Hacking neek2o setup not working with external drive

[Sloshy]

My Wii disc drive is sounding like a chainsaw, so I bought an HDD and a USB external enclosure for it so I can use it with my Wii. It's a Western Digital Caviar Blue WD2500AAKX 250GB. I set it up for uneek2o+DI (32kb clusters, at least one game on the HDD, everything) but my disc drive was flashing so I thought I'd try sneek2o+DI and see if that works. Well it booted my NAND backup just fine, but my games list is completely empty. None of my WBFS or extracted games are showing up like they used to on my flash drive (and yes, they're in the right place). What's even more odd is that my drive works perfectly fine for homebrew and USB loaders. Is there something I could be doing wrong? What troubleshooting steps should I take?

Thank you very much in advance, whoever can help me in the slightest

 

[ddetkowski]

while in your emu nand system menu/screen, ( the system menu), press "1" to bring up your game list on your USB drive and pick your game by pressing "A". then start the game from the disc channel.
That is how DI works..........

 

[Sloshy]

while in your emu nand system menu/screen, ( the system menu), press "1" to bring up your game list on your USB drive and pick your game by pressing "A". then start the game from the disc channel.
That is how DI works..........

Don't you think I would have tried that already ? Hence why I said "None of my WBFS or extracted games are showing up like they used to on my flash drive". I've used DI before. The problem is, there are no games on the list at all. I can't open any of my WBFS or extracted games, but they show up in and work with USB loaders just fine. I'm just trying to find out if anything is my fault before I submit it as a bug.

 

[XFlak]

is it possible you actually built neek without di by mistake? If that's not the problem, perhaps try a different rev of neek2o?

 

[shortz1994]

i had the exact same problem with my hdd of the same make/model..(came out of a dead computer). might need to change hdd.(yep i know it sucks). not sure though if yours has the pig tails (usb cord) or the power box. you could try an push reset as soon as menu kick in (might be spin up problem.).

 

[XFlak]

unless he's using sneek+di I don't think that would be the cause of the problem. Most likely he's using uneek or uneek+di, and since he's able to access the emulated nand on the usb hdd, I don't think spin up is the issue

 

[Sloshy]

i had the exact same problem with my hdd of the same make/model..(came out of a dead computer). might need to change hdd.(yep i know it sucks). not sure though if yours has the pig tails (usb cord) or the power box. you could try an push reset as soon as menu kick in (might be spin up problem.).

Aww, I didn't see it in the HDD compatability list so I figured it was alright. You're serious you have the same model? Hmm...

unless he's using sneek+di I don't think that would be the cause of the problem. Most likely he's using uneek or uneek+di, and since he's able to access the emulated nand on the usb hdd, I don't think spin up is the issue

I admit, my original post was a little cryptic. Actually it's the other way around: uneek+di doesn't work (light flashes once) but sneek+di does work. I used rev 75 of each. While sneek works, it won't find the games on my HDD even if I reset my game cache (or whatever that function was called). I'm able to run games from USB loaders fine though. I'll try it with an earlier revision and get back to you on that !

 

[XFlak]

u sure u have your HDD formatted as FAT32? Most usb-loaders now support loading from NTFS (as well as FAT32 and other formats), but neek only supports FAT32. If you do have your hdd formatted properly, it does sound like it's a compatability issue, just because a HDD is compatible with a usb-loader doesn't necessarily mean it is compatible with neek (although most of the time, if it works on one it will work on both)

 

[shortz1994]

well the reason why sneek works,it's on the sdcard an not on usb hdd.(like neek/neek di). still mine did the same thing, worked with every thing (homebrew/usb loaders). but when it came to running neek, wouldn't even boot to menu.just sat idle.
go to neek2o thread,pages 41-44, an you'll see my post about my hd. it came down to changing the cluster size. not sure if this would work anymore,seeing neek has been updated. but worth a shot.

 

[Sloshy]

go to neek2o thread,pages 41-44, an you'll see my post about my hd. it came down to changing the cluster size. not sure if this would work anymore,seeing neek has been updated. but worth a shot.

You say in the thread that you have a 300GB drive, so it's definitely not the same model as mine. I'll try changing to a lower cluster size, but after I've exhausted all my other options.

 

[shortz1994]

no not the same exact model,but none the less part of the same family (blue cavier). so i suspect it to be the same problem as mine. the only option i would go with is changing the case, some times those will give a reading problem to. good luck.
this is the case i had with mine,only it is blue.http://www.amazon.com/Rocketfish-Drive-Enclosure-Drives-RF-PHD35/dp/B00301EAP2/ref=sr_1_47?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1331833115&sr=1-47

 

[Sloshy]

Well changing to 16kb cluster sizes didn't help at all. CFG Loader runs fine (it's on the same HDD, booted from the USB Loader channel I installed with Modmii) and sees the disk as I said, but sneek2o+DI just won't see it. Here's my CFG Loader log, if it helps.

