Hacking 3TB, 4TB, 5TB, or 6TB+ drives with vWii, USB Loader GX, Nintendont

[ca032769]

Because Disk Management doesn't allow you to create such a big partition on a MBR drive or am I wrong?

Hi @lordelan & @Prod1219. I saw your posts earlier today referencing the post when I'd made my 8TB drive to work on the Wii.

This might be a bit late but after reading over your comments above and that original post I just edited it to include something new I found out for converting GPT to MBR which might be helpful.

The paid version of EaseUS Partition Master has the option to convert GPT to MBR as well as MBR to GPT. I had always used the free version myself until recently and now that I have come across this I've edited that original post to include this new information. My next attempt will be to take one of my unused External WD 10TB My Book HDDs and see if this still holds true for that size and style of WD drive. I'll update everyone if it works, but I'm confident it probably will. See attached picture:

 

[lordelan]

Hi @lordelan & @Prod1219. I saw your posts earlier today referencing the post when I'd made my 8TB drive to work on the Wii.

This might be a bit late but after reading over your comments above and that original post I just edited it to include something new I found out for converting GPT to MBR which might be helpful.

The paid version of EaseUS Partition Master has the option to convert GPT to MBR as well as MBR to GPT. I had always used the free version myself until recently and now that I have come across this I've edited that original post to include this new information. My next attempt will be to take one of my unused External WD 10TB My Book HDDs and see if this still holds true for that size and style of WD drive. I'll update everyone if it works, but I'm confident it probably will. See attached picture:
View attachment 151144

Good find. So the steps with that paid version could be: Create one big GPT NTFS primary partition, convert it to MBR and format it with GUIformat?

As a side note: "one of my unused External WD 10TB My Book HDDs"? Wow mate. If they're collecting dust at your side, don't hasitate to send them over to me.

 

[ca032769]

Good find. So the steps with that paid version could be: Create one big GPT NTFS primary partition, convert it to MBR and format it with GUIformat?

As a side note: "one of my unused External WD 10TB My Book HDDs"? Wow mate. If they're collecting dust at your side, don't hasitate to send them over to me.

Yes those are the steps I'll try when I get to it over Christmas Break.

While one of my 10TB currently isn't being used, I wish it was just extra, but is allocated to replace a smaller drive I've outgrown. I'd like to test it out for use with Wii storage first and if it works I'll keep it and then bump that 8TB over for use elsewhere. I've outgrown so many of the drives that I need to play musical hard drives. Lots of temp items stored on other drives because I'm out of room to keep it all in one place. It'll be nice when 12TB, 15TB or 20TB drives are out and affordable. Pictures below are from earlier this year before I added three WD 10TB My Books and 3 WD 4TB Passports. I'm somewhere in the 106TB overall HDD range now:

 

[lordelan]

Yes those are the steps I'll try when I get to it over Christmas Break.

While one of my 10TB currently isn't being used, I wish it was just extra, but is allocated to replace a smaller drive I've outgrown. I'd like to test it out for use with Wii storage first and if it works I'll keep it and then bump that 8TB over for use elsewhere. I've outgrown so many of the drives that I need to play musical hard drives. Lots of temp items stored on other drives because I'm out of room to keep it all in one place. It'll be nice when 12TB, 15TB or 20TB drives are out and affordable. Pictures below are from earlier this year before I added three WD 10TB My Books and 3 WD 4TB Passports. I'm somewhere in the 106TB overall HDD range now:

View attachment 151196 View attachment 151197

Wow man ...

 

[ca032769]

Wow man ...

Ya, the wife says I'm a hoarder and I suppose I am. But I like to keep a couple backups and besides movies & TV shows I like to keep all the retro games for the Retro Gaming Console Wall I want to build, I see it as more of a collection then hoarding. Well I do have about 30 Wii's I've modded and am sitting on to possibly trade in the future for other systems, so that I may have gone a little overboard.

I'll try the 10TB this weekend if I can find time and will let you know if it works. Pictures attached of my computer room that will eventually have my Retro Gaming Wall. For now it's just a cardboard mockup so I can figure out the final details before building it (a little bragging, but mostly just sharing):

 

[lordelan]

Well I do have about 30 Wii's I've modded

I'm out!

Well that's a hell of a wall man. You even have enough blue and red Wiis to make a color based pattern.
Love your C64 stuff.

At least you've got a wife so everything's set I guess.

 

[Elliander]

I really don't understand why it is accepted so widely on this forum that it's possible to create a single,continuous FAT32 partition larger than 2TB. Please show me a working example of one in a partition viewer if it's possible.

