Wasn't there a Wii mod that was basically a stand that you put your Wii on? No need to soft/hard mod, it was just an stand that you'd buy and I believe it plugged into the USB slot or something.
And you have to solder something inside of the drive if I recall properly. Probably not solder but you DO have to open up the Wii for one of the steps.
Any time it looks like you're in an unwinnable situation that will require you to restart the entire game, it overwrites all your saves with that autosave.