Hacking Formatting a WBFS drive

[the mario]

So I've heard that USB Loader GX now supports FAT32, and I was looking for a way to format my external HDD while still retaining ~80 gigs worth of Wii games. Am I right to assume that the only way to keep them is to save them somewhere else temporarily? I'm running low on computer space, so storing them there isn't really an option. There's also partitioning, but I really don't know the first thing about that. If someone could point me in the direction of a user-friendly program for that, or maybe a little how-to, that'd be awesome.

Thanks in advance for any helpful info.

 

[Riley]

Im gonna guess you use windows.
Goto My computer
right click -> FORMAT on your usb drive to fat32

Use Wii Game Manager to convert your .iso files to .wbfs files.
put the games in USB:/wbfs/GAMEID.wbfs

 

[vexing]

why change to fat32 now? it's going to be a lot of work for little gain.

if you really want to do this you're going to need to clear out 80gb or borrow a different hard drive.

 

[the mario]

I wanna change to FAT now because my computer's starting to crap out on me, and I'd like to have some space to store all my stuff in case it ends up dying.

 

[XFlak]

FYI, u can't use windows disk management to format LARGE hard drives to FAT32, u need to use another tool like EASUS Partition Manager or GUI FAT32 Formatter

and yes, u would need to save the games elsewhere temporarily before formatting the hard drive

 

[bigflause]

You cannot create a file larger than (2^32)-1 bytes (this is one byte less than 4 GB) on a FAT32 partition.

 

[PsyBlade]

the 4GB limit isnt really a problem imho
most files that big (including wii games) can be split

the is currently no program to convert wbfs to fat without using another partition
while there might be a way there does not seem to be much interest in exploring it
http://gbatemp.net/t239107-found-a-way-to-...ert-wbfs-to-fat

 

[the mario]

All right, well partitioning seems like the way to go then. Anyone wanna walk this noob through it a lil bit?

 

[vexing]

i'm pretty sure you can't change the size of the wbfs partition, which means you can't partition the drive now without losing the data.

it seems like it'd be better to address the issue of your computer through a different means. what makes you think your computer is dying?
you'll only lose your stuff if your computer's hard drive dies... if you think that's going to happen (like your hdd is making a clicking sound when accessing) you should probably back up your most important stuff to dvd-rs immediately.

 

[Dust2dust]

...you'll only lose your stuff if your computer's hard drive dies... if you think that's going to happen (like your hdd is making a clicking sound when accessing) you should probably back up your most important stuff to dvd-rs immediately.

DVD-Rs?

Do you have any idea how much work and how time consuming that would be, not even accounting for the fact that you should get good quality media to make it worthwhile? If he's got like 200 or 300 GBs worth of valuable data to save, that would take weeks!

There is also the fact that afterwards, everything is split in tiny 4.37 GB parts, and the potential to lose track of your stuff is great if your classification system is not up to the standards of the Library of Congress. Not to mention the fact those DVD-Rs end up taking a lot of room. 300 GBs divided by 4.37 = around 70 discs.

The much better option is to get an external USB hard drive of decent size. They're fairly cheap nowadays, as everyone knows. Make sure that the stuff you can't live without (your most valuable data) is always stored on two different HDs. One internal and one external, or even better, two externals. That way, if something bad happens to one, you still have the other to make a new backup. If you want to be extremely safe, store one of the backup HD in another house (a friend's or family member) so that in case of fire or theft, or other catastrophe, you still have your backup.