfectly, incuding the most intensive scummvm games and CD game isos (Sega CD and PC-Engine CD) and emunand and neek20 games as well.
It seems like a strange selective corruption

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

Ok I bought a 16Gb SD card and moved all homebrew apps and emunand into it, and now everything is working wonderfully. I decided, for the moment, to try to keep my hdd to see if it's really broken or not.
I've managed to recover the majority of the non-working Wii games, re-dumping my originals and getting the remaining ones from friends whom I have modded their wii years ago, and after days of testing they all work.
I'm increasily convinced that the culprit was Wiixplorer, because the games corruption always happened in times I was using it a lot. If I'll be wrong I will buy another one but atm I don't wanna waste 70€ for nothing.

@fledge68 or anyone else:
to avoid making other stupid mistakes, I'd like to ask you one more thing.
What is the best way to manage game saves?
My Wii game saves are currently written on Real Nand, because in the past I had issues booting some games if they were set to Emunand. In this way the wii nand is still subject to wear and tear (even if minimal).
Could it be that those issues were due to hdd corruption? or is this a common problem?
And what about Nintendont and Emunand Wiiware/VC game saves? Where are they stored?

 

[Deleted User]

You don't need a WBFS partition anymore.
Just install the d2x-cios installer and you can read Wii and GC from SD using ConfigurableUSB Loader for Wii and Nintendont for Gamecube.

Try it with your brand new SD card.

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

I've been playing Wii Isos and Gamecube Isos from SD for... perhaps 6+ months with no issues.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

Who has a WBFS partition? I'm on FAT32. Did you read anything of what I wrote?
And no, I won't use SD card for everyhing (It would be hard to fit hundreds of Gigabytes on a 16GB SD card)

 

[tswntk]

You can use save game manager to backup your saves from real nand or emu nands. I delete saves from real nand regularly if I am not going to play the games for a long time. (Testing games can create hundreds of saves!)

You can use partial Emu nand mode to redirect Wii games to save on an emu nand in SD (in addition to neek/emu nand in HDD if you have them, just need to config the paths when switching). However, a few games won't work in partial Emu nand mode.

Nintendont insists on keeping saves and configs to the drive with the games - it can't mount both SD and HDD simultaneously probably due to code space limitations. I have avoid it myself and use Dolphin though I have not seen any report about Nintendont corrupting HDDs specifically. (I have yet to find a GC game that won't work well with Dolphin and i can hook up my PC with my TV)

 

[RunningSnakes]

I pretty much use the same setup as you Tetsuo Shima, no SD card whatsoever as it is "Broken", FAT32 2TB HDD Western Digital My Passport Ultra. Difference is, I am using the entire HDD as 1 partition. I have had the same issues as you with Wii games becoming corrupted, but have not had this with GameCube games. I also do a lot of tinkering around with WiiFlow Lite plugins, covers, themes etc., adding & deleting. I am lucky enough to have a few different backup HDD i can revert back to when something becomes corrupted & it happens occasionally. I believe it is WiiFlow Lite causing the issue "although I do not want to" and I have no real concrete proof & I also use Wiixplorer from time to time, so Wiixplorer could definitely be the culprit. It just seems to happen when I do a lot of plugging & unplugging the HDD from PC to Wii after adding or deleting several files at a time from WiiFlow Lite. I always make sure, if I have done a lot of moving files around, my backup HDD are kept up to date. Your Hard Drive may not be what is causing this. I have a ?. When you moved nand(s) from HD to SD did you just drag & drop then change file paths accordingly? I have 2 other Wii's modded I don't use that do have SD slot working. After doing a lot of reading about similar problems, thinking maybe valued opinions on this may sway me to invest in a SD card larger than 2GB (which is all i currently have) and use SD/HD for my other Wii's as well as many others I have modded for family & friends.

 

[fledge68]

Ok I bought a 16Gb SD card and moved all homebrew apps and emunand into it, and now everything is working wonderfully. I decided, for the moment, to try to keep my hdd to see if it's really broken or not.
I've managed to recover the majority of the non-working Wii games, re-dumping my originals and getting the remaining ones from friends whom I have modded their wii years ago, and after days of testing they all work.
I'm increasily convinced that the culprit was Wiixplorer, because the games corruption always happened in times I was using it a lot. If I'll be wrong I will buy another one but atm I don't wanna waste 70€ for nothing.

@fledge68 or anyone else:
to avoid making other stupid mistakes, I'd like to ask you one more thing.
What is the best way to manage game saves?
My Wii game saves are currently written on Real Nand, because in the past I had issues booting some games if they were set to Emunand. In this way the wii nand is still subject to wear and tear (even if minimal).
Could it be that those issues were due to hdd corruption? or is this a common problem?
And what about Nintendont and Emunand Wiiware/VC game saves? Where are they stored?

saves: i always use real nand. although emunand should work fine except for a few games that are known to have issues (twilight princess i think). savegame manager gx can always backup your saves if you want to make more room on real nand.
nintendont saves are saved on same device as the games folder. it's coded that way and can't be changed.
wiiware/vc saves are saved on the emunand with the game.
by the way my emunand is on USB. so these saves should be written to USB via the cIOS. nintendont saves are written to USB via nintendont. Wii saves are written to real nand or emunand via cIOS. plugin emu apps handle their own game saves. in other words, with wiiflow 5 on SD card it should never write to USB, only read from.

Wiixplorer: what do you use wiixplorer for? rename titles? copy and paste files? delete files/folders? or wifi to send files from your pc to your wii hdd?
your hard drive is probably fine. it most likely is having wiiflow lite on usb or using wiixplorer.
like i said, i like having wiiflow and wiixplorer on SD because in case of curruption its easier to backup and restore an SD card than 500gb or more of game data on a USB HDD.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

@RunningSnakes At first I tried to simply copy the nands and sneek folders to SD, and most of the games worked but not the ones requiring neek2o mode (black screen). That's because you need a different version for SD. So I followed Cyan and GreyWolf instrucions in the neek2o thread, I had to use modmii to regenerate the kernel.bin and armboot.bin files and copy them to SD.
Armboot.bin goes to SD:/bootmiineek; kernel.bin and font.bin to SD:/SNEEK folder

@fledge68

by the way my emunand is on USB. so these saves should be written to USB via the cIOS. nintendont saves are written to USB via nintendont. Wii saves are written to real nand or emunand via cIOS. plugin emu apps handle their own game saves. in other words, with wiiflow 5 on SD card it should never write to USB, only read from.

I'm sorry, I don't understand this part. Did you not said before that it's best to have emunand on SD?

And I really don't guarantee wiiflow or wiiflow lite isn't to blame for your corrupted games. especially when using emunand on USB HDD.

And with WFL on SD and Nintendont games on HDD, how can it not write GC saves to HDD if it's coded that way?

Wiixplorer: I used that to edit .ini files, mostly for themes and source_menu. And to rename and move some GC and Wii games when I dumped them with ClearRip (that app creates dumps on the root, so I was using Wiixplorer to move them in the games folder). I was finding it very handy for these kind of operations, because I could avoid to constatly plug/unplug the HDD from Wii to PC. I will never use it again.

Oh I forgot to tell you a good news, do you remember my freezing issue when I switched themes from WFL?
Now that I moved WFL to SD that problem is gone :-)