*The Issue: [SOLVED] How can I use a larger than 2TB GTP Hard Drive on a Wii as one single MBR FAT32 partition? [SOLVED]


*** Make sure to see the potential issues with EmuNAND and FIRMWARE noted below ***


This is a twice boiled down version of a couple previous posts from several years ago. This question comes up from time to time and rather than constantly referring people to my 5 year old post that I have to hunt down and that is a bit convoluted talking about various drive sizes and processes, I thought maybe it would be better as an original tutorial that is more to the point and easier to find. One of those previous posts from 2016 can be found here: http://gbatemp.net/threads/usb-loader-gx.149922/page-1129#post-6662953

Here in this revision I focus mainly on using 5TB Western Digital drives because all NTSC Wii, NTSC GameCube & non-NTSC PAL/JAP titles will fit. You would be best to read through everything a couple times to understand the process before proceeding with the steps. While there are other tools and processes others may have come up with, the following is the process I have used myself many, many, many times over. Feel free to seek out other alternatives as you see fit.


Potential Issues:

• EmuNAND - It has been reported on 10/28/21 by a user that EmuNAND does NOT work with this method using 64k or 256k cluster size. This would be a problem if you are trying to have EVERYTHING work off just the HDD and do NOT want to use an SD card. At the moment the only choices seem to be:

A) Use EmuNAND off an SD card large enough for your needs​

​

B) Use a 4TB or smaller HDD formatted with the 32k cluster size​

• Drive Firmware - It has been reported on 06/01/22 by a user that a 5TB WD My Passport purchased around May 2022 was not recognized by the WD Quick Formatter software due to the firmware not supporting the changing of the block size. I haven't bought a My Passport dive in a couple years and will have to purchase a few to see if I can replicate the issue so the pending questions are:

A) Will others run into this issue or is it more of a rare occurrence?​

​

B) Will this become an issue with any newly produced WD drive size because of current firmware versions??​

​

C) My version of WD Quick Drive Formatter is v1.2.0.10, what version is currently available for download on the WD site and would that make a difference?​

​

C) If new firmware becomes and issue can the drives firmware be downgraded to allow WD Quick Formatter to work?​

My Wii:

Original Nintendo Wii (not a Wii U), however I did have a report that it works for the Wii U as well. While I do have a couple Wii U's, I'm lazy and have yet to finish modding them to try it myself.


What I Recommend:

**06/09/22 Firmware on newer drives might be an issue. My recommendation listed below are previous to being made aware of potential issues**

I recommend Western Digital drives because there is WD software that indirectly converts the GPT drive partition to MBR. It has been found that most other drive manufactures do not work because they do not offer this ability, so my recommendation is to stick with using a Western Digital drive. This method has always worked for me on drive sizes of 3TB, 4TB, 6TB, 8TB & 10TB. I found there was no need to continue on with trying my 12TB & 18TB drives.

5TB is the sweet spot, but any size 3TB+ Western Digital drive should work. I have personally used MyBooks, Passports, and the P10 Game Drive. Others have told me their Essentials & Elements drive also worked. I will include additional information as needed for the different drive sizes I've used, but for me the sweet spot is the 5TB because it will hold all NTSC Wii, NTSC GameCube titles, PAL and Japanese titles that did not have a NTSC counterpart, and those that have various versions released.

I do NOT use EmuNAND off the HDD because it has always been installed to my 256GB SDXC card. There is a report that EmuNAND will NOT work on a 5TB+ HDD using this method. For more information in this issue see the "Potential Issues" area below.

Recommended External Drive (one of the following drives and a Y-cable):

• 5TB Western Digital P-10 Black Game Drive: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VNTFHD5/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A2UUG1VCCCBF2J&psc=1

or​

• 5TB Western Digital Passport: https://www.amazon.com/Passport-Por...+passport&qid=1635351550&s=electronics&sr=1-3

These drives will most likely work with the regular cable, but you never know if your ports are weak on power, so for a few bucks it’s always nice to have a Y-cable on hand in case it is needed:

• Y-Cable for USB 3.0: Amazon.com: Cable Matters Micro USB 3.0 to USB Splitter Cable (USB Y-Cable, USB Y Cable) 20 Inches : Electronics

