Hacking HDD USB ISO loader

Miles

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loopguy said:
Miles said:
I'm pretty sure XP has a quick patch to allow larger than 4GB files.
u serious?
blink.gif

it's not an xp issue, it's an filesystem thing...
fat32 can't be modified just like that. and why "modify" an fs if there're better alternatives, ext-fs for example...
I'm not saying it's a full rework of FAT32 (But apparently Microsoft is doing that right now)
What I meant it maybe they are using some sort of dirty trick that only works with Windows XP and above to get around the limitation.
But I guess we'll never know.

As for file systems likes NTFS, ext, etc. they probably are a bit too much for just loading games off a USB stick or external hard drive. That and they have tons of uneeded things that will hardly get used by the HDD ISO loader.

Either way I'm not an expert or anything, but I have been around the block.
That's just my 2 cents.
 

DrKupo

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Miles said:
loopguy said:
Miles said:
I'm pretty sure XP has a quick patch to allow larger than 4GB files.
u serious?
blink.gif

it's not an xp issue, it's an filesystem thing...
fat32 can't be modified just like that. and why "modify" an fs if there're better alternatives, ext-fs for example...
I'm not saying it's a full rework of FAT32 (But apparently Microsoft is doing that right now)
What I meant it maybe they are using some sort of dirty trick that only works with Windows XP and above to get around the limitation.
But I guess we'll never know.

As for file systems likes NTFS, ext, etc. they probably are a bit too much for just loading games off a USB stick or external hard drive. That and they have tons of uneeded things that will hardly get used by the HDD ISO loader.

Either way I'm not an expert or anything, but I have been around the block.
That's just my 2 cents.

this is the most wrong, idiotic post ever.

fat32 is not being updated. NTFS is the replacement for fat 32. please stop talking until you figure out what you are talking about.
 

teq

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DrKupo said:
this is the most wrong, idiotic post ever.

fat32 is not being updated. NTFS is the replacement for fat 32. please stop talking until you figure out what you are talking about.

Haven't been around in a while, but I thought I'd chime in:


DrKupo, you're actually the one who is misinformed.

Microsoft implemented a new version of the FAT32 filesystem called exFAT into Windows Vista SP1. Being that FAT is their filesystem, they are perfectly within right to do with it as they please. exFAT bridges the gap between FAT32 and NTFS, in that, it supports FAT32 natively, but also includes support for encryption, indexing, and journaling.

For 2000/XP, Microsoft included LBA48 support, which extends FAT32 to partitions as large as 8TB. The 4GB file size limitation is still prevalent, except in exFAT.
 

Miles

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DrKupo said:
this is the most wrong, idiotic post ever.

fat32 is not being updated. NTFS is the replacement for fat 32. please stop talking until you figure out what you are talking about.
Let me clarify.
Microsoft is doing something with FAT32 (My understanding is that they are doing an overhaul or something) along with exFAT.
Let me try and find some sources.
Also I never said they were updating FAT32 to kill off NTFS.

Edit: Ahh, I reread and it seems they just got new patents for a new type of FAT32 or something.
I don't know what's up with that, but either way I was wrong.
 

SanGor

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if that 4GB file size limit is your only thing you worry about this calculation might help you to don't see it as a problem.

a typical single layer DVD is 4,7GB.
A normal game partition starts at 0xF800000 which is ~ 248MB, that means the max game partition size is around 4,45GB.
Then the partition is encrypted in 0x8000 byte blocks only 0x7C00 bytes these is actually data, the rest are hashes.

4,45GB = 4778151116 bytes

4778151116 / 0x8000 = 145817

145817 * 0x7C00 = 4628814848 = 4,31GB

so a single layer Wii Disc can hold around 4,3GB of real data, I doubt all games are really the full disc and even if they would use the full 4,3GB it should be possible to rip those ~300MB.

As we saw it uses a .WPT file which is an extracted and decrypted partition, the latest version of WiiSO even allows to repack those to get rid of all the unused space.
 

Miles

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SanGor said:
if that 4GB file size limit is your only thing you worry about this calculation might help you to don't see it as a problem.

a typical single layer DVD is 4,7GB.
A normal game partition starts at 0xF800000 which is ~ 248MB, that means the max game partition size is around 4,45GB.
Then the partition is encrypted in 0x8000 byte blocks only 0x7C00 bytes these is actually data, the rest are hashes.

4,45GB = 4778151116 bytes

4778151116 / 0x8000 = 145817

145817 * 0x7C00 = 4628814848 = 4,31GB

so a single layer Wii Disc can hold around 4,3GB of real data, I doubt all games are really the full disc and even if they would use the full 4,3GB it should be possible to rip those ~300MB.

As we saw it uses a .WPT file which is an extracted and decrypted partition, the latest version of WiiSO even allows to repack those to get rid of all the unused space.

Only problem with a method like that would be with games like Brawl.

I'm still wondering about a method like HD Loader and HD Advanced used on the PS2.
Didn't that use a custom file system and put each game in it's own partition?
Is it even realistic to think that a single home brew dev would go though all the trouble of writing their own filesystem?
It'd be nice to know about all this sooner or later.
 

blaXoid

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Only 2 relevant questions:

1. Will the speed be sufficient or is there a USB 1.1 bottleneck?? will DVD be faster?

2. Are there libs to read from NTFS?
 

HaloBenish

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Waninkoko's will be out 2-3 weeks, 4 max (linkinworm). No information on crediar's release has been posted so I'm going to guess it's going to be a longer wait.
 

SanGor

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blaXoid said:
Only 2 relevant questions:

1. Will the speed be sufficient or is there a USB 1.1 bottleneck?? will DVD be faster?

2. Are there libs to read from NTFS?

1. well the normal Wii's USB mode is 12mbit that's 1.5MB/s the DVDs MAX speed is around 5.5MB/s so for one game it could be a bottleneck other games could be unaffected

2. not for Wii
 

skedone

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er guys Nintendo them selfs use a hard drive via usb to load games, there was a post showing the equipment on this very forum a week ago now if anyone could find the calls in the OS crediar could JUST THINK ABOUT IT
 

Miles

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I'm pretty sure it's been stated in this thread, but Wii has USB 2.0 which is software capped to USB 1.1 speeds.
 

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