Hacking Using one 4TB HDD Fat32 for all Wii Games, GC Games using USBLoaderGX via NEEK Loader

davecham · Dec 11, 2018

Hi guys.

I have been using USBLoaderGX to play all my Wii games (putting all WBFS games in WBFS folder) and GameCube games (using “games” folder with Nintendont loader) and been playing WiiWare / VC games using emunand made via moddmii and using the NEEK LOADER option in USBLoaderGX (using the NEEK option has better compatibility with WiiWare & VC games.

This is all working perfectly but I now want to use a bigger 4TB hard drive instead so I can keep the entire library of games on it (GC & all Wii & WiiWare VC) all in one place.

The bit I’m stuck on is how do I make a 4TB Hard Drive totally fat32? When I’ve used GuiFormatter in the past it says it can only go up to 2TB. I’ve also used a program called MiniTool partitioner that also says the same. Baring in mind, to use the emunand with NEEK loader in USBLoaderGX the hard drive has to be fat32 with 32kb to work correctly.

@Cyan I have read many posts written by yourself and they are really helpful and have got me this far from scratch. I just need this last bit of help getting everything to work using this 4TB drive, and my Wii setup will be complete.

Does anyone know how to do this?

LulaGreen · Dec 12, 2018

You can create a 4TB exFAT partition in either Windows Disk Management or the program you used. This file system also has a good compatibility.

The Real Jdbye · Dec 12, 2018

LulaGreen said:
You can create a 4TB exFAT partition in either Windows Disk Management or the program you used. This file system also has a good compatibility.

Pretty sure nothing on the Wii supports exFAT.

davecham said:
Hi guys.

I have been using USBLoaderGX to play all my Wii games (putting all WBFS games in WBFS folder) and GameCube games (using “games” folder with Nintendont loader) and been playing WiiWare / VC games using emunand made via moddmii and using the NEEK LOADER option in USBLoaderGX (using the NEEK option has better compatibility with WiiWare & VC games.

This is all working perfectly but I now want to use a bigger 4TB hard drive instead so I can keep the entire library of games on it (GC & all Wii & WiiWare VC) all in one place.

The bit I’m stuck on is how do I make a 4TB Hard Drive totally fat32? When I’ve used GuiFormatter in the past it says it can only go up to 2TB. I’ve also used a program called MiniTool partitioner that also says the same. Baring in mind, to use the emunand with NEEK loader in USBLoaderGX the hard drive has to be fat32 with 32kb to work correctly.

@Cyan I have read many posts written by yourself and they are really helpful and have got me this far from scratch. I just need this last bit of help getting everything to work using this 4TB drive, and my Wii setup will be complete.

Does anyone know how to do this?

GPT partitioning scheme is required to use drives larger than 2TB fully. cIOS and Nintendont should support this, but I have no idea if Neek does.

Cyan · Dec 12, 2018

I tried to write an answer this morning, I couldn't finish it.
So :

Short answer : keep your old drive. really ! don't buy or try to use newer drives or bigger than 2TB.
medium answer : use MBR, don't use a 4k drive, use FAT32 on first partition, don't use neek, use neek2o (it's supposed to work with 4k drive but it's not.... there's still a bug. Maybe try the illegal to share version compatible with vWii it might have more bug fixes, but also has more bugs..)

Long answer : STILL writing it. It might end in my "full wii hacking write up guide" in the faq section
currently written part here:

This will be hard to setup, if not impossible.

