Hacking Confused about the maximum size HD you can use with vwii

[brollikk]

I've completed modding my wii U with coldboot haxchi. I currently have a 4tb external (powered) for all of the wii U games that I have. For my wii collection - I tried putting all my WBFS files on a 2tb drive but it won't all fit (I believe the total size is a little over 2tb). Would I be able to use say... a 3 or 4 TB drive for my wii games in vwii mode? Does fat32 support more than 2tb sized hard drives? Anyone have experience with this? thanks!

 

[bostonBC]

I've used up to a 5TB drive on the Wii and vWii. Trick is it must be an MBR drive. Use the guiformat tool to format it with 64k clusters and it will work nicely.

Very few drives > 2TB format with mbr and even less will come up as a single partition. The Samsung D3 and Maxtor D3 drives with and are available up to 5TB in size.

I've put close to 2000 Wii games and all GameCube games on a 5TB drive and run it under vWii mode.

 

[brollikk]

I’m not following. you were able to have 5TB in a single partition as fat32? Why can only certain drives be used?

 

[DaTank45]

I use a 4tb western digital on my vwii

 

[brollikk]

I use a 4tb western digital on my vwii

what format is the hard drive? NTFS or FAT32? Do you have the entire wii library loaded in that hard drive?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

And did you have to do the conversion into an MBR drive like the other poster mentioned?

 

[Ryab]

what format is the hard drive? NTFS or FAT32? Do you have the entire wii library loaded in that hard drive?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

And did you have to do the conversion into an MBR drive like the other poster mentioned?

it has to be formatted to WBFS aka the wii/wiiu's filesystem which it should ask you to format the drive when you plug it in and turn on the wii u if not you can do it in the wii u settings under data management

 

[brollikk]

And that lets you use usbloader GX with all the Wii roms on there?

 

[Ryab]

And that lets you use usbloader GX with all the Wii roms on there?

you can just use VC Injectors

 

[brollikk]

you can just use VC Injectors

if that means I have to inject each game individually then i'd prefer USBloader Gx. Will a wbfs formatted drive let me use MORE than 2tb with usbloader gx? Or can it be NTFS formatted? I have the whole wii library and I believe it's around 2.1 or 2.2 TB.

 

[Ryab]

if that means I have to inject each game individually then i'd prefer USBloader Gx. Will a wbfs formatted drive let me use MORE than 2tb with usbloader gx? Or can it be NTFS formatted? I have the whole wii library and I believe it's around 2.1 or 2.2 TB.

then you need a different drive for both wii and wiiu

 

[brollikk]

then you need a different drive for both wii and wiiu

yes, I use a huge drive just for my wii U games (got em all). I don't mind switching drives. my problem is that I am not sure if i can use a drive larger than 2TB for just vwii and also what format it must be.

 

[SCOTT0852]

Don't format to WBFS, just make your games into .wbfs files with the Wii Backup Manager. As long as you put the files in the right place (SD/wbfs/(gamename)/titleid.wbfs), USB Loader GX should be able to see them.
While NTFS does work with some loaders, it's not recommended. FAT32 works completely fine, and there are options for splitting games into multiple files if you save them as WBFS files in Wii Backup Manager.

 

[Ryccardo]

I’m not following. you were able to have 5TB in a single partition as fat32? Why can only certain drives be used?

FAT32 (nor the MBR partition table) don't have any GB limit, but they have a LBA sector limit (4 terasectors)

Sectors are normally 512 bytes, but the newest "Advanced Format 4KN" HDD designs use 4 KB sectors (these started appearing after some years of "Advanced Format 512e" drives, which have 4 KB sectors but emulate 512 bytes one for compatibility with stuff that assumes sectors will never be different than 512 bytes)

 

[lordelan]

I've completed modding my wii U with coldboot haxchi. I currently have a 4tb external (powered) for all of the wii U games that I have. For my wii collection - I tried putting all my WBFS files on a 2tb drive but it won't all fit (I believe the total size is a little over 2tb). Would I be able to use say... a 3 or 4 TB drive for my wii games in vwii mode? Does fat32 support more than 2tb sized hard drives? Anyone have experience with this? thanks!

