accidentldychanged size of WBFS partition how do i fix

Discussion in 'Wii - Backup Loaders' started by frank01liny, Feb 18, 2010.

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  1. frank01liny
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    frank01liny Member

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    Please, I need help with steps for using any WBFS tool to make my HD think my WBFS partition is now smaller.

    I have a 500gig WD drive I had partitioned it into 3. The first partition being the one for WBFS, the second one a NTFS (just under 32 gigs) and the last a FAT32(just under 32 gigs) (the first parition had the remaining gigs)
    I thought I was resizing my last two partitions [making one bigger and the other smaller] (with norton partition magic 8) but it seems I accidently made my WBFS partition smaller. Now when I try to use WBFS manager 3, it doesnt recognize any of the games that were loaded and working in the WBFS partition. WBFS manager says there is an error loading drive and Wii game manager v1.5 says it cant find any WBFS partitions. Is there any way I can set the WBFS partition size and make it work (to the slightly smaller size it is now) or any way I can recover my backups?

    thanks for any help
     
    #1 Feb 18, 2010


  2. ChokeD

    ChokeD The Contributor

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    Nope, you lost your backups. There is no wbfs partition manager. There is no way to recover your backups because no data recovery tool recognizes the wbfs format. I searched all over the net for a week and came up empty. I would love to have someone prove me wrong cause it's happened to me twice.
     
    #2 Feb 18, 2010
  3. fig2k4

    fig2k4 GBAtemp Advanced Fan

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    Most of the command line tools allow a "force" parameter for WBFS. If the data on the drive is still intact, enabling force mode will let you recover the games.

    In this case I think that should work OK, since you said the WBFS partition was the first one on the drive. The start of the partition is where all the important info is, so as long as the used size of the games was smaller than the size the partition is now, everything should be intact.
     
    #3 Feb 18, 2010
  4. DKAngel

    DKAngel GBAtemp Advanced Fan

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    im pretty sure that partition is toast

    i personaly use 1hdd for games and 1 seperate for wiiware/vc and the sd card for apps
     
    #4 Feb 18, 2010
  5. PsyBlade

    PsyBlade Snake Charmer

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    try changing the size back to original
     
    #5 Feb 18, 2010
  6. ChokeD

    ChokeD The Contributor

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    I'd like to hear more about these command line tools your talking about that deal with wbfs partitioning and forcing parameters ???

    I'm no expert but even if you could somehow force some parameters with a tool the index would more than likely be junk and you'd still be left with a partition with unreadable material because as I stated before there are no tools (that I know of) to recover raw wbfs data. If there is such a program, command line based or not, please name some names cause I'm going to do some experimenting on data recovery from a wbfs drive if there is such an app.
     
    #6 Feb 18, 2010
  7. KiiWii

    KiiWii GBAtemp Psycho!

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    Wont make a difference. The damage has been done.
     
    #7 Feb 18, 2010
  8. ChokeD

    ChokeD The Contributor

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    Yeah that's what I'm sayin, It would really be nice if someone could write us a tool that actually did partitioning and data recovery for wbfs. I'd be in heaven. [​IMG]
     
    #8 Feb 18, 2010
  9. tj_cool

    tj_cool Site dev

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    I think that'd be a welcome app for many people [​IMG] (as well as a WBFS resizing one)
     
    #9 Feb 18, 2010
  10. frank01liny
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    frank01liny Member

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    I dont believe I can change the partition size back (has to do with placement of the partitions and where the data is in each partition). Since my WBFS partition is the first on the drive I thought I would be able to trick the system into thinking it should be a smaller partition now OR a way to force a utility to see my backups, so that I can copy them to another drive. I would prefer the former since I dont have to waste any time making copies to another drive, and then reformatting the WBFS partition and then copying them back. I've never deleted any backups from my WBFS partition prior to this mistake. I've seen another thread where people accidently reformated their WBFS partition and were able to get their games back using a partition hex editor. I may try that but I wanted to know if there was another solution.

    Does anyone know when the WBFS partition is formated, where the sectors or size of the parition is stored... so that maybe I can hexedit the value to be the smaller value.
     
    #10 Feb 18, 2010
  11. fig2k4

    fig2k4 GBAtemp Advanced Fan

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    The size of the partition is calculated from the sector size * number of sectors. Since you've changed the number of sectors, the values don't match. Without force mode, the partition will be seen to be invalid.
    Edit: I probably worded that wrong. I'll fix it later, I'm hungry. lol

    From what I've read, frank01liny didn't format or delete the partition. It was only resized and AFAIK the data on a seemingly raw partition isn't touched. That means the data should still be intact.

    I'll try to get the recovery function working again tonight and release 0.3.5 beta 2 of WBM. It's not really needed for this though. It's designed to recover games from a partition that's been accidentally re-formatted as WBFS. Force mode would do the trick, letting you mount the partition and use it as normal, at least to recover the games before formatting it correctly.
     
    #11 Feb 18, 2010
  12. frank01liny
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    frank01liny Member

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    I'll give force mode a try eventually, but I was looking to avoid the time & HD space needed to copy the games backups back and forth. (looking for a shortcut so I dont have to open/install a new HD) I'll give your update a try when you make it available.