The Basic Steps (using a Western Digital Hard Drive):

1. Merge all items on WD HDD into 1 partition
2. Converting the GPT partition to a MBR partition
3. Select the proper cluster size and format the entire drive as FAT32
4. Optional - Set drive to as ACTIVE & PRIMARY
5. Some of my programs and setting in use
6. Links to Wii items I feel helpful
7. Thanks to those over the years who have helped me with this quest
8. Miscellaneous pictures

The More Detailed Steps:

1 - Merge all items on WD HDD into 1 partition
-Using EaseUS Partition Master (or the partition manager of your choice) check the drives partitions:
-It is very important you merge any other partitions showing such as unallocated, hidden, marked with an ASTERIX, or ??
-Picture below shows what I am talking about on Drive C, all of these need to be merged
-Merge any and all into the main partition, you want just one partition showing and nothing else at all
-Link to free version of EaseUS Partition Master: http://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html




2 - Converting the GPT partition to a MBR partition
-Using EaseUS Partition Master (or the partition manager of your choice) check the drive to see if its partition is MBR or GPT:
-If your drive is MBR skip this step and continue onto step 3
-If your drive is GPT, less than 2TB and you want a free partition manager tool go to step 2a
-If your drive is GPT, less than 2TB and you want a paid partition manager tool go to step 2b
-If your drive is GPT, a Western Digital drive & larger than 2TB go to step 2c

2a - Change the GPT drive partition to a MBR partition if your drive is 2TB or less:​

-Free tools to aid in this conversion:​

• To be added as I find them

2b - Change the GPT drive partition to a MBR partition if your drive is 2TB or less:​

-PAID for tools to aid in this conversion:​

• EaseUS Partition Master

-My free version did not have this option but my paid version does since v12 and up​

-Changing the WD drives partition above 2TB will not work using this method, it has the 2TB conversion limit, so go to step 2c if your drive is larger than 2TB​

-If you find more recent versions offer more functionality please let me know and I will update this post​

​

​

2c - Change the GPT drive partition to a MBR partition if your drive is larger than 2TB using WD Quick Formatter:​

-Note: This most likely will not work on a hard drive that's not made by Western Digital, it scans for compatible drives automatically.​

-If using another manufacturer you will have to search to see if they make tools for something similar​

-WD Quick Formatter Link: https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/16241​

-Used to convert a larger than 2TB HDD to be Windows XP compatible​

-Once running WD Quick Formatter click on CONTINUE then ACCEPT and it will scan for drives​

-Available drives will be listed and if there is more than one select the correct drive to format​

-For configuration select XP COMPATIBLE and then click FORMAT DRIVE​

-Important: In doing this conversion it formats the drive to one single NTFS partition and changes the partition table from GPT to MBR​

-I'm on Windows 10, maybe it makes a difference what OS you are on when you run it, but you might get an error​

-Using this on my 4TB Passport & 5TB P-10 Black Game Drives I received an error about "no recognizable file system on the drive", just click OK and let the format finish and once complete click FINISH​

-This process can take several minutes but it did finish so give it time​

​

​

3 - Select the proper cluster size and format the entire drive as FAT32
-Use FAT32 GUI Formatter to format the drive to FAT32:
-Original links seem to be working again (http://ridgecrop.co.uk)
-32-bit Link: http://ridgecrop.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm
-64-bit Link: http://ridgecrop.co.uk/guiformat-x64.Exe

Cluster size will depend on the size of drive you are using. If you use a different cluster size the entire drive may not be accessible and I would recommend reformatting using my recommendations below:

• 4TB and smaller drive: Select 32k clusters (Allocation Unit Size: 32768)
• 5TB to 8TB drive: Select 64k clusters (Allocation Unit Size: 65536)
• 10TB drive: 256k clusters (Allocation Unit Size: ????)
• 12TB & Above: Unknown, I never tested past 10TB

4 – (Optional) Set drive to as ACTIVE & PRIMARY
-Using EaseUS Partition Master set the drive as ACTIVE & PRIMARY:
-Some say this is not needed, but I always set my drives as ACTIVE & PRIMARY
-Worse case this has no effect so I still do it anyways




