Hacking Help me properly format my 320GB HDD for the wii

[Shinigami Kiba]

with my 16GB USB Flash drive it was easy, I stuck the NTFS formatted USB drive in and USB Loader formatted it and the thing works great.

But the Wiki says the HDD I bought, SeaGate Freeagent GO 320GB needs to be formatted to FAT32 first on the PC with fat32format and then WBFS has to be somehow installed on PC.

I don't understand how to format it to fat32, or rather what the hell all this stuff means

E:\fat32format>fat32format
Usage Fat32Format X:
Erase all data on disk X:, format it for FAT32
It is also possible to specify a cluster size for the disk, e.g
Fat32Format -c1 X:ÂÂ- use 1 sector per cluster ( max size 137GB for 512 bytes pe
r sect)
Fat32Format -c2 X:ÂÂ- use 2 sectors per cluster ( max size 274GB for 512 bytes p
er sect )
Fat32Format -c4 X:ÂÂ- use 4 sectors per cluster ( max size 549GB ... )
Fat32Format -c8 X:ÂÂ- use 8 sectors per cluster ( max size 1TB ... )
Fat32Format -c16 X: - use 16 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c32 X: - use 32 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c64 X: - use 64 sectors per cluster
Fat32Format -c128 X: - use 128 sectors per cluster (64K clusters)

I know how to use dos commands and i know "x" just means my drive letter which in my case is f, what I don't understand is all this stuff about sectors and clusters, I know it's about formatting partitions and I know when HDDs are being checked for errors they go through the clusters but I don't understand what I need to type to just format this whole thing properly.

I guess with FAT32 I can't have one 320GB partition, so I'll need two but how do I decide how big they are, man i dont understand a thing lol

edit: one very important thing, in another topic I made asking if these HDDs were good someone told me you could disable sleep mode on them so the Wii doesn't freeze up and stuff, I see no switches no nothing on the drive, don't tell me i have to open it for this.

 

[Blue-K]

My advice is, to get an GParted/Ubuntu Live-CD/Stick, and format your Drive from there to a FAT32 one (fat32format sucks -.-). Then go back to Windows, choose one of the various GUIs (like WBFS Manager), select your Drive and click format. DONE!

GParted
WBFS-Manager

 

[Shinigami Kiba]

oh I have Ubuntu as my main OS on my other computer, but that's at home I'm at my grandparents lol
alright, I'll do it through Ubuntu, I always used to keep an Ubuntu Virtual Machine on this comp, but i needed the space so I deleted it and now I actually need it lol

From Ubuntu I just go to the partition manager and use that to format it like normal, right?

 

[Kosaic]

The Seagate Go 320 DOES NOT need to be formatted first at all ... I created a partition (and left it RAW, unformatted) and the WBFS program formatted it nicely. The USB Loader also formatted it nicely from RAW, the second time around.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO FORMAT IT FIRST !

 

[nasakii]

You could download EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition. It's free and can do the whole fat32 thing

And here's a guide to fixing the spindown on Western Digital Passport HDDs. It might apply to your drive as well. Although, I wouldn't really bother with it until you actually experience your drive taking a nap on you while your in-game.

 

[Blue-K]

oh I have Ubuntu as my main OS on my other computer, but that's at home I'm at my grandparents lol
alright, I'll do it through Ubuntu, I always used to keep an Ubuntu Virtual Machine on this comp, but i needed the space so I deleted it and now I actually need it lol

From Ubuntu I just go to the partition manager and use that to format it like normal, right?

Yeah, a clever Guy who uses Ubuntu

. If you can't wait, burn a GParted-Live CD. GParted is small, and all you need.

If you want to do it from Ubuntu, you'll still need GParted. If you haven't it, download it via the Packetmanager (or however it's called in English) and you should be fine. Should then be under System-->Partiton Editor. Check that you realy select your USB-Drive, and not the HD...Good luck

 

[ArjanDotOrg]

I've formatted a couple of drives using the steps below in Vista, as well as in XP, and it works every time!!!

First copy FAT32FORMAT.EXE to your Windows\System32 folder before continueing.
Download it from: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

Connect your USB drive to be used with the Wii, and go through the following steps:

1. In XP/Vista go to the Commandprompt (Vista: Start as administrator)

2. Type: diskpart

3. In diskpart type: list disk

4. look if your disk is found, and remember the number that is displayed, then type: select disk #
where # is the number of the right disk

5. type: list partition

6. type: select partition #
where # is the number of the (or one of the) partition(s)

7. type: delete partition

8. repeat steps 5 through 8 for every partition you may want to delete. If you want to use the entire disk, delete them all...

9. type: create partition primary

10. type: assign
Windows will assign a driveletter to the new partition, whether is has been formatted or not.

11. type: exit

12. Now your back at the regular commandprompt.

13. Check the driveletter of the new partition and type: fat32format #:
Where # is the driveletter of the new partition.

14. Confirm the format if you're sure that's the right drive.

15. Exit the commandprompt and disconnect the USB drive.

16. Connect the USB drive and if all goes well, Windows will find it and give it (probably the same) driveletter.

17. Now start WBFS Manager (current version: 2.2.2), format the drive and backup those discs like crazy!

Did this help?


Kind regards,

 

[Shinigami Kiba]

I think Kosaic was right, it seems i didn't need to format to FAT32 first
we'll see if this works now.

The description on the Wiki is VERY badly written and confusing, it said you had to "install WBFS" from PC I thought you had to do something special for this particular HDD type.

Well thanks everyone, lets see if this works.

 

[phertiker]

I've never needed to format the partition before setting it up for wbfs use. I do, however, have a problem accessing that partition again once I've been using it on the wii with the loader. the linux wbfs binary from kwiirk doesn't see it any more and certainly can't initialize it, and in windows it's hopeless since it's seen as unpartitioned space.

after dinking around like that i finally just partitioned and formatted to fat32, THEN initialized as wbfs as many others have done. we'll see how it goes.

 

[WiiBlaster]

don't forget to turn off Sleep mode, for Seagate this program works nicely, i own a Seagate myself and used this program

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000f5ee0a0aRCRD

i think this needs to be done before you format it to WBFS but not sure

 

[Shinigami Kiba]

don't forget to turn off Sleep mode, for Seagate this program works nicely, i own a Seagate myself and used this program

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000f5ee0a0aRCRD

i think this needs to be done before you format it to WBFS but not sure

hey thanks man, maybe that'll fix my Mario Galaxy freezing problems, the game freezes up at random all the time and it's the only game that does this.
I didn't reformat, just installed the app, it recognized my HDD(had no idea how much free space it has or anything since it's WBFS) but the power settings worked, I set it to never and I'll test it later if it worked.

Since I got it I've been playing A LOT of Rune Factory without so much as a single problem, yesterday and earlier today i played for 2 hours straight

But, I left Rune Factory paused once to test and see if my HDD goes into sleep mode, left it for some 10 or so minutes and it did went to sleep mode, but the game only froze after i changed areas where is in mario galaxy it hangs with looping sound and all so it might not be a sleep mode problem with SMG.