Gaming 256GB SDXC on Wii???

[ca032769]

Has anyone tried a 256 SDXC card on the Wii??

I'd like to get out of my 32GB chip and into a larger one. I see Amazon has the PNY SDXC 256GB Class 10 UHS-1 for $89.99 and would like to know who's using 64, 128 or 256 size cards successfully before I purchase.

Any comment/recommendations are appreciated...



****Updated 11/02/16 - Thanks to Many. To avoid having people read through all the following posts: YES, both 128GB SDXC & 256GB SDXC Chips work. I'm using system menu 4.3U. Note that ANY system menu 4.0+ and higher will read SDXC cards. Just make sure to use FAT32 GUI FORMATTER to format them as FAT32 with 32k clusters.

FAT32 GUI FORMATTER 32-bit link: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

FAT32 GUI FORMATTER 64-bit link: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm



****Updated 12/17/25 - 1TB SD Cards work just fine. Forgot I'd started this threat way back when and just updating it to reflect that there does not seem to be a limit to the size of SD card that can be used. If only the cost of a 2TB SD card was reasonable I'd have one., with all expectation it would work.

 

[Rubyheart]

I have a 64gb card, and it works fine. You can format SDXC cards to SDHC if you want to, and anything that can read HC cards should be able to read an XC formatted to HC.

This is the card I have.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0090J5X0O/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_nzu1ub0SQGY7M

It currently has a few dozen gamecube games on it, and everything works perfectly.

 

[ca032769]

I have a 64gb card, and it works fine. You can format SDXC cards to SDHC if you want to, and anything that can read HC cards should be able to read an XC formatted to HC.

This is the card I have.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0090J5X0O/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_nzu1ub0SQGY7M

It currently has a few dozen gamecube games on it, and everything works perfectly.

Great & thank you for confirming.

When you say make it SDHC, is that referring to formatting it as FAT32 or is there something else that is needed?

 

[Rubyheart]

You can make devices see it as a SDHC card with 64gb, instead of a SDXC card. I forget the program I used to do it, but I followed a link from somewhere here. I'm not sure if it's absolutely needed, but if it doesn't see it when it's SDXC, then try changing it to SDHC.

Both can be formatted to FAT32, to be perfectly honest, I'm not exactly sure what it does to make it SDHC, nor why.

 

[shinkodachi]

You can make devices see it as a SDHC card with 64gb, instead of a SDXC card. I forget the program I used to do it, but I followed a link from somewhere here. I'm not sure if it's absolutely needed, but if it doesn't see it when it's SDXC, then try changing it to SDHC.

Both can be formatted to FAT32, to be perfectly honest, I'm not exactly sure what it does to make it SDHC, nor why.

There's no need for any special program as most SDXC cards will work fine with devices that support SDHC cards, as long as the card is formatted as FAT32. It's only a question of whether the device has any upper limit in software for how much data it can read from an SDHC card whether the greater capacity of an SDXC card will work.

The reason for this is that the SDXC standard requires devices with official compatibility to support the exFAT format, which can be licensed from Microsoft. If a device manufacturer doesn't support exFAT or lacks the license from Microsoft, the device can't be advertised as supporting SDXC cards. There are some more minor differences between SDXC and SDHC cards, but the formatting is the biggest difference, which allows us to simply reformat an SDXC card as FAT32 and it'll work 99% of the time just like an SDHC card.

Hope this clears up any confusion.

 

[ca032769]

Thank you for the feedback!! Will order the 256GB today & report back...

 

[Ryccardo]

You will have to fill it so that there's less than 32 GB free, assuming they haven't fixed this (maybe intentional) bug that prevents using 4 GB regular SDs on software that doesn't support SDHC...

 

[ca032769]

You will have to fill it so that there's less than 32 GB free, assuming they haven't fixed this (maybe intentional) bug that prevents using 4 GB regular SDs on software that doesn't support SDHC...

Good to know if I run into problems, then I'll give that a try. Ordered it, but won't arrive until Monday...

 

[HNKii]

I have a 64gb card, and it works fine. You can format SDXC cards to SDHC if you want to, and anything that can read HC cards should be able to read an XC formatted to HC.

This is the card I have.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0090J5X0O/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_nzu1ub0SQGY7M

It currently has a few dozen gamecube games on it, and everything works perfectly.

Is it possible to format SDHC to SD?

 

[Ryccardo]

Is it possible to format SDHC to SD?

No (well, SD is normally FAT16 and SDHC FAT32, but 99% of the time filesystem isn't the problem: the protocol was changed for SDHC, and so it did for SDXC but this time the changes were very minor)

 

[ca032769]

256SD card arrived. Will reformat it from exFAT to FAT32. Any thoughts on cluster size when I do this??

 

[shinkodachi]

256SD card arrived. Will reformat it from exFAT to FAT32. Any thoughts on cluster size when I do this??

4K

 

[ca032769]

4K

Thanks will make it your recommended 4K cluster size and report back.


Edit: Only about 15 minutes of playing around with the 256GB SDXC card formatted as FAT32 4k/cluster size, but seems fine. Was able to play Wii & Gamecube games off it without any issues.

Will play with it more and post back if I have any issues...

 

[KyleK87]

Thanks will make it your recommended 4K cluster size and report back.


Edit: Only about 15 minutes of playing around with the 256GB SDXC card formatted as FAT32 4k/cluster size, but seems fine. Was able to play Wii & Gamecube games off it without any issues.

Will play with it more and post back if I have any issues...