5 - Some of my programs and setting in use
-My Wii: NTSC Wii (original Wii, not Wii U)

-Version #'s currently in use updated: 2019-05-21
-**My versions in use shown probably need to be updated
-CFG USB Loader v71beta51t3
-USB Loader GX v3.0rev1271
-WiiFlow Lite v5.3.0beta6
-Nintendont v5.486MMMOD
-All loaders set to use IOS249[57] D2X v8-final
-IOS249[base57]
-IOS250[base56]
-IOS251[base58]


6 - Links to Wii items I feel helpful
-My Wii’s Modded with ModMii, Link: http://gbatemp.net/threads/modmii-for-windows-official-support-topic.207126/
-CFG USB Loader Link: https://gbatemp.net/threads/configurable-usb-loader.147638/
-USB Loader GX Link: http://gbatemp.net/threads/usb-loader-gx.149922/
-WiiFlow Lite Link: https://gbatemp.net/threads/wiiflow-lite.422685/
-Nintendont Link: http://gbatemp.net/threads/nintendont.349258/


7 - Thanks to those over the years who have helped me with this quest
-Thanks @element6, @GreyWolf, @Elliander, @XFlak & many others I probably have missed for help getting to this point


8 - Miscellaneous pictures
-Yes I have about 32 Wii's just for myself (4 of each type plus my test Wiis) and over 210TB in external hard drive space I'm constantly fiddling with. It would seem that my OCD has ADD making me obsessively collect randomly.

 

[ber71]

Sorry, no way to share a wiiu drive with other device. It's formatted as a raw device , without partitions. Nobody has found how to repurpose the unused space.

 

[Peli86]

Just to let you all know, I got a new 6TB Intenso USB drive today for my PS2. It's formatted fat32 That means there are still large drives out there with fat32 support over 2TB.

 

[jeannotte]

I got a new 6TB Intenso USB drive today for my PS2.

Hello,

USB key 6 TB OR 6 GB ??????

Or 6TB external hard drive?

 

[SylverReZ]

Well illustrated tutorial

 

[Sypherone]

Just to let you all know, I got a new 6TB Intenso USB drive today for my PS2. It's formatted fat32 That means there are still large drives out there with fat32 support over 2TB.

New drive standard "Advanced Format" with 512be/4kn :

Basic info : Limitations by (v)Wii`s 32 bit system, MBR and Fat32.

Theoretical every drive that has nativ/physical 4096b sektor size can be formated with fat32 32b sector size up to 8TB(32k) or up to 16TB(64k).

This 4k sektor size is a new standard since 2010 and normaly a lot of consumer hdd should support it already, even if its not mentioned in the specification. Its called "Advanced format Technology" (AF) or descriped as 4kn (n=native) as this drives can emulate 512be (e=emulate) to be backwards compatible with e.g. BIOS.

There are two generations :

• Generation 1 with 512be :
• Because of compatibilty the generation 1 "AF" drive is forced for use with 512b emulation only and makes changing the blocksize to 4k impossible.
• The AF emulation logo has one rounded corner and is used on any client or enterprise hard drive that is equipped with industry-standard emulation techniques. AF 512e is the current standard by which downward compatibility with legacy sector formats is achieved.
  
  
  
  
  

• Generation 2 with 4kn:
• On generation 2 "4kn" drives the blocksize for use can be changed and in this case manufacturer provide a tool to change the used sectorsize.
• The AF native logo identifies the presence of AF native technologies, where data using long data sector format standards is both recorded on the drive and passed to the host in the AF format. Unlike AF emulation, there is no modification of the sector size by which the data is processed or communicated to the host.
  
  

To check the physical and used sectorsize Powershell commandfsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo <drive letter>: (requires ntfs partition) can be used and seen in the lines "Bytes per Sector" and "Bytes per physical Sector".

or with Powershell command Get-Disk | Format-List

On Linux the sectorsize can be checked with fdisk # fdisk -l /dev/sdX or blockdev.