FAT32FormatGUI will throw an error right away if you try to make a FAT32 partition larger than 2TB.

In order to create a single FAT32 partition that is 4 TB in size you need to have a 512 sector size drive. This is pretty rare these days, as everything switched over to 4K around the time that 4 TB became available. I only found one such drive, and in another thread I successfully demonstrated this on the Wii and it WORKED (with all steps screenshotted so others can repeat it). However, the Wii software couldn't handle a FAT32 drive of that size and so, while it worked, it couldn't access data after the 2 TB mark. And I only tried because FAT32 was needed for DIOS MIOS.

 

[ca032769]

In order to create a single FAT32 partition that is 4 TB in size you need to have a 512 sector size drive. This is pretty rare these days, as everything switched over to 4K around the time that 4 TB became available. I only found one such drive, and in another thread I successfully demonstrated this on the Wii and it WORKED (with all steps screenshotted so others can repeat it). However, the Wii software couldn't handle a FAT32 drive of that size and so, while it worked, it couldn't access data after the 2 TB mark. And I only tried because FAT32 was needed for DIOS MIOS.

Hmmmm, I haven't had that issue.

After using several 4TB drives as one single partition for myself and several others I have yet to come across a game that did not load. This would be for Wii & GameCube games all on the same drive. I've extensively gone through all the games to verify loading and this would have easily pushed past the 2TB mark seeing the drive contains all US Wii & GameCube titles. To be fair though I am missing Lets Sing 2018, but I believe that was only a European release.

For over a year, maybe more, I have moved onto using 8TB drives as one single partition without any issues. Granted I had to format it with 64k cluster size to see the whole drive, but still no issues loading any of the titles. Next will be to try my WD 10TB just to see if it works, but I've been busy and haven't gotten around to it. The drive is meant for storage of Nintendo Switch games once I outgrow the 4TB I've been using.

Maybe I just got lucky with my drives, all are Western Digital External HDD My Books, pictured a few posts back.

Edit - My Setup - Original Wii (not Wii U), using Cfg USB Loader, USBLoaderGX & Nintendont.

Edit 2019-05-15: @Elliander @element6 So after 4 months I finally got around to trying this out on my 10TB WD MyBook and it WORKED. If you don't need as much space and want a more slim line drive with just a USB cable and no power adapter the WD 4TB Passport works great also (I bought a Y-cable just in case but haven't had to use it). You can even color match the Passport to your White, Black or Red Wii. If you are still interested in this you can check my signature below for a link to how it was done.

Edit 2021-02-23: My new drives of choice is the 5TB WD Passport & 5TB WD P-10 Game Drive. Anything over 5TB now just seems over kill because I can fit all US Wii & GameCube titles onto it including several PAL & JAP titles that were not release for the US with room leftover. I have not tried emuNAND from it as others have told me they didn't get theirs to work. It probably has to do with the 64k cluster size. I use emuNAND off my 256GB SDXC card, but one day I might get around to trying off the USB.

My 5TB drive recommended are either of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VNTFHD5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

or

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VP5X239/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

 

[showdownx]

Hmmmm, I haven't had that issue.

After using several 4TB drives as one single partition for myself and several others I have yet to come across a game that did not load. This would be for Wii & GameCube games all on the same drive. I've extensively gone through all the games to verify loading and this would have easily pushed past the 2TB mark seeing the drive contains all US Wii & GameCube titles. To be fair though I am missing Lets Sing 2018, but I believe that was only a European release.

For over a year, maybe more, I have moved onto using 8TB drives as one single partition without any issues. Granted I had to format it with 64k cluster size to see the whole drive, but still no issues loading any of the titles. Next will be to try my WD 10TB just to see if it works, but I've been busy and haven't gotten around to it. The drive is meant for storage of Nintendo Switch games once I outgrow the 4TB I've been using.

Maybe I just got lucky with my drives, all are Western Digital External HDD My Books, pictured a few posts back.

Edit - My Setup - Original Wii (not Wii U), using USBLoaderGX and Nintendont.

I know this might not be related to the topic, but the way you formatted the FAT32 HDD in 4TB, do you think that will also work for a modded Xbox 360 and PS3?

 

[snoofly]

I found Seagates were no good for 8Tb Fat32 partitions, but WD My book 8Tb works fine after being formatted with the WD software.

