Hacking External Hard Drive for Wii, NTFS and FAT32 for Apps and Emulators, IDK How to Make it Work

[loudwarning]

I own a softmodded wii that I play with an external hard drive, it has been great because I can use usbloadergx to play games I've downloaded. The problem that I have is installing anything on the hard drive that can be seen in the homebrew channel, my previous (now unreadable on pc) hard drive was simple, I just copy and paste apps and emulators to the apps folder, that can't be done on my new hard drive, I was thinking maybe it's because the format of my new hard drive is NTFS, but I don't know a way of testing whether that is the cause of the problems or not. If anybody knows how to properly install apps and emulators on my wii with the NTFS Format, please leave a reply, thanks!

(notes: - I didn't softmoded my own wii, it was softmoded by my friend's ex when I was still in junior high and I didn't know much back then.
- My first hard drive (unreadable on pc, only readable on wii) is from Touro, my new (NTFS) hard drive is Seagate
- I really prefer if I don't have to format my hard drive since I have games on it)

 

[Shadow#1]

I own a softmodded wii that I play with an external hard drive, it has been great because I can use usbloadergx to play games I've downloaded. The problem that I have is installing anything on the hard drive that can be seen in the homebrew channel, my previous (now unreadable on pc) hard drive was simple, I just copy and paste apps and emulators to the apps folder, that can't be done on my new hard drive, I was thinking maybe it's because the format of my new hard drive is NTFS, but I don't know a way of testing whether that is the cause of the problems or not. If anybody knows how to properly install apps and emulators on my wii with the NTFS Format, please leave a reply, thanks!

(notes: - I didn't softmoded my own wii, it was softmoded by my friend's ex when I was still in junior high and I didn't know much back then.
- My first hard drive (unreadable on pc, only readable on wii) is from Touro, my new (NTFS) hard drive is Seagate
- I really prefer if I don't have to format my hard drive since I have games on it)

Fat32 is preferred for Wii/GC/homebrew

 

[loudwarning]

Fat32 is preferred for Wii/GC/homebrew

Do you know a tutorial to install apps with hard drive (NTFS)? Because all I can find are the ones that uses SD Cards

 

[XFlak]

Why not reformat as FAT32?

There's no special guide. Modern forwarder channels can load apps saved to NTFS drives, and usb loaders can read from NTFS just fine (writing is pretty stable now, but at one point it was hit or miss and could corrupt drives).

Some apps don't support NTFS, for example I don't think emulators do. So while you could load an emulator app's boot.dol from an NTFS drive using a forwarder, I don't think you would be able to navigate the drive to find your roms. I know USB-loader GX has emulator plugin support but I'm not sure if it's NTFS support extends to these plug-ins as well.

Often people want to use NTFS because they think they cannot save large wii games to FAT32 drives, this is not the case. You can save large wii games to a FAT32 drive and they will be split into 4GB chunks so it does not interfere with the max size limitation of 4GB of FAT32 drives. So in the end, I think you should convert/format your drive to FAT32

 

[JuanMena]

Often people want to use NTFS because they think they cannot save large wii games to FAT32 drives, this is not the case. You can save large wii games to a FAT32 drive and they will be split into 4GB chunks so it does not interfere with the max size limitation of 4GB of FAT32 drives. So in the end, I think you should convert/format your drive to FAT32

Sorry for necrobumping, but I'm having this exact same doubt.

So... you're saying that NTFS is compatible with Wii, but uncompatible with Emulators and some loaders?

And FAT32 is the way to go, but do I have to split the games? Or is it done automatically when copying over the files? Or do I have to use something like WBFS manager?

 

[Alexander1970]

Hello.

Sorry for necrobumping, but I'm having this exact same doubt.

So... you're saying that NTFS is compatible with Wii, but uncompatible with Emulators and some loaders?

And FAT32 is the way to go, but do I have to split the games? Or is it done automatically when copying over the files? Or do I have to use something like WBFS manager?

Please use ONLY the WiiBackup Manager for the Game Transfers.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-backup-manager-for-windows.188295/

NEVER EVER use the WBFS Manager,it is outdated
because it has very,very,very bad "Programming Errors" in the LIBWBFS !!

Thank you.

####################################################################

Here is the Guide from @Cyan how to setup and use the WiiBackup Manager correctly:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-split-brawl.484822/#post-7592791

Good Luck.

 

[XFlak]

games files are split automatically, unless a large ISO and are copying using windows explorer. For these you will need to use Wii Backup Manager

The HBC won't load apps from NTFS, but a modern forwarder channel can. I'm not sure if emulators will see roms saved to NTFS, most probably it can but I don't recall 100%

 

[Shadow#1]

games files are split automatically, unless a large ISO and are copying using windows explorer. For these you will need to use Wii Backup Manager

The HBC won't load apps from NTFS, but a modern forwarder channel can. I'm not sure if emulators will see roms saved to NTFS, most probably it can but I don't recall 100%

That's why fat32 is superior for Wii

 

[JuanMena]

games files are split automatically, unless a large ISO and are copying using windows explorer. For these you will need to use Wii Backup Manager

The HBC won't load apps from NTFS, but a modern forwarder channel can.

So that means that I can have my HDD without partitions or FAT32 formats, and I can just use a "modern forwarder"?

Can you tell me which one I can use so I don't split my hard drive?

 

[KeinesR]

If you want to use partitioned drive:

-MiniTool Partition Wizard

First plug in the hdd and open Minitool, inside the program delete all partitions and then right click on the disk and select convert to MBR, if it was in MBR leave it that way.

Now, right click on the unassigned space and create a FAT32 partition with 32kb cluster size, and the desired space format it.

Now create the other partition with ntfs format, i created it with 32kb cluster size and the rest of the available space or the desired space.

Righ click on the fat32 partition and set to active.

Done, now you can use a partitioned external hdd to play any emulators, wii or gamecube games.

PS: The loading times on wii will be slower than usual, i mean, you open the HBC and take some time to show the apps and you can't use forwarders. Some apps like Wad Manager doesn't work too. I was able to perfectly play wii games with wiiflow, i even have wii games on the ntfs partition and gamecube, emulators, etc, on the fat32 partition, i can play perfectly with FCE Ultra GX, Genesis Plus GX, Not64, Snes9x GX and Visual Boy Advance GX emulators.