1.) Sector size
HDDs have a hardware physical constraint : the sector size (defines how much bytes fit in one sector)
Old drives were all manufactured with 512bytes per sectors. But based on the way a drive is accessed (LBA, logical block address), the number of blocs (sectors) accessible on a 32 bit system is limited to 2^32bit (2 is because 2 possible binary states : either 0 or 1, on 32 bit size) = 4294967296 sectors * 512bytes = 2TB (A * B = max partition size)

To store more data on a drive (not talking about partition yet), you have two possibilities : change either A or B.
Make A bigger : to address more than 4M sectors you need 64bit addresses instead of 32bit (2^64 = 18446744073709551616, 18Peta). This one is software dependant (your OS, the homebrew) and need to be updated to use 64 bit values.
Make B bigger : make sectors bigger instead of 512bytes physical size. 4096 bytes per sector is the new hardware norm, but very rare and old drives can have 1024 bytes sector size. This one is hardware based and can't be changed.

Since 2008/2009, Hard drive manufacturer started creating drives with bigger sector size, and such drives are called "Advanced Format".
They are also commonly named "4k HDD" in reference to sector size of 4096bytes, but not all "advanced format" drives have 4096 Bytes per sector. 512, 1024, 2048 and 4096 are all possible sector sizes.

2.) Partition table
To define partitions on a drive, the first physical sector of a device contains a "partition table" which can hold up to 4 Primary partition information (status, start sector, size, type, etc.).

2.A) MBR
This partition table format, called the MBR (Master Boot Record), was created when HDD was only few MB in size (yes, HDD was very small years ago! I already saw a 250MB HDD in 1980's), and therefore using 32bit to store values was le proper choice. Giga Bytes was futuristic, not even talking about Tera byte capacity.

2.B) GPT
With the release of new drive models, requiring addressing of sectors higher than 2TB mark, a new partition table using 64bit values was created : GPT (GUID Partition Table)

3.) Old programs and 512e
As both the 512bytes sector size and MBR format has been the only norm for decades, a lot of programs had (and still have) these information hard coded.
A lot of hardwares, softwares and Operating Systems are only compatible with MBR partition table only, and are set to read/write 512 bytes of data for each accessed sectors, even if the sector holds more data.

This is particularly problematic for computer with old OS, like Windows XP, which are still widely used at the time they released the new drives.
WindowsXP (32bit) is not compatible with GPT, and always access sectors as if they were 512bytes. In order to use Advanced format HDD with old programs or OS, Hard drive manufacturer added a real time sector addressing converter called "512 emulation", "512e" or "XP compatibility mode".

Most advanced format drives have the 512e Emulation mode enabled for convenience. So, out of the box, all drives report a sector size of 512 bytes.
Western Digital is providing a tool to edit this emulation mode. Strangely, it's named backward in their program: when you "enable XP mode" it exposes the 4096 bytes.
Seagate offers a different approach, they are providing a tool to mount the hard drive's sectors above 2TB as an additional external drive partition. it can't access the full drive as a single partition.
Other manufacturer probably have their own choice and tools to access data beyond 2TB.

For homebrew, it is highly recommended to buy a Western Digital Hard disk drive, as it's achieving the proper method to unlock and access data up to 16TB with a single MBR FAT32 partition !
The counter part is that you'll need an OS which supports Advanced format to unlock it (Windows 7+, Linux).

4) Homebrew and GPT

A lot of homebrew only support MBR, and therefore are limited to use 32bit sector addressing. For example: Neek, emuNAND, Homebrew channel, and most homebrew from early 2010.
A few homebrew have been updated to read GPT information and can therefore use 64 bit sector addressing. For example: USBloaderGX, Wiiflow, Nintendont, the "GX" series emulators (snes9xGX, gbaGX, etc.)

If you want to use homebrew which support only MBR with a drive bigger than 2TB you have two solutions :

- Remember from Chapter 1, we saw that in order to access bigger drives you can either change A (MBR/GPT) or B (sector size), leaving you with only one choice : sector size.
You first need to be sure your device is reporting more than 512 bytes per sector. If not, you have to use the manufacturer tool to do that. All the drive's data will be lost! make backups first.