I had to do research and recommend reading up on logical sector sizes on drives:
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=24338&lang=en

I found 8Tb FAT32 only worked well if you had a 4K native drive, 512 and 512 emulated did not work for me.
I've have all my Wii and GC content stored on one (around 4-5Tb) running flawlessly for a year or so.

You also need to worry about having a drive that spins up in time for the vWii side of things to recognise it.
Again, WD My Book delivers in that respect where others didn't.

 

[Cyan]

In order to create a single FAT32 partition that is 4 TB in size you need to have a 512 sector size drive.

that's the contrary.
old drives (with 512bytes/sector) were limited and couldn't be formatted bigger than 2TB.
that's specifically why new drives with bigger sectors were created, to make bigger partitions.
why would they be invented if old sector size was better to make bigger partitions size?

The problem is not that it requires 512bytes/sector, but that most homebrew only use MBR instead of GPT, and to use MBR with partition bigger than 2TB you need 4096 bytes per sector.
some manufacturer don't have the option to emulate 512 bytes or disable the emulation.

best manufacturer is Western Digital.
other manufacturer are not properly affecting the drive's firmware, but adding drivers to OS (windows), which is useless for the Wii/wiiu.

 

[ca032769]

I know this might not be related to the topic, but the way you formatted the FAT32 HDD in 4TB, do you think that will also work for a modded Xbox 360 and PS3?

Sorry, I can't speak to the Xbox 360 & PS3 external hard drive usage. I have both which are modded, but haven't gotten around to using external hard drives with them yet.

My thoughts would be that if their requirements are the same FAT32 with 32k clusters it should work.

 

[Elliander]

that's the contrary.
old drives (with 512bytes/sector) were limited and couldn't be formatted bigger than 2TB.
that's specifically why new drives with bigger sectors were created, to make bigger partitions.
why would they be invented if old sector size was better to make bigger partitions size?

The problem is not that it requires 512bytes/sector, but that most homebrew only use MBR instead of GPT, and to use MBR with partition bigger than 2TB you need 4096 bytes per sector.
some manufacturer don't have the option to emulate 512 bytes or disable the emulation.

best manufacturer is Western Digital.
other manufacturer are not properly affecting the drive's firmware, but adding drivers to OS (windows), which is useless for the Wii/wiiu.

ahh, I see. That's the reason I went through that mess to get 4 TB at 512 bytes. Well, the drive I used was the "Barracuda XT" which I had to hunt for and buy specifically for my tests. It was a 4 TB 512 sector size drive only sold as part of an external USB hard drive. The enclosure presented it as a 4k drive, but removed from the hardware it presented instead as a 512 byte drive. It formatted correctly to 4 TB with MBR and FAT32 as a 512 byte drive, but on the Wii it didn't work right.

Interestingly, if formatted as anything in either mode, it shows up as a corrupt partition in the other mode. So if I format it in FAT32 with a 4k attachment, and then take the hardware off and try to use it in a computer directly it will not be readable at all.

 

[brandon916]

1tb was enough for all i could think of, and a since some apps still need a certain clustersize and fat32 to work correctly they maight faile if there's more that 2 gb total disk space (all partitions together).

I agree with you. I had a 2tb laying around and had to use it. Boy, I can't even fill 1tb worth. I'm just throwing in games I know I won't ever play for wii u, wii and gc games. I think a 500gb hard drive would be perfect. You'll load all the top games and save money on paying for extra drive you won't use.

 

[JaapDaniels]

I agree with you. I had a 2tb laying around and had to use it. Boy, I can't even fill 1tb worth. I'm just throwing in games I know I won't ever play for wii u, wii and gc games. I think a 500gb hard drive would be perfect. You'll load all the top games and save money on paying for extra drive you won't use.

wow man! did i mess up my post so bad? 1 tb was all gc games, all wii games, about all n64, all snes, all genesis, all gamegear, all master system, all nes, and as many psx roms i could find... i meant 2 tb as a max (and i mean not by todays calculations but the old 2tb since that's max for fat32.
fat32 with special clustersize (i thought it to be 64) is the magic setup for gamecube, all other systems don't care so much.
please only backup you owned games, for the makers of good games deserve thier salary.
that makes it still okay to pirate EA though

 

[El_Oliverio]

Hi people I was using a 5tb wd and the partitioning to fat32 went fine. However, for some rare reason my PC doesn't detect my 5tb fat32 drive and I was wondering the fact that I think is because of the space limit which is 32 GB. I don't know, but my PC doesn't seem to recognize aside of what I have mentioned previously regarding the 32 GB limit