Hi I just bought this : https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00VBNQJLY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I formatted it to FAT32 and filled it up but it keeps failing to produce the letterbomb and install homebrew and when I click on the SD card on my wii its just blank. Do you possibly have any ideas on how to fix this or if I should get a different card? any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[ca032769]

Hi I just bought this : https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00VBNQJLY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I formatted it to FAT32 and filled it up but it keeps failing to produce the Letterbomb and install homebrew and when I click on the SD card on my wii its just blank. Do you possibly have any ideas on how to fix this or if I should get a different card? any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Let me check my 256GB card tonight when I get home and I'll confirm back it's format status (Format/Sector Size/Cluster Size). It's been a while since I worked on it but I'd used Fat32 GUI Formatter (32bit link: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/download/fat32format.zip & 64bit link: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/guiformat-x64.Exe).

I don't think the card will show anything on it while in the Wii, just on the PC. But the problem could be your system menu version. I believe anything 4.1 and earlier needed an SD card 2GB or less to install letterbomb. Only system menu 4.2 & 4.3 (I might be wrong about 4.2 seeing I went from 3.8 or 4.1 to 4.3 skipping it) can read SDHC & SDXC cards. So if you're 4.1 or lower you'll need a smaller card to hack it first with Letterbomb. To originally hack my Wii I used ModMii (http://modmii.comuf.com) and this SanDisk 2GB SD Memory Card (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J47W12/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1). After that I used a 32 or 64GB SDHC until I bought my PNY 256GB SDXC (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FF90EZM/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1).

With that said, I have had two or three Wii's not pull up Letterbomb as expected. Even going back a day or more it didn't show up, so I put everything away and when I tried it the next day it was there. Happened a few times but always showed up after waiting, no idea if it was me or not. Also make sure your Wiis date and time are set correctly, try Letterbomb again by going back a day and if still nothing then give it a full 24hrs before trying to go back a day in messages again and see if it shows up.

I'll check my 256 chip settings for you tonight and report back in the morning...

 

[ned]

You can create partitions of any size any have it recognize as that sd card type,
I n
noticed this before on the wii when installing bannerbomb using a 8gb sdhc card when bannerbomb only supported sd and other homebrew that only supported sd as long as the partition was 2gb it read it fine.

 

[ca032769]

You can create partitions of any size any have it recognize as that sd card type,
I noticed this before on the wii when installing bannerbomb using a sdhc card when bannerbomb only supported sd and other homebrew that only supported sd as long as the partition was 2gb it read it fine.

Sorry, I never formatted a larger card to have a smaller or multiple partitions on it. I just went and bought the smaller 2GB card and have always used it to do my initial ModMii installation. (@KyleK87 - here's the GBATemp link to ModMii if you're not already aware of it: http://gbatemp.net/threads/modmii-for-windows-official-support-topic.207126/)

@ned - Haven't tried formatting a larger card to a smaller 2GB partition to bypass the limitation, but sounds like it's worth a try for @KyleK if he keeps having issues...

 

[KyleK87]

Let me check my 256GB card tonight when I get home and I'll confirm back it's format status (Format/Sector Size/Cluster Size). It's been a while since I worked on it but I'd used Fat32 GUI Formatter (32bit link: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/download/fat32format.zip & 64bit link: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/guiformat-x64.Exe).

I don't think the card will show anything on it while in the Wii, just on the PC. But the problem could be your system menu version. I believe anything 4.1 and earlier needed an SD card 2GB or less to install letterbomb. Only system menu 4.2 & 4.3 (I might be wrong about 4.2 seeing I went from 3.8 or 4.1 to 4.3 skipping it) can read SDHC & SDXC cards. So if you're 4.1 or lower you'll need a smaller card to hack it first with Letterbomb. To originally hack my Wii I used ModMii (http://modmii.comuf.com) and this SanDisk 2GB SD Memory Card (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J47W12/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1). After that I used a 32 or 64GB SDHC until I bought my PNY 256GB SDXC (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FF90EZM/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1).

With that said, I have had two or three Wii's not pull up Letterbomb as expected. Even going back a day or more it didn't show up, so I put everything away and when I tried it the next day it was there. Happened a few times but always showed up after waiting, no idea if it was me or not. Also make sure your Wiis date and time are set correctly, try Letterbomb again by going back a day and if still nothing then give it a full 24hrs before trying to go back a day in messages again and see if it shows up.

I'll check my 256 chip settings for you tonight and report back in the morning...

Ok Thank you for your reply. My wii Menu is 4.3u so it shouldn't be an issue and I checked the save game blocks on my SD card on the wii so I know its recognizing the card. Talk soon

 

[KyleK87]

Ok Thank you for your reply. My wii Menu is 4.3u so it shouldn't be an issue and I checked the save game blocks on my SD card on the wii so I know its recognizing the card. Talk soon

oh and that program keeps giving me an error. ugh this is frustrating. I used easeus partition manager to format it to format32. I copied the letterbomb files to the root of the 256Gb SD card. changed the date and time correctly on my wii still nothing. Sorry to bug you by the way.

 

[ca032769]

oh and that program keeps giving me an error. ugh this is frustrating. I used easeus partition manager to format it to format32. I copied the letterbomb files to the root of the 256Gb SD card. changed the date and time correctly on my wii still nothing. Sorry to bug you by the way.

When you say you have it in the root of the SD card does it look like SD:/private/wii/app and also title subdirectories?? There are more subdirectories in each of those as well, but that's the general idea.

Also, what are you using to mod your Wii?? What guide??