Hardware About hard drives and backups...

[MasterZoen]

Okay, so I've looked around GBATemp and done about 2 dozen online searches and found that if you use a drive formated by the Wii U it won't work for USB loaders in Wii Mode.

However, I've not found any information for a few questions I have.

1) If I'm using a large drive, i.e.: 2-4 TB, and have formatted only half of it to be WBFS for USB loaders to run Wii Backups does the Wii U see the unallocated space as a different drive?

2) If the answer to the above is, "No," then is it possible to resize a drive partition created by the Wii U, and then format the newly unallocated space as WBFS for USB loaders?

3) Assuming the answer to either of the above is, "Yes," then will the separate partitions work in their respective environments, the Wii U partition for Wii U backups and the WBFS partition for Wii/Gamecube backups in Wii Mode?

 

[DocAmes1980]

Okay, so I've looked around GBATemp and done about 2 dozen online searches and found that if you use a drive formated by the Wii U it won't work for USB loaders in Wii Mode.

However, I've not found any information for a few questions I have.

1) If I'm using a large drive, i.e.: 2-4 TB, and have formatted only half of it to be WBFS for USB loaders to run Wii Backups does the Wii U see the unallocated space as a different drive?

2) If the answer to the above is, "No," then is it possible to resize a drive partition created by the Wii U, and then format the newly unallocated space as WBFS for USB loaders?

3) Assuming the answer to either of the above is, "Yes," then will the separate partitions work in their respective environments, the Wii U partition for Wii U backups and the WBFS partition for Wii/Gamecube backups in Wii Mode?

No to 1 and 2. The Wii U can only use the entire drive. When it formats it doesn't use a partition table. If the Wii U sees a partition table on the drive it displays the prompt to Format. Even if you shrunk the Wii U partition after it nukes the drive and created a fat32 or NTFS partition doing so would generate a partition table. Even if you deleted the partition table it still probably wouldn't work in the Wii U and it definitely wouldn't work for the vWii as it wouldn't know the layout of the drive. A CFW that can load Wii U games from a fat32 drive would be the only way to have one drive for Wii U, Wii, and GC.

In the meantime you'll have to use two drives if you want to do both. I use external enclosures with power buttons so I don't have to plug and unplug the drives.


EDIT: Apparently people have tried exhaustive tests:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/can-you-make-a-wii-u-partition.337805/

 

[MasterZoen]

No to 1 and 2. The Wii U can only use the entire drive. When it formats it doesn't use a partition table. If the Wii U sees a partition table on the drive it displays the prompt to Format. Even if you shrunk the Wii U partition after it nukes the drive and created a fat32 or NTFS partition doing so would generate a partition table. Even if you deleted the partition table it still probably wouldn't work in the Wii U and it definitely wouldn't work for the vWii as it wouldn't know the layout of the drive. A CFW that can load Wii U games from a fat32 drive would be the only way to have one drive for Wii U, Wii, and GC.

In the meantime you'll have to use two drives if you want to do both. I use external enclosures with power buttons so I don't have to plug and unplug the drives.


EDIT: Apparently people have tried exhaustive tests:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/can-you-make-a-wii-u-partition.337805/

I would have thought that someone would have tested that thoroughly by now, but nothing ever came up in my searches. *sigh* I long for the days of yore when a search on the internet actually returned relevant information.

Well, thanks for the help, looks like I'll just grab 2 1TB drives instead then.

 

[DocAmes1980]

I would have thought that someone would have tested that thoroughly by now, but nothing ever came up in my searches. *sigh* I long for the days of yore when a search on the internet actually returned relevant information.

Well, thanks for the help, looks like I'll just grab 2 1TB drives instead then.

If possible go for external HDDs or enclosures that have power buttons so you can just turn off the unused drive instead of having to plug/unplug.