I'm working on possibly getting back Wii U saves from a USB drive

LuxBrush · Mar 31, 2023

First, here's how I got to the point of having to try and get Wii U saves from a USB drive.

My friend's system broke after I finished getting all of their games working by deleting the games from the system memory, copying the save files to a USB drive, and re-downloading them to the USB drive. Their system was giving the 160-0103 and 160-0130 memory errors for most of their games. After everything but one game was working, for some reason, I thought it was a good idea to copy one game back to the system memory. That's when the whole system froze up during the copy, and now it doesn't work.
After the system crashed during the game copy to the system memory, nothing appears on the screen.
The system turns on, the blue light shows normally, and the disc drive works, but there is no display on the TV of game pad.

So we exchanged it for another Wii U from a local used game shop that also does repairs. I've asked the local game shop if they can try and get the otp.bin and the Seeprom.bin from my friend's broken Wii U so I can decrypt the USB drive we have from my friend's broken Wii U and get their saves. If that's not possible, I'm hoping to recreate the saves with a little help from save editors and my friend's excellent memory.

The games I can remember right now that have the most important saves to recreate if I can't get the files to decrypt the USB drive are Splatoon, Hyrule Warriors, and DuckTales Remastered. There are others that I can't remember, but those are the ones that stand out as most important. Also, is there any advice or links I could give to the game shop to possibly help them get the necessary files from the non-working Wii U?

All help will be greatly appreciated.

danny19901 · Mar 31, 2023

Best bet probably start fresh or find a modded save or a decent save online Im assuming the wii U is modded if so can start fresh and maybe use trainers for some games this requiring tcp gecko though

LuxBrush · Mar 31, 2023

danny19901 said:
Best bet probably start fresh or find a modded save or a decent save online Im assuming the wii U is modded if so can start fresh and maybe use trainers for some games this requiring tcp gecko though

Thank you for the reply. The current Wii U is not softmodded but will be when either of the save file methods prove successful.

SDIO · Mar 31, 2023

It's a shame you gave the Wii U away. Without otp and seeprom the saves are forever lost.

I had the same happening to my Wii U with exactly the same symptoms.
Problem was a bad eMMC chip from Hynix. The chip is probably still readable and just read only. If you could get the console back, you could try to read the eMMC with a card reader and replace it with an an sd card. There will soon be a Quick soldering Board, which makes the process much easier. This should get you at least to the point where you can run UDPIH to dump the OTP and SEEPROM and probably also get the console working again.

LuxBrush · Mar 31, 2023

SDIO said:
It's a shame you gave the Wii U away. Without otp and seeprom the saves are forever lost.

I had the same happening to my Wii U with exactly the same symptoms.
Problem was a bad eMMC chip from Hynix. The chip is probably still readable and just read only. If you could get the console back, you could try to read the eMMC with a card reader and replace it with an an sd card. There will soon be a Quick soldering Board, which makes the process much easier. This should get you at least to the point where you can run UDPIH to dump the OTP and SEEPROM and probably also get the console working again.

Thanks for the reply. I don't have any soldering skills to do that type of repair myself, but the game shop is also a repair shop and they will be taking a look at the Wii U over the weekend. If you have any info I could send them to help them work on the Wii U, that would be greatly appreciated. Also, most of the info about this possible repair was not out or available to me at the time.

In the meantime, do you know of any save editors that I could use to build saves for the games I've mentioned?

SDIO · Mar 31, 2023

Here is the Thread about this problem: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-i-fixed-160-0103-system-memory-error.626448/
Here I wrote a short version of the process: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-i-fixed-160-0103-system-memory-error.626448/post-10114480
Here is the current state of the QSB development: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-i-fixed-160-0103-system-memory-error.626448/post-10115383

All go to the same thread but different posts.

Post automatically merged: Mar 31, 2023

In short: the Hardware work that needs to be done:

cut the clk trace to the eMMC
connect sd card reader to the signal lines of the eMMC.
Create a Raw dump eMMC (WIn32Imager for WIndows or ddrescue on linux). The Wii U needs to be turned on during the dump, to supply the eMMC with Power
Write that Raw Dump back to an 32GB (a bigger one won't work) SD card (assuming you had a 32GB Wii U) and ignore the warning that the SD Kart is a few KB smaller.
Connect the SD to the signals of the eMMC and get 3.3V from Q6 and also make sure to add an decoupling cap.

After that the Wii U hopefully produces screen output again. If that is the case, even if it boots into an error we can do the rest with a Raspberry Pico and UDPIH through software.