    Regarding your comment about WBFS partition size and sectors though... would that calculation be any different than how the norton partition software removed it as well (because I resized about 32 megs smaller [not gigs] and it's isnt unallocated anymore.. it was given to the adjecent partition which I beleive is NTFS formated). I want to make certain that what I do about the WBFS partition doesnt cross over and corrupt my adjecent NTFS partition
     
    #12 Feb 18, 2010
  13. Ossot

    Ossot GBAtemp Fan

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    starting jdownloader & utorrent seems like waaay less work to get back all your pirated games than your current method. I'm just sayin.

    edit: but i'm sure like most pirates, you actually play all your 500gb worth of games on a daily basis. If not at least weekly. There are a lot of really good games out there, so i'm sure that's the hurry.
     
    #13 Feb 18, 2010
  14. frank01liny
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    frank01liny Member

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    I have more supporting info for my situation

    in norton partition magic 8, my WBFS partition properties is now
    First physical sector 63 cyl 0 hd 1 sect 1 (I believe this did not change)
    Last physical sector 911,174,669 cyl 56717 hd 254 sect 63 (I believe this was decreased)
    total physical sectors 911,174,607 = 444,909.5 mb (previously it was around 444,940.?? mb)

    The properties for the second partition (NTFS) is now
    first physical sector 911,174,733 cyl 56718 hd 1 sect 1

    sector 63 starts like the following
    57 42 46 53 36 50 66 D3 09 17 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    so what should my WBFS header be set/changed to based on the numbers above?
     
    #14 Feb 19, 2010
  15. Wiimm

    Wiimm Developer

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    Here is a untestet guide for you:

    CODE#----- Build a dummy wbfs

    # Build a dummy WBFS file with the old size.
    # Because of sparse it consumes only some MB of your disc.
    # File 'a.wbfs' must *not* exists before.

    wwt format a.wbfs --size m --force
    # For you: wwt format a.wbfs --size 445m --force

    #----- Copy header from dummy wbfs to your broken wbfs

    # Copy the first 12 bytes from the dummy wbfs.
    # Use a hex editor or command 'dd' under linux:

    dd if=a.wbfs of=/dev/your_wbfs_drive bs=12 count=1

    # Now you can remove the dummy wbfs file 'a.wbfs'

    #----- Mark all discs as used (active) on your drive

    wwt -p /dev/your_wbfs_drive edit act=0- --force

    #----- Repair free blocks table and remove really invalid discs

    wwt -p /dev/your_wbfs_drive repair --repair=FBT,RM-INVALID,RM-EMPTY

    #----- Run check to see more warnings

    wwt -p /dev/your_wbfs_drive check --verbose

    And again: It is absolut untestet! Use it on your own risk!
     
    #15 Feb 19, 2010
  16. frank01liny
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    frank01liny Member

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    Since I decreased my WBFS partition size by only a little bit... I dont think the wbfs sector/cluster size (byte 10, value of 17) would not need to be changed Wouldnt I just need to change the partition size (header bytes 5 thru 8) to 36 4F 6B CF (=911174607)?
    (like I stated earlier, I only added about 40 games to my WBFS partition priorhand... I never deleted any so I dont think any other cleanup is needed. )
     
    #16 Feb 19, 2010
  17. fig2k4

    fig2k4 GBAtemp Advanced Fan

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    I've sent you a PM with a version of WBM that has both the force and recovery modes I mentioned. Simple instruction are in the PM. Let me know if your games show up and can be transferred off the drive.

    I've got a few more little things I want to add before I release another public version..
     
    #17 Feb 19, 2010
  18. frank01liny
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    frank01liny Member

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    It took me a few minutes to figure out how to remount... but here are the results
    When selecting drive with the bad partition header it gave me an error.
    I selected the option to force and deselected/reselected the drive
    I was able to see my 42 games.
    I tried recover mode too but I didnt see any difference than using force
    I believe my wbfs header remained untouched physically

    thanks for the help
     
    #18 Feb 20, 2010
  19. frank01liny
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    frank01liny Member

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    I decided to edit the partition manually using the value above with a harddrive sector editor. I am able to see all of my 42 games without forcing any mode using multiple wbfs managers/utilities.
    I reconnected the drive to my wii and I was able to play a few of the games using 2 different usb loaders

    thanks for the help
     
    #19 Feb 20, 2010
  20. frank01liny
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    frank01liny Member

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    I did some more playing around with WWT and it seems that somewhere between 270 and 280 gigs is where the 10th byte of the header changes from 16 to 17 so it would seem I could theoretically decrease the size of my wbfs partition from 440gig to 280 gig without any ill effects as long as all of the existing data on the wbfs partition is in the first 280 gigs of the partition (which is should be since I have only loaded about 100 gig of files without deleting any) and I change the 5 thru 8th bytes of the header with the parition size. I am not going to test this out yet... until I backup my files from the WBFS partition to WBFS files on another drive... (but I wont be doing this for another week or so) I will report my findings here after I'm done.
     
    #20 Feb 22, 2010
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