Hacking Cloning Wii U HDD

[galneon]

(I asked at least part of this in a mega-thread but had no luck...)

I've been using an old PS3's stock 2.5" as my Wii U HDD and now I'd like to switch to an even older Samsung 3.5" I have lying around, but have some concerns about cloning.

1) Is the Wii U's recognition of the HDD tied to a hardware ID such that changing the drive, even if the new drive has otherwise identical data, renders it unrecognizable? It's been a long time but IIRC the Xbox had a key stored on the drive that needed to be edited in the event of changing HDDs without reformatting.

2) Are installed games written in a structured but raw way such that cloning to a larger drive will make expanding into the additional space trivial, or is it the case that when the drive is formatted a partition with a definitive, unchangeable endpoint is created? In other words, when I clone my 160GB to a 500GB drive, will it be recognized by the console as a 160GB drive due to a partition with a particular endpoint being cloned, or will it be recognized by its maximum capacity?

 

[KevinX8]

The controller is encrypted so its impossible to clone, this was already answered a few days back

 

[galneon]

Thanks. I didn't know it was answered already because I don't actually read everything that is posted here. I'll just reinstall everything.

 

[tvall]

The controller is encrypted so its impossible to clone, this was already answered a few days back

care to provide a link? what controller? are you talking the hd mcu? usb-sata controller? what exactly prevents this

 

[galneon]

I think he means MCU and that encryption is tied to the hardware ID or serial of the HDD. Were it only the USB to SATA controller, I presume you could at the very least clone to a drive of the same size and exchange them at will given the controller remains the same.

This is all only a minor inconvenience for me, so "it can't be done" is sufficient for now--maybe someday we'll be loading up our HDDs from our PCs like civilized people.

 

[Bu2d85]

If you want to use a different hard drive just connect both of them to the Wii U. You can transfer everything from the old one to the new one but it takes forever.

 

[galneon]

Hahaha thanks, for some reason I thought only one drive could be connected.

 

[Tarantus]

I had a hard time when I discovered the console can't recognize HDDs already formatted with it if you ends swapping their cases... But since HDDs are hardware tied, not working after changing their cases (due to different controller boards) just makes sense. Turn out to be a big problem since I formatted both HDDs with the same case since I couldn't find my second one by the time...

 

[Bu2d85]

Hahaha thanks, for some reason I thought only one drive could be connected.

Almost true, you can connect 2 drives but only 1 can be used at a time. Connecting 2 drives is only useful for data transfer.

 

[galneon]

I had a hard time when I discovered the console can't recognize HDDs already formatted with it if you ends swapping their cases... But since HDDs are hardware tied, not working after changing their cases (due to different controller boards) just makes sense. Turn out to be a big problem since I formatted both HDDs with the same case since I couldn't find my second one by the time...

Oh, so it really is the controller, or even a combination of both controller and HDD? Damnit.

 

[KevinX8]

Oh, so it really is the controller, or even a combination of both controller and HDD? Damnit.

It's combination of both unfortunately, someone did manage to decrypt it but after the decryption the HDD is no longer usable on the wii u.

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

 

[plyscho]

There was a thread about this, a while ago: https://gbatemp.net/threads/cloning-wii-u-usb-hdd.445982/

 

[galneon]

I just changed my HDD from one enclosure to another--one is a USB 3.0 vertical dual dock and one is a traditional USB 3.0 enclosure. It's not at all likely both enclosures use the same controller considering one has dual ports and additional functionality including (a very annoying) built-in sleep mode that can't be disabled. Whatever the case, the drive and all its contents is recognized from one enclosure to the next.

This is strange. I guess these two different controllers could have identical hardware IDs...

 

[nexusmtz]

I just changed my HDD from one enclosure to another--one is a USB 3.0 vertical dual dock and one is a traditional USB 3.0 enclosure. It's not at all likely both enclosures use the same controller considering one has dual ports and additional functionality including (a very annoying) built-in sleep mode that can't be disabled. Whatever the case, the drive and all its contents is recognized from one enclosure to the next.

This is strange. I guess these two different controllers could have identical hardware IDs...

The more likely reason is that both enclosures represent the drive's geometry in the same way. For example, both might have the 3TB limit, or they both can handle larger drives, and they do so in the same way. I suspect that the problems people have moving a drive from enclosure to enclosure are caused more by the way the drive logically appears to the WiiU than any effort to key the encryption to the enclosure.

 

[tunip3]

Thanks. I didn't know it was answered already because I don't actually read everything that is posted here. I'll just reinstall everything.

You can format the second HDD to the Wiiu
And then copy it all over via the. Wiiu