Hacking How safe is WBFS2FAT?

[MassiR77]

Hey guys, I was planning on converting my hard drive to FAT32 using WBFS2FAT, however, I am afraid I may lose some games in the process, mainly because a cousin of mine tried the same thing and his hard drive got corrupted. I do believe this was from the program crashing during the conversion, so I am hesitant to try it on mine. I don't know if it has to do with the space taken up by games, considering I have a 1 TB hard drive filled 75%, I think that if storage taken up was the issue, mine would encounter that problem as well. Backing up the entire drive would take far too long, and backing up the games I actually play would be around 120-150 GB I think, so quite a while for that option as well. Please inform me on any steps or precautions I can take to ensure I safely can convert and use my hard drive once in FAT32 format, thanks.

 

[XFlak]

Backup up your games first to another hard drive is the only precaution you can take

 

[petethepug]

Its not safe but you can do it. if you really want to. I wouldn't use it. There's an application called WiiTitledb/Wiibackupmanager in France and Germany. Released world wide... You can make your drive WBFS if its a FAT32 Drive. They greatly improved the WBFS format in the application.

The only reason to use WBFS2Fat is to divide sectors in the hard drive so they are recalled every single time instead of ran. (Not like WBFS Format.) Do not use it. But its fun to play around with and use. Its just not safe to use as the hard drive can corrupt easily if its above 5TB or more. ...

 

[MassiR77]

Its just not safe to use as the hard drive can corrupt easily if its above 5TB or more. ...

Well my hard drive is only one terabyte so I might be safe?

Backup up your games first to another hard drive is the only precaution you can take

Cool, I think I might just back up my favourites and hope it works. Thanks again XFlak!

 

[CMDreamer]

Converting a WBFS HDD to a FAT32 HDD is something like converting a NTFS HDD to a FAT32 HDD. A FAT16 HDD would not make sense nowadays, because it became deprecated when FAT32 appeared. A FAT32 HDD has the limitation of 4 GB as maximum file size.

When converting, the main issue is with the allocating of data, considering the restraints FAT32 has about max file size (4 GB). Actually there are some Wii game images (ISO/WBFS) that are bigger than 4 GB, so the conversion might cause problems.

If you have another drive I would suggest you format it as FAT32 and make a backup on it. Then format the WBFS HDD and use it for something else, as it wouldn't make sense to reallocate all the files on it.

 

[Wiimm]

Alternative way:
1.) extract all files from WBFS partition to local file system of PC as WBFS files (=backup).
2.) format old WBFS partition to FAT.
3.) Copy *.wbfs fils to new FAT.

 

[Cyan]

so many mistakes in this thread.

There's an application called WiiTitledb/Wiibackupmanager in France and Germany. Released world wide...

the program is not just called "wii backup manager" in France, that's just the tool's name, and it's of course available worldwide, it's a tool shared on internet, there's no boundaries.
the developer is not even French nor german, he is from UK.

Its not safe but you can do it. if you really want to. I wouldn't use it.

why would it be not safe?
it is safe, and the tool has a lot of failsafe checks before actually doing the dangerous part, which takes only few milliseconds. to crash on that part is really misfortune.
it's even more probable that the issue wasn't on that part, but because of the existing corrupted games and doing the conversion without verifying the games first.

The only reason to use WBFS2Fat is to divide sectors in the hard drive so they are recalled every single time instead of ran.

what do you mean "recall every single time instead of ran" ?
I really don't understand your understanding of HDD's functionalities.

There's nothing "called" nor even "recalled"
what is ran ? there's no program, so nothing to run or launch.

the wbfs2fat is not really used to be able to "divide sectors", which I suppose you meant "partition the HDD" ?
and no, that's not the only reason you'd convert to FAT32, and partitions can even been done with WBFS format, no need of FAT32 to partition a drive.

FAT32 can be used to easily manage the files on it (your OS recognize it and don't ask to format it anymore)
FAT32 can be used to store other files for other homebrew (emulators, media players, homebrew, gamecube games, etc.)

But its fun to play around with and use. Its just not safe to use as the hard drive can corrupt easily if its above 5TB or more. ...

you mean wbfs or the program to convert to FAT32?
what's this arbitrary 5TB limit? there's no logical number behind that value. either it's 2TB (for 32/64bit) either there's no problem at all.
FAT32 can even be up to 16TB on newer HDDs.