Drives that are verifyed by members that can use 4k logical sectorsize :

Maufacturer	Drive
Western Digital	RED (comes with 512be, but can changed by software)
Seagte	EXOS (comes with 512be, but can changed by software)
Western Digital	WD_Black P10 Game Drive Model-Nr: 5 TB : WD50NMZW-59BCBS0 5 TB : WDBA3A0050BBK-WESN 4 TB : WDBA3A0040BBK-WESN )

 

[Alexander1970]

Good Morning.

Just to let you all know, I got a new 6TB Intenso USB drive today for my PS2. It's formatted fat32 That means there are still large drives out there with fat32 support over 2TB.

And how do you "bypassed" the 2 TB Limit all PlayStation 2 Loaders / Tools have please ?

 

[godreborn]

Good Morning.


And how do you "bypassed" the 2 TB Limit all PlayStation 2 Loaders / Tools have please ?

iirc, you need specific drives that have 4,096 byte sector size or up. those can be formatted up to 16 tb iirc as fat32.

 

[Sypherone]

@godreborn Three post above, pls

 

[godreborn]

@godreborn Three post above, pls

ah, I didn't see that as I was responding to @Alexander1970 , though, he might not have seen it either.

 

[nexxusty]

Just a bit of advice for people having the same issue as me.

I couldn't get my AF format drive into 4K logical sector mode no matter what I did, as I absolutely require full use of the 3TB drive I am using.

It's an AF drive with 4K physical sectors. Shouldn't be an issue, right? These are 2015 drives, so surely not any issues akin to the newer disks not allowing this sector change either?

Not always. I'm here to tell you about an outlier. There are 2 generations of 4K emulation, my drive has Gen 1. 512e only, nothing else. Absolutely cannot format it to 4K logical sectors. No tool works, even SeaChest Seagate's own tool.

Gen 2 allows this change to 4K logical sectors.

Spent about 6 hours on this today. Hopefully saves someone else some time.

Using these Gen 1 AF 4K drives, or any HDD that doesn't have support for 4K, use an ASM1153/ASM1153E USB 3.0 enclosure. They support 4K emulation and allow these drives to work perfectly with the Wii in FAT32 MBR mode up to 16TB. If you have an external HDD that won't format 4K, shuck it, spend $26 on one of these enclosures and your drive will work with your Wii in FAT32 MBR mode.

Hope this helps someone in the future.

 

[Peli86]

Good Morning.


And how do you "bypassed" the 2 TB Limit all PlayStation 2 Loaders / Tools have please ?

There is no limit. OPL+Travel Router+SMB

 

[LDigital]

I completed this process today on a 4TB WD digital drive. it is ridiculously easy as long as you use a WD drive to use their software. If you use something else it feels almost impossible. I tried on a 4TB seagate and just could not find a way to create a single partition 4TB fat 32 MBR drive

If someone can somehow get rid of the arbitary WD drive check on the WD_Quick_Fornatter software this would open things up for many more drives

 

[ber71]

The check for WD drive isn't really arbitrary. This application instructs the firmware to handle the drive according to 4k logical sectors. While many parametters are common across manufacturers, and most firmwares recognize them, such as 'smart' data, this one seems to be brand specific.

 

[LDigital]

That is a shame, so are we saying its WD or nothing then?

I was wondering, if I say wanted to upgrade my HDD to SSD and got an equivalent sized drive. Would using something like Raw copy tool to clone the MBR Fat32 4TB disk image and essentially write sector by sector. Would this give me an equivalent SS drive or would I hit some kind of technical barrier? Or would this work for HDD to HDD but off-brand such as seagate?

 

[godreborn]

That is a shame, so are we saying its WD or nothing then?

I was wondering, if I say wanted to upgrade my HDD to SSD and got an equivalent sized drive. Would using something like Raw copy tool to clone the MBR Fat32 4TB disk image and essentially write sector by sector. Would this give me an equivalent SS drive or would I hit some kind of technical barrier? Or would this work for HDD to HDD but off-brand such as seagate?

I think copying an hdd sector by sector might work for say the same sized drive, but I don't believe it's a good idea to do so with a larger drive, because it will be read as the same size as the original drive (if that makes sense).

