Hardware Is it possible to replace a wii nand?

[12_year_old_homebrewer]

So i have a wii that is out of space and i cant install forwaders/homebrew so i found nands on the internet so i thought why dont i just replace it? But i found a problem. The wii menu install disc installs the dev firmware so it cant play retail games. So i was wondering if it was possible to swap nands and keep the current firmware

 

[lisreal2401]

I don't believe you can know of the Wii Menu install disc + assume NAND is something you can replace and get more space with software.

 

[12_year_old_homebrewer]

Dude. I have been making virtual machines ever since i was 8

 

[GerbilSoft]

Dude. I have been making virtual machines ever since i was 8

Wii isn't a standard PC.

Ignoring the debug vs. retail issue, you can't simply run Wii Menu Installer on a completely blank NAND and expect to get a full Wii Menu. If the NAND is completely blank, the system won't boot at all.

You'd have to preinstall the NAND contents using a flash ROM programmer and the Ohneschwarzenegger tool (which I can't seem to find at the moment), and then desolder the old NAND chip and solder in the new one. This seems like a lot of effort for not much gain.

 

[12_year_old_homebrewer]

yeah I was going to make a nand backup with bootmii and then copy it to the new nand. And I have a soldering gun so soldering won’t be a problem

 

[Anxiety_timmy]

Heres the thing. the wii has 5 stages of booting. In the first stage it checks to see if the wii's nand has the correct encryption keys if it doesn't it wont boot. The hard part is that the code that makes those checks is in the gpu.You would have to replace the gpu plus the nand. And worse if you mess up at any point your wii is done for. Secondly the wii's ios (aka firmware that handles hardware communication) doesn't support nands over 512 mb. Unless you are a programmer and know how to mod ios modules then go ahead.If you dont well your out of luck. Unless you want to make your wii storage smaller, then go for it. For some unknown reason the ios modules sopports 128mb-512mb

 

[rs1n]

If you feel that comfortable with the notion of programming a NAND, then why not consider a much easier approach: use cIOS EmuNAND and/or (s)NEEK? With both, then you should have pretty high compatibility, and the only storage limit would be the size of your HDD (assuming you use a USB HDD drive). There is really no reason to continue using your real NAND except for the truly finicky Wii games that require the real NAND for saving and (maybe) a small handful of very stubborn Wiiware/VC titles.