So you're using

• 4 TB for Wii U
  and
• 2 TB for vWii

right now? Lol, just swap them.
Seriously, the max size for Wii U drives is 2 TB so don't waste money (and space) for bigger ones on that side.
The vWii on the other hand can theoretically have any size as long as it is MBR and FAT32 (that's at least the recommendation to work with almost all homebrew apps).
I was using a 4 TB WD My Passport for the vWii and now am using a 5 TB WD Elements for it and both were/are working.

Follow this post to format it:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/usb-loader-gx.149922/page-1132#post-6662953
Helped me a lot back then.
Hide your vWii drive once it's done and fired up with all games using UStealth and have it connected with your Wii U drive at the same time.

 

[brollikk]

So you're using

• 4 TB for Wii U
  and
• 2 TB for vWii

right now? Lol, just swap them.
Seriously, the max size for Wii U drives is 2 TB so don't waste money (and space) for bigger ones on that side.
The vWii on the other hand can theoretically have any size as long as it is MBR and FAT32 (that's at least the recommendation to work with almost all homebrew apps).
I was using a 4 TB WD My Passport for the vWii and now am using a 5 TB WD Elements for it and both were/are working.

Follow this post to format it:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/usb-loader-gx.149922/page-1132#post-6662953
Helped me a lot back then.
Hide your vWii drive once it's done and fired up with all games using UStealth and have it connected with your Wii U drive at the same time.

i just finished setting up. I realize the 4tb gets wasted but I got it cheap and already installed all my wii U titles there
I was able to format a 3tb drive in fat 32 for my wii games
and I formatted a 2tb drive in fat32 for gamecube games.

You use a 5tb for both wii and gamecube on the same drive and it works? Then you ustealth'd it?

 

[lordelan]

You use a 5tb for both wii and gamecube on the same drive and it works? Then you ustealth'd it?

Yeah. On that 5 TB drive which is MBR and has one big 5 TB FAT32 partition on it, I have:

• emuNAND/neek
• Wii games
• WiiWare games
• VC games (although I don't really use them thanks to RetroArch)
• GameCube games

UStealth deletes some kind of partition file so the Wii U "won't find" the drive and stops annoying you with that nasty "format the drive" popup.

 

[brollikk]

Yeah. On that 5 TB drive which is MBR and has one big 5 TB FAT32 partition on it, I have:

• emuNAND/neek
• Wii games
• WiiWare games
• VC games (although I don't really use them thanks to RetroArch)
• GameCube games

UStealth deletes some kind of partition file so the Wii U "won't find" the drive and stops annoying you with that nasty "format the drive" popup.

i see. I may do this in the future then. What format are your wiiware games? I have all of them as .wad, but it sounds like you have them ready to play off of a usb loader?

 

[lordelan]

i see. I may do this in the future then. What format are your wiiware games? I have all of them as .wad, but it sounds like you have them ready to play off of a usb loader?

No. I dumped my vWii nand into a folder on the USB drive (by USB Loader GX -> features -> dump nand to emunand) then installed all WiiWare wads into that emunand (by USB Loader GX -> features -> WAD manager) because while the vWii has 512 MB of memory, that emunand has "unlimited space".

 

[brollikk]

No. I dumped my vWii nand into a folder on the USB drive (by USB Loader GX -> features -> dump nand to emunand) then installed all WiiWare wads into that emunand (by USB Loader GX -> features -> WAD manager) because while the vWii has 512 MB of memory, that emunand has "unlimited space".

i'm reading about this now - to install my wads into that emunand, do I have to do it via SD card? or can I put them on the same usb drive with the emunand and install into the emunand?

 

[lordelan]

i'm reading about this now - to install my wads into that emunand, do I have to do it via SD card? or can I put them on the same usb drive with the emunand and install into the emunand?

They can be anywhere (USB or SD). Think of the WADs like CDs that you use to install stuff on your computer.
Just point USB Loader GX to where the WAD is to install it. Once that's done you can delete the WADs.