* add info how to check sector size*

- If your drive is not an "advanced format" device, there is another solution to use data beyond 2TB with MBR and 512bytes/sector, but is not always working. Especially due to partition manager themselves more than hard drive limitation.
Based on the MBR and FAT32 specs, this is theoretically possible to create a second partition starting before the 4294967296th sector, and setting its size to 4294967295 sectors. This way, you can use up to 4TB (2 x 2TB) with MBR and 512 bytes per sector.

Unfortunately, most tools will detect that the partition is above 2TB mark and will refuse to format the partition to FAT32.
You'll also need to be able to address sector numbers in more than 32 bit (LBA had different norms and capability), the drive should be compatible with 64 bit values, and your homebrew too.

ca032769 · Dec 13, 2018

davecham said:
Hi guys.

I have been using USBLoaderGX to play all my Wii games (putting all WBFS games in WBFS folder) and GameCube games (using “games” folder with Nintendont loader) and been playing WiiWare / VC games using emunand made via moddmii and using the NEEK LOADER option in USBLoaderGX (using the NEEK option has better compatibility with WiiWare & VC games.

This is all working perfectly but I now want to use a bigger 4TB hard drive instead so I can keep the entire library of games on it (GC & all Wii & WiiWare VC) all in one place.

The bit I’m stuck on is how do I make a 4TB Hard Drive totally fat32? When I’ve used GuiFormatter in the past it says it can only go up to 2TB. I’ve also used a program called MiniTool partitioner that also says the same. Baring in mind, to use the emunand with NEEK loader in USBLoaderGX the hard drive has to be fat32 with 32kb to work correctly.

@Cyan I have read many posts written by yourself and they are really helpful and have got me this far from scratch. I just need this last bit of help getting everything to work using this 4TB drive, and my Wii setup will be complete.

Does anyone know how to do this?

Take a look at this post and see if it helps: https://gbatemp.net/threads/usb-loader-gx.149922/page-1129#post-6662953

I'm using an WD 8TB External HDD and it all works fine. Will be moving up using one of my 10TB soon.

davecham · Dec 14, 2018

Hi guys, I knew you lot would be able to help me do it!! Thanks for all the help so far, you’ve actually got me so close to completing my goal.

@Cyan thanks for the info, the jewel in the crown was the WDFormat tool to format the drive. I had to check the option “XP Compatible” which unlocked it so now it has the 4096 sectors. Just incase anyone else has issues with this, this “XP check box” needs to be checked but does not appear if you use windows 10 or 8 or any of the modern OSX on Mac, I had to use my girlfriend’s old Vista Laptop to get this option to appear, this is so important, without this check box you won’t be able to format it correctly to show 4096.

I have now successfully got all my Wii games and Nintendo games on one big fat32 hardrive. Yes!!

The next problem is getting NEEK to work properly. And this is the biggie! I’m having an absolute nightmare with it. I’ve been on it since Tuesday morning (3 days ago) non stop, my Mrs is super angry with me as I should be helping decorate the xmas tree and doing festive things but I keep saying “just a sec babe I’m gonna try one last thing” and it never works, I’m exhausted. If you guys can help me through this final part I’d be eternally thankful.

If we can get it all to work on the one big external drive that’s great but if not, I’ve also got a 128gb usb stick (fat32 32kb) we can use in the other Wii USB port. I’m using a 2gb SD card inside the Wii to house the apps folder, but I also have a brand new 32gb SD card we can use if we can’t get NEEK to work on the USB drive. I’m pretty confused to how it works.

The really weird thing is that I got it to work with a 4gb usb stick randomly and it still works, but this was a few days ago and I have no idea how I did it. It even works without an SD card installed. This would be perfect but it’s only 4gb and won’t hold the entire WiiWare / VC library, and that’s the goal. I used the modmii install to create a fresh nand and then I installed the 2 wads that comes with the modmii installation, “neek2o_NK2O_1.wad” and plforwarder.5.1.5.wad” I’m guessing that the app that downloaded with the moddmii install MMM was for installing the 2 wads but I couldn’t get them to install, I had to use a different wad installer and I believe I had to change the install to 222 to make it actually work.

