Hacking Extending WBFS Partition?

[S.Bear]

1. Is it possible to extend a WBFS partition on an HDD in order to make space for more games?

2. If so, will using the tools in Windows Disk Management to extend the partition into any unallocated space you might have format said space to WBFS or will it alter both partitions thus rendering you
unable to play or access your games as the partition would need to be reformatted again?

3. If you cannot use the normal tools in windows is there perhaps a program that you can download that will do the job instead?

4. If you cannot extend the WBFS partition and do not want to extract, format and copy all your games over again, is there perhaps a way to create a second WBFS partition on your HDD and be able to
swap between them using the USB Loader?


Thanks to anyone who can shed light on the subject.


~P~

 

[AllWiidUp]

1. Is it possible to extend a WBFS partition on an HDD in order to make space for more games?

2. If so, will using the tools in Windows Disk Management to extend the partition into any unallocated space you might have format said space to WBFS or will it alter both partitions thus rendering you
unable to play or access your games as the partition would need to be reformatted again?

3. If you cannot use the normal tools in windows is there perhaps a program that you can download that will do the job instead?

4. If you cannot extend the WBFS partition and do not want to extract, format and copy all your games over again, is there perhaps a way to create a second WBFS partition on your HDD and be able to
swap between them using the USB Loader?


Thanks to anyone who can shed light on the subject.


~P~

1. No
2. you'd have to reformat and re-install the games
3. No.
4. I don't think so.

 

[wiiman123]

...........................

 

[ether2802]

4. If you cannot extend the WBFS partition and do not want to extract, format and copy all your games over again, is there perhaps a way to create a second WBFS partition on your HDD and be able to
swap between them using the USB Loader?

Depending on the loader, you can or cannot, CFG let you choose, dunno the others...!!

 

[trumpet-205]

It is possible to extend WBFS partition.
And I recommend you choose the 3rd software to finish this operation. It can realize better than built-in disk management. And you needn't wipe data, re-install the games.
All these operation can be realized by Partition Assistant. This software not only works well, but also has FREE EDITION.
Many users all spoke highly of it after use it.
They all think extend partition through it is the best choice.
So, your question can all solve by it, I promise.

I smell advertising!!

I doubt it can extend the partition without destroying WBFS in the process.

 

[Slowking]

i would suggest switching to ntfs. With that you won't have these problems in the future anymore.

 

[the real SUX2BU]

i would suggest switching to ntfs. With that you won't have these problems in the future anymore.

You mean FAT? I use WBFS cause it uses ALOT less space than FAT. You can use two separate WBFS partitions with Configurable that's what i use on the 2 TB hard drives i set up. That way it can hold up to about 1,000 games.

 

[Slowking]

No I meant NTFS. And afaik WBFS is actually less efficient than NTFS and uses more space.
You know you can trim games with Wii Scrubber, right?

 

[Wiimm]

You know you can trim games with Wii Scrubber, right?

... and lost the original signature. Are there any advantages when using trimmed WBFS files?

 

[smf]

No I meant NTFS. And afaik WBFS is actually less efficient than NTFS and uses more space.
You know you can trim games with Wii Scrubber, right?

FAT32 is better than NTFS for the Wii still.
Maybe if HBC supported it then it might be worth switching.

I can't be bothered with two partitions or a SD card.

 

[marice]

No I meant NTFS. And afaik WBFS is actually less efficient than NTFS and uses more space.
You know you can trim games with Wii Scrubber, right?

FAT32 is better than NTFS for the Wii still.
Maybe if HBC supported it then it might be worth switching.

I can't be bothered with two partitions or a SD card.

Why is Fat32 better then NTFS?

Since yesterday i use a NTFS drive (converted all my games on a wbfs partition to .wbfs files and put them on a NTFS partition).
And all my 50 games that i could be bothered convert to the new drive work

(through usbloader cfg 58a-wiinertag edition, cios rev 19, also no problems using hermes 222 v4)

 

[thesund0g]

No I meant NTFS. And afaik WBFS is actually less efficient than NTFS and uses more space.
You know you can trim games with Wii Scrubber, right?

FAT32 is better than NTFS for the Wii still.
Maybe if HBC supported it then it might be worth switching.

I can't be bothered with two partitions or a SD card.

Why is Fat32 better then NTFS?