Also, thanks for Modmii, XFlak!

 

[Sloshy]

One more detail that's rather important that I left out: when I say CFG loader works, I mean it works only on my original NAND. If I use my emulated NAND and try to launch the loader, it fails. This is definitely a problem with neek/neek2o and not my drive.

 

[XFlak]

i wouldn't call it a problem with neek2o, just different HDD compatibility

btw, have you tried the original neek (ie. not neek2o)?

 

[Sloshy]

i wouldn't call it a problem with neek2o, just different HDD compatibility

btw, have you tried the original neek (ie. not neek2o)?

I'll try it later. I'm using CFG Loader from my regular nand if that doesn't work, though it isn't exactly ideal. What's odd is that I can't access the drive from neek2o at all, whereas it works perfectly in regular nand for everything. The drive is definitely compatible, but neek2o just won't read it. Maybe it's a spin-up issue or something...

 

[obcd]

sneek2o+di is broken. Usually the system hangs into a black screen. Sometimes it works, but mostly it doesn't.

In case of a suspected harddisk compatibility, the first thing you should try is a sneek2o without di setup. It will prove that your emulated nand is working fine.

After that, you can copy all the nand folders from the sd card to a subfolder of the nands folder on your usb drive, and try a uneek2o setup.
So, your emulated nand folder setup should be usb://nands/nand1/xxxx
xxxx are all the nand folders from the sd card.

Some people having bootmii as boot2 launch into neek directly. If your harddisk has a slow spinup time, it might not be ready yet to load the emulated nand files.
A possible way to test this is removing your sd card, starting the wii, inserting the card and launching bootmii with the homebrew channel.

Important:

sneek2o kernel.bin and sneek2o + di kernel.bin are 2 different files. uneek2o kernel.bin is the same with and without di. If the system can't find di.bin, it will run uneek2o without it. (just rename that file)

If you have a nandcfg.bin file in your sneek folder, you might remove it. It contains the location of the emulated nand folders. If the settings in it are wrong, it will never boot into neek2o.

Have you checked the cluster size of your harddisk? You can do this by writing down the free space, and adding a small file. After that, check the free space again. The difference should be approximatly your cluster size,
as the minimum space a file occupies is one cluster.

It's always possible that your harddisk isn't compatible with neek2o. In that case, there is no solution yet. (Besides trying another harddisk.)

 

[Sloshy]

I just tried using the HBC startup method and that doesn't work either . Odd... I guess I'll just have to use a regular USB loader for the time being. If there's any way I can help (debug logs, etc.) I'd love to.

 

[buzlight]

I installed XFlak Neek2o setup from the ModMii installation and copied the respective files to USB HDD and SD. Both formatted correctly as per suggested software. Put the games into the wbfs folder on the HDD using the converter from ISO to wbfs format. When I first boot up the WII console and choose Neek2o all is well. From here I can run WiiFlow and all other channels no problems. If I shut the console down and switch the HDD off then switch everything back on again I get problems. The WII console boots OK, then press A to see the channels. If I choose Neek2o the HDD LED blinks a couple of times then the system hangs with a blank screen. If I hold the power button on the WII and reboot and try again I keep getting the same thing. This happens several times until eventually I can get the system to enter HBC via the HDD. I have tried several HDD with different speeds etc but they all do the same thing. Sometimes WiiFlow works then other times it hangs. If I remove the HDD and transfer all the wbfs files to my LapTop then move them back again it works first time. I will try switching the WII console off but leaving the HDD powered up to see if this works. I wonder weather in transferring files using my LapTop there are some hidden files or Wii related USB power problem. I might be talking out of turn here but there is all manner of talk about HDD spin speed and the rest and it gets deeper. The thing that puzzles me most is it works if I reboot the WII several times or attach to my LapTop

Sorry this is such a descriptive post but I have searched the corners of the NET to no avail.

Any suggestions appreciated. OS is 4.1 by the way.

Cheers.

Dr P.

 

[obcd]

To my knowledge, wiiflow isn't intended to be used in a neek2o environment. Overjoy created Joyflow for that purpose.
Very likely, it tries to access the emulated nand for gamesaves and corrupts it. Due to that, neek2o doesn't boot properly anymore.

So, in neek2o, you should use the overlay menu, Joyflow or postloader to load your game backups..

Since neek2o is running once, it doesn't seem a harddisk issue.