Homebrew HDD partition designated for ROMS; All ROMS deleted, replaced with few junk files

[bryanoid]

Hi.... long time lurker here lol

Wii is currently on 4.2U. Basically I downloaded the emulators (snes9xgx, fceux, genplus-gx, vbagx).... I run the actual apps off the SD and I got tired of having my DVD's with loading being slow and getting minor scratches leaving some games unplayable so I used a FAT32 partition of my WD External HDD for ROMS. The same ROMS that I've been playing for ages on my Wii. I even played some a couple of times of the HDD and it worked just fine.

Yesterday, I try playing and the emulator (snes9xgx) didn't detect any ROMs in the default location. So i thought no problem, i'll just browse for them. Well the individual folders for each emu's ROMS were still there, but no ROMS whatsoever in the folders. I connect it to my PC and I see 3 large files in the root of the partition:

= "" sm.bsh (1.56 GB)
= 1 Sta.tes (976 MB)
PadType.2 = (1.56 GB)

For a total of 4.096 GB

As well as a new folder:

adButton.Slo (Location not available error when trying to open it)

When I open up the properties of the files, however, they're read as 0 bytes. I tried changing the file type to .rar and I get an error. Hmm

I don't recall how much space the ROMs took exactly, but 4.096 does seem likely. I'm guessing all my ROMS are scattered through these junk files. I can transfer them from my DVD again, but I'd like to prevent this from happening again. Any ideas?

 

[damien907]

i know this isnt really an answer to your question, but you said that when you partitioned your drive, then it erased the ROMs? is anything else on there gone? or were your roms the only things on that drive?
the only advice i can really give you is, next time before you partition a drive, make a backup of your stuff, that way you dont lose your data afterwards. i dont know much about the wii, and as you said you were loading through dvd's, but i assume your drive can be removed from it and you can get a hd enclosure that could load files via usb couldnt you?
i think in the end you might just have to chalk this up to a loss and re-load your stuff, but make sure to make regular backups, i know how much it sucks to lose your files, it has happened to me before too!
although, someone else with more expirence with drive partitioning and the wii might be able to chime in, and make more sense of those files it made. you might still be able to retrive them somehow, but that is beyond me.

hope this helps!