Since yesterday i use a NTFS drive (converted all my games on a wbfs partition to .wbfs files and put them on a NTFS partition).
And all my 50 games that i could be bothered convert to the new drive work

(through usbloader cfg 58a-wiinertag edition, cios rev 19, also no problems using hermes 222 v4)

Plenty of homebrew apps have either flaky/unreliable or no NTFS support. Of course the ISO games will work.

 

[trumpet-205]

You can use both remember. FAT32 for homebrew and NTFS for game.

Also, FAT32 was never designed to handle big disk drive and files. So it will be better to use NTFS.

 

[thesund0g]

You can use both remember. FAT32 for homebrew and NTFS for game.

Also, FAT32 was never designed to handle big disk drive and files. So it will be better to use NTFS.

True, but if your FAT32 partition is 90% ISOs, the filesystem overhead will be negligible. Not very many wasted clusters.

 

[Slowking]

You know you can trim games with Wii Scrubber, right?

... and lost the original signature. Are there any advantages when using trimmed WBFS files?

you don't lose the original signature. Only partitions are signed in Wii games. What Wii scrubber and wbfs manager usually do is overwriting unsigned garbadge data with zeros, so the game can be compressed. The only thing the trim mode does differently is that it deletes the garbadge data instead of replacing it with zeros.

 

[Slowking]

You can use both remember. FAT32 for homebrew and NTFS for game.

Also, FAT32 was never designed to handle big disk drive and files. So it will be better to use NTFS.

True, but if your FAT32 partition is 90% ISOs, the filesystem overhead will be negligible. Not very many wasted clusters.

Still what keeps you from using a small FAT32 partition for homebrew and a big NTFS one for games?
With tools like Partition Magic you can resize them anytime.

 

[thesund0g]

You can use both remember. FAT32 for homebrew and NTFS for game.

Also, FAT32 was never designed to handle big disk drive and files. So it will be better to use NTFS.

True, but if your FAT32 partition is 90% ISOs, the filesystem overhead will be negligible. Not very many wasted clusters.

Still what keeps you from using a small FAT32 partition for homebrew and a big NTFS one for games?
With tools like Partition Magic you can resize them anytime.

You sure can, that's the setup I was using for a long time. The filesystem overhead/slack space problem of FAT32 is a lot more noticeable with lots of little files than with several big ones, so it'd be nice if it worked the other way around. You can split WBFS images, so the 4GB limit wouldn't be a problem at all if the loaders would implement splitting when ripping. I settled on a ~10GB NTFS partition just for that, the rest goes for FAT32 since I have other devices that use my external drive.

 

[smf]

You know you can trim games with Wii Scrubber, right?

... and lost the original signature. Are there any advantages when using trimmed WBFS files?

you don't lose the original signature. Only partitions are signed in Wii games. What Wii scrubber and wbfs manager usually do is overwriting unsigned garbadge data with zeros, so the game can be compressed. The only thing the trim mode does differently is that it deletes the garbadge data instead of replacing it with zeros.

trimming is different to scrubbing, it moves all the files and has to fake sign it.

 

[Slowking]

You know you can trim games with Wii Scrubber, right?

... and lost the original signature. Are there any advantages when using trimmed WBFS files?

you don't lose the original signature. Only partitions are signed in Wii games. What Wii scrubber and wbfs manager usually do is overwriting unsigned garbadge data with zeros, so the game can be compressed. The only thing the trim mode does differently is that it deletes the garbadge data instead of replacing it with zeros.

trimming is different to scrubbing, it moves all the files and has to fake sign it.

If it doesn't have fakesign it obviously doesn't destroy the signature.

Why would it move files? The only thing it does is delete the garbadge data. Offcourse that changes the offsets of the signed partitions, but that can be undone by filling the part that was garbadge with zeros again.
I don't know if Wiiscrubber can do that yet, though. The gamecube trimmers could.

 

[Wiimm]

The only thing the trim mode does differently is that it deletes the garbadge data instead of replacing it with zeros.

Please explain "deletes the garbadge data".
Does it mean, that data behind the garbage is moved to an other position?

You can only move the whole partition without fake signing. But normally the data partitions starts at 0xf800000 and ends at ~ 0x1173c0000. There is only a little space for partition movements.

The data partitions contain holes (unused areas). Trimming means to delete this areas (move files behind holes) to reduce the partition size. And after changing a partition you have to fake sign it.