LuxBrush · Mar 31, 2023

SDIO said:
Here is the Thread about this problem: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-i-fixed-160-0103-system-memory-error.626448/
Here I wrote a short version of the process: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-i-fixed-160-0103-system-memory-error.626448/post-10114480
Here is the current state of the QSB development: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-i-fixed-160-0103-system-memory-error.626448/post-10115383

All go to the same thread but different posts.

Post automatically merged: Mar 31, 2023

In short: the Hardware work that needs to be done:

cut the clk trace to the eMMC

connect sd card reader to the signal lines of the eMMC.

Create a Raw dump eMMC (WIn32Imager for WIndows or ddrescue on linux). The Wii U needs to be turned on during the dump, to supply the eMMC with Power

Write that Raw Dump back to an 32GB (a bigger one won't work) SD card (assuming you had a 32GB Wii U) and ignore the warning that the SD Kart is a few KB smaller.

Connect the SD to the signals of the eMMC and get 3.3V from Q6 and also make sure to add an decoupling cap.

After that the Wii U hopefully produces screen output again. If that is the case, even if it boots into an error we can do the rest with a Raspberry Pico and UDPIH through software.

Thanks for all of the info. Man, the more I read about how Nintendo handled the encryption of the Wii U, the more I'm like "What were they thinking? Were they really that paranoid about game piracy that they would sacrifice repairability?"

If I get the saves back, what's the best way to get them onto the Wii U we currently have? I know a softmod is probably required, but after that, what should I do?

SDIO · Mar 31, 2023

You can use ftpiiu everywhere to copy them in the right location, but I belive there is also an hombrew for that.
Or you just use the original wii u, when it is fixed

V10lator · Mar 31, 2023

To read the OTP and SEEPROM the shop just needs a pico and UDPIH / recovery menu, so I would tell them to do that first so you can backup your saves.

LuxBrush · Mar 31, 2023

V10lator said:
To read the OTP and SEEPROM the shop just needs a pico and UDPIH / recovery menu, so I would tell them to do that first so you can backup your saves.

Thank you for the reply. I did try that method many times before we exchanged it, and it never worked for me. I really wish it had.

godreborn · Mar 31, 2023

LuxBrush said:
Thank you for the reply. I did try that method many times before we exchanged it, and it never worked for me. I really wish it had.

seeprom might be wrong. the seemprom increases by one every time you format iirc. I don't remember the byte, but you can decrease it get it to work.

SDIO · Mar 31, 2023

If the eMMC is read only, IOSU will crash to early for UDPIH to work.

LuxBrush · Mar 31, 2023

Another thing I've been thinking of is I wish Nintendo had a master key for the encryption of the Wii U like they do for the parental controls on the Wii U.

godreborn · Mar 31, 2023

LuxBrush said:
Another thing I've been thinking of is I wish Nintendo had a master key for the encryption of the Wii U like they do for the parental controls on the Wii U.

not drive encryption. systems since the ps3 era have encrypted their hdds to prevent piracy I'd imagine;.

Post automatically merged: Mar 31, 2023

btw, Habib, at least with the ps3, said using the same drive for all systems was theoretically possible, but it would force everyone to reformat their drives. I assume the same is true here, so it's not practical.

LuxBrush · Mar 31, 2023

I'd like to thank everyone again who's replied to this thread so far. I was really hoping it would get some attention. This has made me feel much better about the situation.

Post automatically merged: Mar 31, 2023

godreborn said:
seeprom might be wrong. the seemprom increases by one every time you format iirc. I don't remember the byte, but you can decrease it get it to work.

Would you please explain what you meant here? I'm very new to anything to do with modding and working with hardware in this way in general. Though I am very curious about it all.

Post automatically merged: Apr 1, 2023

Okay I've sent an email with the info off to the game shop/repair shop. I hope it helps them.

franjcd · Apr 9, 2023

First things first, sorry if I make any grammatical or spelling errors, my mother tongue is not English.

I managed to get the savefiles from a USB stick. Here is the problem I had: I copied my save files to an USB stick and then formatted the console because I messed a little bit with modding the Wii U (dumb decision tbh).

As soon as I noticed the Wii U had to format the USB again to use it, I made some research. I found out that both the OTP.bin and SEEPROM.bin files have a key for encrypting/decrypting USB storage devices.

If you open the OTP.bin file in a hex editor (HxD for instance), you find the key for encrypting and decrypting USB storage devices, which is 0x10 bytes long, at the offset 0x130.

