Hacking Homebrew Channel Cannot Recognize USB HDD

[CarbonX13]

Alright, so I recently upgraded my year-old soft-mod to a much more recent setup using ModMii. The procedure was easy, and everything seemed to be set up fine. Upgraded to 4.1U from 4.0, got onto HBC 1.0.8, and installed a bunch of new IOS updates. I re-formatted my WBFS drive to a FAT32 one as well.

Now the weird thing, I can't get Homebrew Channel to recognize my FAT32 HDD. And that is not always the case. Sometimes, it loads the apps on the HDD without issue, and displays them as well with no problem. However, once I load an app and reboot back to the HBC, it can no longer find my HDD. For example, I load up Multi-Mod Manager, install a WAD file, and then exit back to the HBC. Before, I booted in from the USB HDD, but now, I get a blank menu, because it is suddenly reading from SD card. I press 1 to switch to USB, but it never finds it. The issue persists even if the SD card isn't inside the Wii.

Is there something I'm doing wrong here? I have IOS58 (installed it along with the bunch of new IOS from the ModMii Wizard), and the drive is FAT32. The apps do appear sometimes when booting directly into the Homebrew Channel, but they never appear after exiting an app, nor for the most part of booting in. I've tried removing the SD card, but that didn't help the issue, and just gave me a blank menu instead.

 

[tueidj]

Does it get recognized if you unplug and plug it back in while HBC is running?

 

[PPSainity]

I don't know if The Homebrew Channel uses libogc, but if it does you may want to run Rodries' Wii USB Test App and post your results in his thread over > here

 

[CarbonX13]

Does it get recognized if you unplug and plug it back in while HBC is running?

No, but it does seem to work when I unplug and then plug it back outside HBC. Still, that doesn't really resolve the issue.

 

[tueidj]

No it doesn't, but seeing as I wrote most of the new usbstorage code that was used in HBC it helps me work out what's going wrong so it can be fixed in the next version.

Did you have the SD card removed when you tried it?
Did the USB button light up at all on the options screen?
What brand/type of hard drive is it?
Can you hear it going to sleep/waking up when HBC starts?
Have you checked to make sure HBC is actually using IOS58?

 

[CarbonX13]

No it doesn't, but seeing as I wrote most of the new usbstorage code that was used in HBC it helps me work out what's going wrong so it can be fixed in the next version.

Did you have the SD card removed when you tried it?
Did the USB button light up at all on the options screen?
What brand/type of hard drive is it?
Can you hear it going to sleep/waking up when HBC starts?
Have you checked to make sure HBC is actually using IOS58?

- I'll remove the SD card while unplugging/replugging and see what I get...
- It does for a few seconds, but it dims out afterwards. It lets me select it but yields no results.
- I believe the brand is a Western Digital HDD. Not sure how old it is, or the model number.
- The HDD turns on when I plug it into the Wii. It powers on the moment it enters the USB slot, and doesn't go to sleep unless unplugged.
- Yes, HBC is running IOS58.

 

[Taleweaver]

Now the weird thing, I can't get Homebrew Channel to recognize my FAT32 HDD. And that is not always the case. Sometimes, it loads the apps on the HDD without issue, and displays them as well with no problem. However, once I load an app and reboot back to the HBC, it can no longer find my HDD.

A question: does this happen just with certain apps?

It kinda sound like an 'issue' I have myself: if I go to the HBC, it'll display the USB apps just fine. If I load most of my homebrew and go back to the HBC, it still displays the apps from the USB drive. However, with some apps (I can't recall from memory which ones...just that I only use them to install wads) it can't find my hard drive anymore. It always fixes itself after resetting the wii or even loading another homebrew app*.

I always figured it had to do with how those homebrew apps were written...never really bothered to look into it, though.

@tuedj: dunno if it helps you but here's my data:

Did you have the SD card removed when you tried it? no...my sd card is pretty much always in
Did the USB button light up at all on the options screen? dunno...will check
What brand/type of hard drive is it? Western Digital My Passport Essential 2.5" 500GB External HDD
Can you hear it going to sleep/waking up when HBC starts? nope
Have you checked to make sure HBC is actually using IOS58? it's using IOS58, yes





*I have most of my homebrew stored my USB drive and some on SD card. If the USB drive isn't found, I just load an app from sd, quit it immediately, and get back to the HBC...which'll display my USB apps

 

[CarbonX13]

Now the weird thing, I can't get Homebrew Channel to recognize my FAT32 HDD. And that is not always the case. Sometimes, it loads the apps on the HDD without issue, and displays them as well with no problem. However, once I load an app and reboot back to the HBC, it can no longer find my HDD.

A question: does this happen just with certain apps?

It kinda sound like an 'issue' I have myself: if I go to the HBC, it'll display the USB apps just fine. If I load most of my homebrew and go back to the HBC, it still displays the apps from the USB drive. However, with some apps (I can't recall from memory which ones...just that I only use them to install wads) it can't find my hard drive anymore. It always fixes itself after resetting the wii or even loading another homebrew app*.

I always figured it had to do with how those homebrew apps were written...never really bothered to look into it, though.

I'm not too sure about if it happens with just certain apps, but the for sure problem is that HBC cannot find my USB drive for the majority of the time. This includes rebooting from an app, or simply trying to boot into the HBC from the System Menu. The USB drive icon in the "1 button menu" lights up for a few seconds, then switches off.

 

[jesquinas]

No it doesn't, but seeing as I wrote most of the new usbstorage code that was used in HBC it helps me work out what's going wrong so it can be fixed in the next version.

Did you have the SD card removed when you tried it?
Did the USB button light up at all on the options screen?
What brand/type of hard drive is it?
Can you hear it going to sleep/waking up when HBC starts?
Have you checked to make sure HBC is actually using IOS58?

tueidj,next version of HBC will support NTFS disks?I dont use SD card and I have to have a small FAT first partition for storing the homebrew apps.The second NTFS partition stores games.

Greetings.

 

[tueidj]

No.

 

[PPSainity]

No it doesn't, but seeing as I wrote most of the new usbstorage code that was used in HBC it helps me work out what's going wrong so it can be fixed in the next version.
.....I understand that currently the HBC does not use libogc for USB drive access, but it does use libogc for something as it is listed in the credits. Since the library is being used anyhow, and there is some effort being done to increase USB drive compatibility with libogc, will future HBC versions switch over to libogc for USB storage code? I ask as I don't know the relationship between your code and libogc and wish to see the best performance from the HBC and improvements shared for other homebrew via libogc.

.....
tueidj,next version of HBC will support NTFS disks?I dont use SD card and I have to have a small FAT first partition for storing the homebrew apps.The second NTFS partition stores games.
.....
QUOTE(tueidj @ Feb 7 2011, 04:30 AM)

No.

I too would like to second the support of different drive formats like NTFS. I don't know how this might impact the license of the HBC code, but there are Wii libraries for NTFS and EXT2 formats available for homebrew use. Please reconsider.

-[]D

 

[tueidj]

HBC does use libogc. When the last HBC was built I had just finished writing the USB2 code. There have been many bugfixes to libogc since then (by me and other people) and I'm pretty sure the cause of CarbonX13's problem has already been fixed (some drives don't initialize properly after the usb port has been suspended, so the suspend code was removed).
The licensing problem is why I gave a flat out no answer, if you can find a BSD-licensed NTFS library then maybe they will consider using it.