Unfortunately I’m still not sure why or how these IOS numbers work, I’m not that clever and I just followed another tutorial where the guy had a similar install problem. Anyway, two new channels appeared on the Wii, Postloader and NEEK2O. Now with the 4gb stick plugged in, if I load the NEEK2O channel it actually works and boots into the EMUNAND and everything works fine, I can then reset the Wii, go into USBLoaderGX and load the emunand fine and load the WiiWare games using NEEK mode in the global settings etc and they work. The thing is that I cant get this to work with anything else other than this 4gb usb stick. I’ve tried everything, I’ve tried using the main 6TB hardrive, I’ve tried the 128gb usb stick, all following the same instructions as before and it always gets stuck on the screen which tells you it’s searching for MBR, FAT, loading the Kernal etc in the NEEK2O channel. It just freezes, when before, using the 4gb stick, it would post the text then go black for a few seconds then load the emunand system menu, working perfectly. I’ve tried making fresh modmii nands, I’ve also tried simply copying and pasting the folders from the working 4gb stick over to the 128gb drive. It just doesn’t work. It’s so weird, both the usb sticks are the same make “Sandisk” and look identical. I even used MiniTool Partition software to clone the working 4gb over to the 128gb drive but even this doesn’t work. I’ve spent almost 4 entire days trying to get this NEEK thing to work on a small usb drive, a big usb drives, a small sd card, a big sd card, and I can’t for the life of me remember how I did it, or where I’m going wrong.

I’ve uninstalled the channels and deleted everything off the SD card apart from apps/usbloader_gx

I’ve also deleted everything off of the 128gb usb stick. Ready for a fresh install, if anybody knows the correct way then let me know. Preferably I’d like it to be on the 6TB drive along with all the other games, but at this stage I’d be happy even installing the emunand on the 32gb sd.

Can anybody help me just get this NEEK thing working. All I want to do is essentially play the WiiWare & VC games through USBLoaderGX using the NEEK loader in settings.

If anybody can fix this for me I’d happily PayPal them a £20 thank you. Call it a xmas present from me. Trust me at this stage I’d be more than happy to just get this done and dusted so I can concentrate on more family things.

@Cyan you seem to know a lot about this kind of thing, would you be able to talk me through this last NEEK part, step by step, from scratch? Actually I’d be grateful if anyone could assist me through this.

Thanks for everything so far guys, you’re all brilliant and far more knowledgeable than myself, I really appreciate it. Sorry for such a long post.

Dave

davecham · Dec 14, 2018

Update*

Still no luck getting this NEEK to work!!

I followed both these very useful tutorials from scratch, and both did not work for me:

NOTE: I can’t post hyperlinks to webpages so google the following:

Tutorial One:
neek20-emunand-setup-for-noobs

Tutorial Two:
Digital-Kaos Neek2o-setup-and-installation-guide

I do everything exactly as they say. Tutorial 2 adds the NEEK2O channel and when I click it it just freezes on the
“reloading bootmii IOS” screen. If I go into USBLoaderGX then features and click load NEEK system menu it just goes black.

This is actually driving me crazy now! There’s literally nothing else for me to do unless someone smart on here can help me.

Cyan · Dec 15, 2018

davecham said:
this “XP check box” needs to be checked but does not appear if you use windows 10 or 8 or any of the modern OSX on Mac, I had to use my girlfriend’s old Vista Laptop to get this option to appear, this is so important, without this check box you won’t be able to format it correctly to show 4096.