If you open the SEEPROM.bin file in a Hex editor, you find the USB key seed, which is also 0x10 bytes long, at offset 0x0B0.

I had both files dumped (using nanddumper) in my SD card. However, they were dumped after the Wii U was formatted. Nevertheless, I decided to format the Wii U again, dump the OTP.bin and SEEPROM.bin files again and see what were the changes between both keys.

As I supposed, the key from the OTP.bin file remained the same. I knew this in advance because I had read that the OTP is programmed during the factory process and never changes afterwards. This means that I can use that file for the decryption.

But the SEEPROM's USB key seed only changes one byte. Indeed, the last byte of the key increases by one.

An example of the SEEPROM.bin's first USB key seed (Wii U formatted once):

44 D9 C7 C8 BB 96 D0 8D 71 0D AB 90 86 95 56 56

The SEEPROM.bin's second USB key seed (Wii U formatted twice):

44 D9 C7 C8 BB 96 D0 8D 71 0D AB 90 86 95 56 57

Following the same pattern, it's logical that the SEEPROM key I need for decrypting the USB stick, which was the one before formatting the Wii U, is the following:

44 D9 C7 C8 BB 96 D0 8D 71 0D AB 90 86 95 56 55

What I did was copying the OTP.bin and SEEPROM.bin to my computer, open the Hex editor and change that byte in the SEEPROM file.

Now that I had the keys I needed for decrypting the USB stick, everything was pretty straightforward. I used wfs-extract to copy the information stored in the USB stick to my computer.

After that, I used SaveMii to restore the saved data. Here is what I did:

The savefiles from the USB stick are in usr/save. When opening the save directory, there are other two ones: 00050000 and system. Inside the first folder there are a list of other folders whose names are numbers and letters. Each folder contains the saved data of a certain game. For example, 1010ed00 is the folder for MK8 saved data. Inside each of these folders, there are two other ones, called meta and user, which contains the saved data of the game. For example, going to usr\save\00050000\1010ed00\user\ will give us the save files from MK8.

SaveMii stores the saved data in the root of the SD card in a very similar way. For example, this is where it would save the data of MK8:
sd:\wiiu\backups\000500001010ed00\0

The 000500001010ed00 folder's name is the combination of 00050000 and 1010ed00, while the 0 folder is the slot of the SD card where the saved data is stored.

Knowing this, I only had to reorganise the saved data so that SaveMii is able to restore it. For example, here is how I reorganised the MK8 savefiles:
1. Created the route
sd:\wiiu\backups\000500001010ed00\0\
2. Copying the contents in usr\save\00050000\1010ed00\user\ to the 0 file.

After that, I had to load every game before restoring the data (otherwise SaveMii won't work) and used SaveMii to restore the data... everything was back to normal!

In summary, as long as you get the Wii U that has formatted the USB drive repaired, you can recover the files. Good luck!

I'm also sorry if the length of the text is too long, but I hope it's worth reading it all and hope I've explained everything well.

LuxBrush · Apr 9, 2023

franjcd said:
First things first, sorry if I make any grammatical or spelling errors, my mother tongue is not English.

I managed to get the savefiles from a USB stick. Here is the problem I had: I copied my save files to an USB stick and then formatted the console because I messed a little bit with modding the Wii U (dumb decision tbh).

As soon as I noticed the Wii U had to format the USB again to use it, I made some research. I found out that both the OTP.bin and SEEPROM.bin files have a key for encrypting/decrypting USB storage devices.

If you open the OTP.bin file in a hex editor (HxD for instance), you find the key for encrypting and decrypting USB storage devices, which is 0x10 bytes long, at the offset 0x130.

If you open the SEEPROM.bin file in a Hex editor, you find the USB key seed, which is also 0x10 bytes long, at offset 0x0B0.

I had both files dumped (using nanddumper) in my SD card. However, they were dumped after the Wii U was formatted. Nevertheless, I decided to format the Wii U again, dump the OTP.bin and SEEPROM.bin files again and see what were the changes between both keys.

As I supposed, the key from the OTP.bin file remained the same. I knew this in advance because I had read that the OTP is programmed during the factory process and never changes afterwards. This means that I can use that file for the decryption.

But the SEEPROM's USB key seed only changes one byte. Indeed, the last byte of the key increases by one.

