Hardware Can't access flash drive.

[UltraSUPRA]

Hi.
I've been homebrewing for as long as I can remember, and one of the things I always did was pirate Wii games. The USB drive I have for it, I had since at least 2010. It still works...sorta.
It still turns on, it still runs games, and I can still put new games on it. However, trying to access this drive from the File Explorer or WinRAR will give me an error message saying I need to format it. Since the SD card I use isn't exactly big enough to store all the Gamecube games I want to play, I need to copy the games folder for Nintendont over to the drive...which I can't do.
But is there a fix for this half-a-terabyte drive from the days of the DS? Or will I have to stick with swapping out cards for my Gamecube games? I refuse to format the drive and lose all 150-some-odd games on it, so am I hopeless or is there an answer?
EDIT: And before you say it, 7-Zip doesn't work either.

 

[Deleted User]

How can you still put games on it if you can't access the drive from the file explorer? Do you mean accessing the drive from the Wii? Or from another computer? The rest of this post assumes you can at least read/write files to the USB from the Wii itself.

What you could do, is use a tool like WiiXplorer to transfer the files from the SD Card to the USB on the Wii itself. Not sure what the write speeds on the Wii are like, though; I know that the ones on the 3DS are pretty terrible, so expect the worst as far as that's concerned.

If you really want to use this drive normally, though, you could go in the opposite direction and carry over games from the USB to the SD, then from your SD to your local hard drive. You'd have to do this a few games at a time, until the USB Drive is empty. From there, you can just format the drive on your computer normally. It'd probably be really time-consuming to pull that off, though.

 

[Mark McDonut]

sounds like your flash drive is formatted as WBFS, try using Wii backup Manager to access the disk, yours is set up the old way of installing games before fat32 and ntfs support was added.

you're going to need a pc with as much space free as the flash drive, you need to extract the games from the wbfs format into *.wbfs files (advised since ISO's are the full dvd size regardless of game data size due to format of disk). extract all your wbfs files, format your drive to fat32 and copy your games back using a wbfs folder, then an individual game folder for each game's *.wbfs file(s) so it would be like this:

USB:\wbfs\Mario Galaxy\Mario Galaxy.wbfs
USB:\wbfs\Mario Kart Wii\Mario Kart Wii.wbfs

 

[UltraSUPRA]

How can you still put games on it if you can't access the drive from the file explorer? Do you mean accessing the drive from the Wii? Or from another computer? The rest of this post assumes you can at least read/write files to the USB from the Wii itself.

What you could do, is use a tool like WiiXplorer to transfer the files from the SD Card to the USB on the Wii itself. Not sure what the write speeds on the Wii are like, though; I know that the ones on the 3DS are pretty terrible, so expect the worst as far as that's concerned.

If you really want to use this drive normally, though, you could go in the opposite direction and carry over games from the USB to the SD, then from your SD to your local hard drive. You'd have to do this a few games at a time, until the USB Drive is empty. From there, you can just format the drive on your computer normally. It'd probably be really time-consuming to pull that off, though.

I use Wii Backup Manager, WiiXplorer doesn't recognise the USB drive's existence, and I have a feeling that my computer doesn't have enough allocated space to put all those WBFS files on there. Come to think of it...

sounds like your flash drive is formatted as WBFS, try using Wii backup Manager to access the disk, yours is set up the old way of installing games before fat32 and ntfs support was added.

you're going to need a pc with as much space free as the flash drive, you need to extract the games from the wbfs format into *.wbfs files (advised since ISO's are the full dvd size regardless of game data size due to format of disk). extract all your wbfs files, format your drive to fat32 and copy your games back using a wbfs folder, then an individual game folder for each game's *.wbfs file(s) so it would be like this:

USB:\wbfs\Mario Galaxy\Mario Galaxy.wbfs
USB:\wbfs\Mario Kart Wii\Mario Kart Wii.wbfs

This sounds about right. My Wii is stuck on 4.2, and I have a feeling I've been doing this since before then. All I need to do is find a program besides Wii Backup Manager that can load WBFS-formatted drives.

 

[Mark McDonut]

I use Wii Backup Manager, WiiXplorer doesn't recognise the USB drive's existence, and I have a feeling that my computer doesn't have enough allocated space to put all those WBFS files on there. Come to think of it...

This sounds about right. My Wii is stuck on 4.2, and I have a feeling I've been doing this since before then. All I need to do is find a program besides Wii Backup Manager that can load WBFS-formatted drives.

do you have another external layin around? or maybe a loose hard drive and an enclosure/usb hookup? I'd hate to recommend purchasing anything new when you need more space just to hold off so you can switch to fat32 (which works perfect with nintendont, and i even have a FSTOOLBOX emunand setup on mine so i can launch 50+ wiiware channels from usbloader GX without fuckin with the space on my wii itself.)

there ARE some sites where whole collections of WBFS files are available if you have limited space but decent bandwidth, another idea.

 

[UltraSUPRA]

do you have another external layin around? or maybe a loose hard drive and an enclosure/usb hookup? I'd hate to recommend purchasing anything new when you need more space just to hold off so you can switch to fat32 (which works perfect with nintendont, and i even have a FSTOOLBOX emunand setup on mine so i can launch 50+ wiiware channels from usbloader GX without (Please consider censoring yourself; there are kids here.) with the space on my wii itself.)

there ARE some sites where whole collections of WBFS files are available if you have limited space but decent bandwidth, another idea.

No need. I already fixed the problem. I found a program called WBFS2FAT and it worked perfectly.

 

[Mark McDonut]

No need. I already fixed the problem. I found a program called WBFS2FAT and it worked perfectly.

Awesome, I had no idea that even existed. Glad you got everything worked out!