 

[XFlak]

I shared an idea with @ca032769 back in April for him to test but I'm not sure if he ever did, and I don't have the hardware necessary to test. Anyway, I guess I'll share my idea below in case someone else is able to test and who knows, maybe this can get large non-WD working with the Wii

Copy and paste of my PM to @ca032769 below:

I have an idea to try to get non WD hard drives that are >2TB working with your WD software to convert to MBR. check out this link: <https://www.howtohaven.com/system/change-disk-signature.shtml> Basically we are going to try to intentionally create a disk collision, lol, we should always be able to reverse this later. But follow the steps from the link above to only retrive the uniqueid disk ID of one of your WD hard drives that work with the software. Then disconnect it and plug in a non-WD drive that's >2TB, do the same thing and make a note of it's original uniqueid disk ID before changing it to match the ID from the WD HDD. Follow the steps again to confirm the ID successfully changed, then load up your WD software and check if it will now accept the non-WD hdd (but now with a WD uniqueid disk ID). It's worth noting that windows cannot load 2 drives with the same signature at the same time. The only reason I knew to think of this was because I once bought 2 HDD's of the same type at the same time, so I used this method to slightly change the ID of one of them to solve it.

 

[ca032769]

I shared an idea with @ca032769 back in April for him to test but I'm not sure if he ever did, and I don't have the hardware necessary to test. Anyway, I guess I'll share my idea below in case someone else is able to test and who knows, maybe this can get large non-WD working with the Wii

Copy and paste of my PM to @ca032769 below:

I have an idea to try to get non WD hard drives that are >2TB working with your WD software to convert to MBR. check out this link: <https://www.howtohaven.com/system/change-disk-signature.shtml> Basically we are going to try to intentionally create a disk collision, lol, we should always be able to reverse this later. But follow the steps from the link above to only retrive the uniqueid disk ID of one of your WD hard drives that work with the software. Then disconnect it and plug in a non-WD drive that's >2TB, do the same thing and make a note of it's original uniqueid disk ID before changing it to match the ID from the WD HDD. Follow the steps again to confirm the ID successfully changed, then load up your WD software and check if it will now accept the non-WD hdd (but now with a WD uniqueid disk ID). It's worth noting that windows cannot load 2 drives with the same signature at the same time. The only reason I knew to think of this was because I once bought 2 HDD's of the same type at the same time, so I used this method to slightly change the ID of one of them to solve it.

@XFlak Ya, that's my bad for being busy, tired and generally lazy.

I have the unopened Seagate drive that was ordered to test this out still sitting next to my computer. I can start working on this early Saturday morning seeing I have my most of my weekends free again. I'll bump over to PM's Saturday with any questions and updates for you. Once we have determined an outcome, I'll update this thread with what we figured out, good or bad.

 

[XFlak]

Amazing dude. Sorry if my post above sounded impatient I didn't mean it that way, just thought I'd share the idea publicly as I totally understand you've been busy and have other things going on IRL and in the meantime maybe someone else would have the free time and motivation to test

If it does work out that would be amazing, but at best I'm thinking the chances are 50/50. Fingers crossed!

 

[godreborn]

I'd guess that the id signature is in sector 0. I messed with it a bit many months ago, and I know that sector 0 is how the system knows the size of the drive.

Post automatically merged: Nov 2, 2022

btw, if you mess up, you can use diskpart as well to recover the boot sector.

 

[ca032769]

Amazing dude. Sorry if my post above sounded impatient I didn't mean it that way, just thought I'd share the idea publicly as I totally understand you've been busy and have other things going on IRL and in the meantime maybe someone else would have the free time and motivation to test

If it does work out that would be amazing, but at best I'm thinking the chances are 50/50. Fingers crossed!

No worries, I didn't take it badly at all. For any testing the more the marrier.

I still see the Seagate drive laying there when I'm at the house, which is about 3 to 4 days a week now. Otherwise, I'm staying overnight at the girlfriends house the other days. My daughter was recently taking up my nights after work and the weekend when I was home, we moved her back to the house after finishing college the end of May. But now those days are free now because we just moved my daughter (end of October) into her new apartment on the other side of the county. From sunny California to the soon to be snowed in Connecticut. Hope it works out for her, brrrrrrrrrrrrr.