An example of the SEEPROM.bin's first USB key seed (Wii U formatted once):

44 D9 C7 C8 BB 96 D0 8D 71 0D AB 90 86 95 56 56

The SEEPROM.bin's second USB key seed (Wii U formatted twice):

44 D9 C7 C8 BB 96 D0 8D 71 0D AB 90 86 95 56 57

Following the same pattern, it's logical that the SEEPROM key I need for decrypting the USB stick, which was the one before formatting the Wii U, is the following:

44 D9 C7 C8 BB 96 D0 8D 71 0D AB 90 86 95 56 55

What I did was copying the OTP.bin and SEEPROM.bin to my computer, open the Hex editor and change that byte in the SEEPROM file.

Now that I had the keys I needed for decrypting the USB stick, everything was pretty straightforward. I used wfs-extract to copy the information stored in the USB stick to my computer.

After that, I used SaveMii to restore the saved data. Here is what I did:

The savefiles from the USB stick are in usr/save. When opening the save directory, there are other two ones: 00050000 and system. Inside the first folder there are a list of other folders whose names are numbers and letters. Each folder contains the saved data of a certain game. For example, 1010ed00 is the folder for MK8 saved data. Inside each of these folders, there are two other ones, called meta and user, which contains the saved data of the game. For example, going to usr\save\00050000\1010ed00\user\ will give us the save files from MK8.

SaveMii stores the saved data in the root of the SD card in a very similar way. For example, this is where it would save the data of MK8:
sd:\wiiu\backups\000500001010ed00\0

The 000500001010ed00 folder's name is the combination of 00050000 and 1010ed00, while the 0 folder is the slot of the SD card where the saved data is stored.

Knowing this, I only had to reorganise the saved data so that SaveMii is able to restore it. For example, here is how I reorganised the MK8 savefiles:
1. Created the route
sd:\wiiu\backups\000500001010ed00\0\
2. Copying the contents in usr\save\00050000\1010ed00\user\ to the 0 file.

After that, I had to load every game before restoring the data (otherwise SaveMii won't work) and used SaveMii to restore the data... everything was back to normal!

In summary, as long as you get the Wii U that has formatted the USB drive repaired, you can recover the files. Good luck!

I'm also sorry if the length of the text is too long, but I hope it's worth reading it all and hope I've explained everything well.

Thank you. This will definitely be useful. I also have an update about the Wii U. It has been moved to a dedicated electronic repair shop where they have two techs who have experience with working on video game consoles and know how to solder. They really appreciated the info I gave them from this forum and will get to work on it on the 10th.

Valery0p · May 14, 2023

franjcd said:
But the SEEPROM's USB key seed only changes one byte. Indeed, the last byte of the key increases by one.

I smell a SeedMiner U ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) @zoogie have you checked if there's any flaw?

The Real Jdbye · May 14, 2023

LuxBrush said:
First, here's how I got to the point of having to try and get Wii U saves from a USB drive.

My friend's system broke after I finished getting all of their games working by deleting the games from the system memory, copying the save files to a USB drive, and re-downloading them to the USB drive. Their system was giving the 160-0103 and 160-0130 memory errors for most of their games. After everything but one game was working, for some reason, I thought it was a good idea to copy one game back to the system memory. That's when the whole system froze up during the copy, and now it doesn't work.
After the system crashed during the game copy to the system memory, nothing appears on the screen.
The system turns on, the blue light shows normally, and the disc drive works, but there is no display on the TV of game pad.

So we exchanged it for another Wii U from a local used game shop that also does repairs. I've asked the local game shop if they can try and get the otp.bin and the Seeprom.bin from my friend's broken Wii U so I can decrypt the USB drive we have from my friend's broken Wii U and get their saves. If that's not possible, I'm hoping to recreate the saves with a little help from save editors and my friend's excellent memory.

The games I can remember right now that have the most important saves to recreate if I can't get the files to decrypt the USB drive are Splatoon, Hyrule Warriors, and DuckTales Remastered. There are others that I can't remember, but those are the ones that stand out as most important. Also, is there any advice or links I could give to the game shop to possibly help them get the necessary files from the non-working Wii U?

All help will be greatly appreciated.

No chance of save modding in Splatoon I'm afraid, Nintendo are pretty ban happy with that game specifically. Safest to start over.

LuxBrush · May 14, 2023

The Real Jdbye said:
No chance of save modding in Splatoon I'm afraid, Nintendo are pretty ban happy with that game specifically. Safest to start over.

Thanks for the reply. I had a feeling that would be the case. Though, I wonder if just modifying the single player would be okay?

I'm working on possibly getting back Wii U saves from a USB drive

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