The limits are:
with WBFS :
500 games max on a 512bytes/sector HDD.
4084 games max on a 4096bytes/sector HDD.

with FAT32:
2TB partition max on 512bytes/sector HDD with MBR, with max allocated data 4TB (2 partitions of 2TB, if second partition starts before 2TB position. That's theoretical, no partition manager let you do that).
16TB partition max on 4096bytes/sector HDD with GPT.

Converting a WBFS HDD to a FAT32 HDD is something like converting a NTFS HDD to a FAT32 HDD.

that's nothing identical.
NTFS to FAT32 is hard to do, specifically because files can be bigger than 4GB and can't be split in multiple smaller files (converters can't split all existing file format, like video or PC game files).

When converting, the main issue is with the allocating of data, considering the restraints FAT32 has about max file size (4 GB). Actually there are some Wii game images (ISO/WBFS) that are bigger than 4 GB, so the conversion might cause problems.

And that's not a problem at all, because WBFS is not a real file system and doesn't have filenames and file size attached to data.
WBFS is thought around "multiple smaller blocs" of games, (up to 10 000 ?) and therefore each blocks can be located and split all over the HDD, they don't need to be a single big file.
when converting a game bigger than 4GB, wbfs2fat just created 2 FAT32 files (wbfs and wbf1), assigning sectors in each files based on the location of the data on the partition.
there's no problem converting WBFS to FAT32, even if games are bigger than 4GB, it just split the game in 2 files, like it's meant to be for USBLoaders!

Then format the WBFS HDD and use it for something else, as it wouldn't make sense to reallocate all the files on it.

there's no reallocation done, that's all the purpose of wfbs2fat !
the program keeps the data to where they already are, and only creates a partition table, with filenames associated to each sectors. it takes 1 second to assign files to existing data on the drive, and you don't have to copy/backup/restore hundred of GB of games from/to other HDDs.



Of course, doing a backup of your important game is always recommended.
if something can go wrong it's because your games are already corrupted on your WBFS partition (by using WBFS manager for example, instead of proper tools to manage your WBFS partition), and one game data bloc is assigned to multiple game.
WBFS2FAT should check for wrong data block and warn you if there's a problem before continuing. You can also use WWT to check your partition and all your games first and be sure they are not corrupted. Though, it can take some time to analyze all your drive.

 

[the_randomizer]

I hate to say this, but the HDD never should have been in WBFS in the first place. FAT32 HDDs with WBFS files work just fine, just saying.

 

[FanNintendo]

my wbfs with gamecube isos on fat32 2tb hdd over 1000 together games runs no problem i hear wbfs supposely be on nstf 2nd partition. So I do what i like mine better

 

[Deleted member 301661]

my wbfs with gamecube isos on fat32 2tb hdd over 1000 together games runs no problem i hear wbfs supposely be on nstf 2nd partition. So I do what i like mine better

all legal backups i presume? man watch out for what you do say in public about your collections. i don't really care, but you know that these statements will last a long period, and it's about a lot of copyrighted material... the type of fine you can get for these things...

 

[FanNintendo]

all legal backups i presume? man watch out for what you do say in public about your collections. i don't really care, but you know that these statements will last a long period, and it's about a lot of copyrighted material... the type of fine you can get for these things...

its all legal all u put disc in thru usb loader gx it will transfer your back up to hdd no problem the less mess cds is packed and storage

 

[Cyan]

FAT32 HDDs with WBFS files work just fine, just saying.

it didn't work in 2008 !
FAT32 support was added years later.
that's why WBFS format was created, because the loaders and cIOS didn't have file system support yet. it's based on device's sector list, with big clusters of game data.
FAT32 support was added 1-2 years later.

 

[the_randomizer]

it didn't work in 2008 !
FAT32 support was added years later.
that's why WBFS format was created, because the loaders and cIOS didn't have file system support yet. it's based on device's sector list, with big clusters of game data.
FAT32 support was added 1-2 years later.

Hmm, I suppose that's a fair point, I never did format my HDD as WBFS but FAT32, and this was I believe in 2011/12 when I was actively using Wii hacks. My mistake.