I have now successfully got all my Wii games and Nintendo games on one big fat32 hardrive. Yes!!

glad my info helped you.
I didn't know the option only appeared in old OS. that's very bad

if you want to unlock 4k display of the drive and you only are on a modern system you can't do it? really bad move from the manufacturer.

as for neek :
512 bytes / sector was hardcoded, so it won't work on a "xp mode" drive with 4096 bytes per sector. it should work if you disable it, but you won't be able to format the full drive in MBR....

you could try neek2o r96, but I got report it doesn't work with 4k drive.
you might want to find the illegal to share pre-built version of latest beta. but I didn't test it or had report about advanced hdd format with this version.

davecham · Dec 15, 2018

Cyan said:
glad my info helped you.
I didn't know the option only appeared in old OS. that's very bad
if you want to unlock 4k display of the drive and you only are on a modern system you can't do it? really bad move from the manufacturer.

as for neek :
512 bytes / sector was hardcoded, so it won't work on a "xp mode" drive with 4096 bytes per sector. it should work if you disable it, but you won't be able to format the full drive in MBR....

you could try neek2o r96, but I got report it doesn't work with 4k drive.
you might want to find the illegal to share pre-built version of latest beta. but I didn't test it or had report about advanced hdd format with this version.

Hi @Cyan thanks for your prompt reply.

The 4K drive thing has all been sorted out and works great on the large 6TB drive.

The new problem is trying to get this NEEK to work on anything. I have a blank 128gb usb stick we can use to make a fresh NEEK install on. Then I can plug it in the other USB port, failing that we could try and load NEEK with emunand on a 32gb SD card I have. I really don’t mind how we install it. The emunand is only around 8-10gb. I just want it to be recognised by the Wii full stop. I know it’s time consuming but would you help me by making an idiot proof step by step guide on how to get this NEEK installed and working for me?

Thanks for your help so far :bow:

Cyan · Dec 16, 2018

ah, you don't want the emuNAND folder on your USB ?
then that's fine, you can use your SD card for neek and the emuNAND folder where you'll install all the wad channels.

If you don't use USB for emuNAND, I'm not sure what's your problem.
there's nothing complicated in setting up or using sneek2o.

1. use usbloadergx to dump your NAND.
- go to usbloadergx settings, user path, edit the "emuNAND channel folder" from "sd:/nand/" to "sd:/nands/01/" <--- this is required for neek2o
- go to usbloadergx settings, features, dump NAND, full. it'll take 1min.
Done !

2. generate sneek (with or without di) with modmii.
copy the "copy to sd" folder's content to your SD card.

Done !

3. initialize neek
- go to usbloadergx settings, features, emuNAND wad manager, install "nk2o" channel if you want to exit neek back to real nand after each played game. if you want to stay on neek, don't install it.
- go to usbloadergx settings, features, launch neek system menu.
- press 1 or 2 on the wiimote when you are on the system menu, it'll open the "hidden menu", set region free. shutdown the console once done.

4. set the option to neek only for games not working with cIOS emuNAND. no need to use sneek2o with all games, it's too heavy and too long to load and exit back to real nand.

5. ....
that's all, actually.

full recap (somehow outdated) : https://gbatemp.net/posts/6592730

ca032769 · Dec 17, 2018

Cyan said:
glad my info helped you.
I didn't know the option only appeared in old OS. that's very bad
if you want to unlock 4k display of the drive and you only are on a modern system you can't do it? really bad move from the manufacturer.

as for neek :
512 bytes / sector was hardcoded, so it won't work on a "xp mode" drive with 4096 bytes per sector. it should work if you disable it, but you won't be able to format the full drive in MBR....

you could try neek2o r96, but I got report it doesn't work with 4k drive.
you might want to find the illegal to share pre-built version of latest beta. but I didn't test it or had report about advanced hdd format with this version.

I did this a few years ago and yes while on Windows 10 it didn't give me the XP Compatible option. I just went ahead with the format anyways and it worked giving me the proper 4k sector size.

Not sure if I got lucky or maybe being on Windows 10 caused it to automatically be placed into the proper 4k cluster size thus no option being provided.

Hacking Using one 4TB HDD Fat32 for all Wii Games, GC Games using USBLoaderGX via NEEK Loader

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