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Hacking cloning wii U USB HDD?

  • Thread starter Thread starter naddel81
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ukigh4ie said:
Do yourself a favor and use professional software that is also open source. Clonezilla clones anything.
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So, has anybody tried this? Any success?

Also, I'm worried about something. I have two identical 2.5" 500 GB drives (same brand, model, etc.). One full of games, one empty and unused. But those drives don't have any power connector. They are fueled only via USB. Which means they need a USB "y" cable each. Which means they need 4 USB ports total. The Wii U has 4 USB ports (2 front, 2 back). If I were to use the Wii U's copy feature, would it work with one hard drive on the 2 back ports and the other on the 2 front ports?
 
WiiFanAix said:
So, has anybody tried this? Any success?

Also, I'm worried about something. I have two identical 2.5" 500 GB drives (same brand, model, etc.). One full of games, one empty and unused. But those drives don't have any power connector. They are fueled only via USB. Which means they need a USB "y" cable each. Which means they need 4 USB ports total. The Wii U has 4 USB ports (2 front, 2 back). If I were to use the Wii U's copy feature, would it work with one hard drive on the 2 back ports and the other on the 2 front ports?
Click to expand...
yes, I think that's the main reason why there are four usb ports. that should work. as far as cloning the drive on the pc, I don't know. I think it would work tbh, just never tried it. pretty sure people have had success on the ps3.
 
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I'm asking because on the Wii U I would have to buy a second "y" cable just for that purpose, while on my PC during the cloning process any drive could be powered by a single USB port, so no cable needed. Faster and cheaper... IF it could work of course. I'd love to read that somebody has already had success with this in 2022.

EDIT - somebody tried Clonezilla and Acronis in 2022. It did not work. https://gbatemp.net/threads/cloning-a-hdd-for-a-second-wiiu.590718/
 
Last edited by WiiFanAix,
the problem is I don't know if anyone knows if cloning the drive works. though, doing it on the console will be tedious as hell.
 
you have nothing to lose by trying the cloning process, so if I were you, I'd try that instead of using the system report back of success or failure.
 
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godreborn said:
the problem is I don't know if anyone knows if cloning the drive works. though, doing it on the console will be tedious as hell.
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The only way what I think would work is to make an Image from the drive, save it to pc and write it to the new drive.
Because the Partitioning Programs does not se the drive as full etc
 
Someone has yet to come with a foolproof tutorial on this. That's a bit sad in 2022.
I mean a tutorial that works on Windows, not the "plug both drives to the Wii U and wait two days" thing.

I'm a Wii U newbie (got mine a month ago), I have just softmodded it thanks to some excellent tutorials, I'm still discovering stuff every day, and I don't think it should be up to people like me to experiment with things like this one. I wouldn't even know where to start. For starters I have never used a cloning app. What could go wrong, right ?...

Well, maybe it just can't be done. Or maybe it has worked randomly for some people for unknown reasons. Go figure.
 
Can´t find any tool what can from an Unalocated disk drive make an image
Maybe on Linux but I don´t have linux
 
nah clonezilla never worked because when I tried with various options the software just did not recognise the drive at all.

I found the whole wait a few days thing to be better via the wii u menu
actually my predicament now is this....

about 2 months back i made a backup of all contents to another drive via 2 x usb caddys
since then I've been installing more games content etc so don't know if there is an easy way for me to only copy over recently updated/installed games only :)
bit like a latest backup
 
You are talking about incremental copy, which is a common feature on all backup apps.
Unfortunately backup apps don't seem to work with the Wii U, and neither do cloning apps, so I guess you don't have any choice besides keeping track of the new stuff and doing it manually.
On the other hand, you shouldn't have hundreds of games, and keeping track should be easy enough with pen and and paper.
 
WiiFanAix said:
You are talking about incremental copy, which is a common feature on all backup apps.
Unfortunately backup apps don't seem to work with the Wii U, and neither do cloning apps, so I guess you don't have any choice besides keeping track of the new stuff and doing it manually.
On the other hand, you shouldn't have hundreds of games, and keeping track should be easy enough with pen and and paper.
Click to expand...
there is a thought... a backup application that can backup the HDD to another HDD? :P
 
Psd99 said:
surely a rather basic linux command could achieve something simplistic
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Code: 
sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=4k
X is the drive to copy from, Y the drive to copy to. Be carefully: Using the wrong output drive could delete all the data on your PC, rendering it none-bootable!
Y must have at leat as much space as X. Any additional space won't be used by the Wii U through.

//EDIT: @WiiFanAix Cloning and backup apps work just fine as long a they aren't operating on filesystem level but do raw, bit by bit identical copies of the drive (like dd is doing).
 
Last edited by V10lator,
But I was talking about Windows apps, not LInux.
Like said earlier, somebody has yet to provide a foolproof guide that works on Windows.
 
WiiFanAix said:
But I was talking about Windows apps, not LInux.
Like said earlier, somebody has yet to provide a foolproof guide that works on Windows.
Click to expand...

I'd go one step further and ask if there is an app on homebrew that has a decent GUI that lets u connect two drives at a time and do the backup(s)
incremental would be a blessing
 
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