How to play GameCube games off a USB HDD.

Welcome to my guide! This will teach you to "backup" your games that you TOTALLY legally own. Right?
This guide is completely compatible with Windows, Mac (Wine), and Linux (Wine). I do not have access to an Apple machine, but theoretically, it should work. Please note that this guide requires you to format your HDD, however you can still use it for storage after we're done, so just back it up before we begin.


NOTE BY A MODERATOR :

There are different methods to play Gamecube games off a USB HDD, and this outdated guide will only tell you ONE method.
It will not explain to you how to run gamecube games from USB HDD, but instead will tell you to do things blindly and install specific outdated files and use a specific outdated USB Loader version.
It doesn't cover other USB HDD methods or other Gamecube loaders.
Don't follow this guide if you want updated informations, updated loaders or if you want to use a different gamecube loading method.

You can follow it only if you want DIOS MIOS 2.8 (outdated) and CFG Loader v70 r36 (outdated).
Thanks for reading,
Cyan

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You will need:
-An SD Card
-A USB HDD
-Wii Mote
-GameCube Controller
-A Wii with Homebrew Channel installed
-A GameCube iso

Download Links:

COMPUTER:


1.) Download WiiFlow from the Download List above. Put it in the apps folder of your SD Card.

2.) Download the DIOS MIOS v2.8 RAR. Go to 'DM', then move 'DIOSMIOS_2.8' to the root folder of your SD card, or for easier installation put it in a folder on the root titled 'wad'.

3.) Download MMM, and put it in your apps folder.

4.) In the DM folder in the RAR, there will be a file named DMToolbox.exe, run it, select your games iso file, and choose where you want the game's folder to go (Desktop will do.). Hit 'Install', and the folder will appear where you wanted it to, it will be named the game's ID, which will, to you, appear to be a bunch of random characters.

5.) Download and Install EaseUS Partition master, and open it. Find your HDD, and right click it, and select 'format'. Format it as FAT32 with 32KB Clusters. *DON'T IGNORE! Press OK, and then "Apply".

6.) Look at your empty HDD, and make a 'games' folder. Put the folder with the Game ID in there.

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WII:




1.) Plug in your HDD in USB Slot 0. Turn on your Wii. Launch Homebrew Channel. Then launch MMM.

2.) Choose WAD Manager on the menu and install DIOSMIOS_2.8.wad

3.) After you're done, exit MMM. Launch WiiFlow.

4.) Go to Settings, and change game partition to USB1

5.) Press 'B', and select the Gamecube icon

7.) Choose a game and press Start. Every time you add new games, you have to hit the home icon, and hit update cache, and your game list will refresh.

Congratulations! You can now play GC games from your USB HDD!

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CFG USB LOADERv70 r36:

COMPUTER:
Follow steps 3-7 in the COMPUTER guide above.

WII:

1.) Follow step 3 in the guide above.
2.) Install DIOS MIOS using MMM.
3.) Launch CFG USB Loader.
4.) Click the icon with tools on it
5.) Set "DML Version" to DM.
6.) Launch your game!
 

Maxternal

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uninstalled and reinstalled dios mios. same thing, green screen to disk when gc disk is in and apploader size is zero when wii or no disk is in
There are several other people that have reported this problem with it trying to load the game in the drive and not from USB. It would be good to figure out what's really causing it.

- You could try loading it with a different loader. DM(L) Booter is known to have good compatibility and you wouldn't need to set it up but there's also WiiFlow and CFG.
- Is your game compressed? Sometimes using the full image helps. You would rename it game.iso and use it to replace the one in the folder on your hard drive for that game.
- Are you forcing any video modes?

You could always look at the other DM(L) guide and compare it to what you did. It's a little more detailed (This one's meant for simplicity)
http://gbatemp.net/topic/318585-how-to-create-and-use-dml/
I'm not really sure what to tell you. I'm just kinda throwing ideas out there at this point. :wink:
 

manateeman

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well, i got it working. turns out i didn't follow directions as well as i thought i did :P
i had my wii partition set as primary and gamecube partition set as logical...oops! works great now
thanks to the developers of brilliant software for dull users, and thanks also to those who deal with the aftermath by making guides and answering stupid questions. i love this community.
 

kingdomhearts17

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thank you all for those who have helped me my issue was solved by converting the hard drive to FAT 32 i missed that step thought DIOS supports NTFS thanks again :D My Gamcube games are now working ^^
 

matmat07

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After pressing play from usb I get a black screen. I did everything beside the fact I use a usb jey formatted in fat32 with 4096b cluster. Could one of there cause the issue or is it something else?
And I think It was usb4 as I just saw in another thread because I formatted with windows..
 

HackAllDevices

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I get a black screen when i try to play GC games. I installed DIOS MIOS V2.2 I formatted my USB Drive to FAT32 and im using usbloadergx mod. The game shows up but when i try to play i get black screened
 

HackAllDevices

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ok now instead of a black screen i get the DIOS MIOS logo with a message
'area! al error app_entry is not within the apploader'

whats that mean and how do i fix it?


 

zeikyn

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Alright I've been working on this for a while but still having problems.

I've used my HDD to play wii games from USB Loader GX for over a year. Today I updated to USB Loader GX v3 and converted my WBFS drive to FAT32; after a while it all worked fine.
Now, after going through this tutorial, my gamecube games load as channels, and I'm able to click 'load from USB,' but my system freezes on the DIOS MIOS screen and displays--

"Fatal error apploader size is zero!"

I think some other people have this problem too. Any fixes yet?

EDIT: Btw this is with wii sports in. When I start with super smash bros melee in, no matter what gc game i load, smash starts.
 

Maxternal

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Is there any alternate method?
My Wii cannot read any DVDs, since I think the Reader is broken. =/
I take it you're problem is copying the disks from the original retail disk to the HDD. If you're in a country where it's legal to do so you can download a copy of a disk image someone else made of the same game you have. Use DiskEX on it just the same.

Another way that's a little safer (not having to worry about what sites/torrents to get a copy of your game from and how trustworthy they are) is if you have a friend with a Wii you could rip the game on their Wii.
Alright I've been working on this for a while but still having problems.

I've used my HDD to play wii games from USB Loader GX for over a year. Today I updated to USB Loader GX v3 and converted my WBFS drive to FAT32; after a while it all worked fine.
Now, after going through this tutorial, my gamecube games load as channels, and I'm able to click 'load from USB,' but my system freezes on the DIOS MIOS screen and displays--

"Fatal error apploader size is zero!"

I think some other people have this problem too. Any fixes yet?

EDIT: Btw this is with wii sports in. When I start with super smash bros melee in, no matter what gc game i load, smash starts.
The first point I see is You have GX version 3.0 which came our right BEFORE Dios Mios came out so it will not work with it. (What the "Load from USB" option does is copy everything to your SD card and try to run it from there with DML but DM can't run off of the SD card) You will need one of the newer beta versions and you can get those asking for them in the USB Loader GX thread here at GBAtemp.
 

Arras

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Where can i get the DiosMios wad? the link you have seems to be broken.
Try http://ul.to/of524gjv. It's the latest Dios Mios for real NAND found at the google code page. I'm not sure if there's a wad inside or if you have to do some compiling, but it should be the latest version.
 

About7fish

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I followed this guide to the letter with CFG Usb Loader (even downgraded to be at the proper version). The loader will not acknowledge any gamecube games on my FAT32 partition. I tried uninstalling the WAD, though 2.2 refuses to uninstall no matter what cIOS I load (2.0 uninstalled with 249).

Am I missing something?
 

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