New To Wii U - Initial Set Up Help

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HI All,

I've been reading this forum and the wealth of information and advice that is available for the past week as I'm about to receive my first Wii U this week.

I come from a background of modding a PS 3 and partitioning drives to run PS3 ISO's as well as PSX ISO's and also have a huge catalogue of ROMS for Retroarch which is pretty clunky in PS3 admittedly but all on the same drive.

My main interest in the WII U aside from playing some new excellent games is the actual modding process - I love tinkering.

With that in mind, I have read quite a few of the threads and I had some questions. Bear in mind that I realise there are a million ways to achieve the same goal but mine is likely to involve a 2TB SSD, a 1TB SD card ( not endurance as I don't believe that size exists yet) and possibly a mod of the NAND to 64gb from the 32gb the WII U comes with.

I am going to install Aroma and the beta Retroarch that works with Aroma.

What is the best file format set up based on what I have already said above?
WIIU Games and Retroarch Roms together on the USB SSD ? I noted that there might be an issue with ROMS visibility in Retroarch on the current Beta version? What format should this drive be? Does the drive need to be partitioned to host both WII U and Roms?

WII and Gamecube games on the SD Card ? What format should this drive be? I'm assuming these games require FAT32 similar to the apps and Homebrew files?

NAND upgrade to 64gb - I read the forum guidance but I wasn't quite sure whether this could be achieved without soldering? I would prefer mods that don't involve me and tools.

Any other must have tools and suggestions? I have N64 roms, given Retroarch's current capabilities can they be emulated on the WII U outside of Retroarch? I see there is WIIFLOW and the USB Loader? Is there one clear winner in 2025 over the other or is it best to try both and see what I like best? (Not trying to open a can of worms here just genuinely interested) How do Injects work( I realise there is a specific thread for this but trying to gather all of the info I need in a one stop shop) and would they offer a way to play N64 games (or other platforms that are less straightforward?)

Any other hints and tips are appreciated? I realise if anyone prefers a one drive/card solution then what I'm suggesting above will have them suggesting another option but I'd prefer to try out this approach in the first instance and would love to hear how I can make this set up work for me.

Really appreciate any info and suggestions. Ta!
 
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The Real Jdbye

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HI All,

I've been reading this forum and the wealth of information and advice that is available for the past week as I'm about to receive my first Wii U this week.

I come from a background of modding a PS 3 and partitioning drives to run PS3 ISO's as well as PSX ISO's and also have a huge catalogue of ROMS for Retroarch which is pretty clunky in PS3 admittedly but all on the same drive.

My main interest in the WII U aside from playing some new excellent games is the actual modding process - I love tinkering.

With that in mind, I have read quite a few of the threads and I had some questions. Bear in mind that I realise there are a million ways to achieve the same goal but mine is likely to involve a 2TB SSD, a 1TB SD card ( not endurance as I don't believe that size exists yet) and possibly a mod of the NAND to 64gb from the 32gb the WII U comes with.

I am going to install Aroma and the beta Retroarch that works with Aroma.

What is the best file format set up based on what I have already said above?
WIIU Games and Retroarch Roms together on the USB SSD ? I noted that there might be an issue with ROMS visibility in Retroarch on the current Beta version? What format should this drive be? Does the drive need to be partitioned to host both WII U and Roms?

WII and Gamecube games on the SD Card ? What format should this drive be? I'm assuming these games require FAT32 similar to the apps and Homebrew files?

NAND upgrade to 64gb - I read the forum guidance but I wasn't quite sure whether this could be achieved without soldering? I would prefer mods that don't involve me and tools.

Any other must have tools and suggestions? I have N64 roms, given Retroarch's current capabilities can they be emulated on the WII U outside of Retroarch? I see there is WIIFLOW and the USB Loader? Is there one clear winner in 2025 over the other or is it best to try both and see what I like best? (Not trying to open a can of worms here just genuinely interested) How do Injects work( I realise there is a specific thread for this but trying to gather all of the info I need in a one stop shop) and would they offer a way to play N64 games (or other platforms that are less straightforward?)

Any other hints and tips are appreciated? I realise if anyone prefers a one drive/card solution then what I'm suggesting above will have them suggesting another option but I'd prefer to try out this approach in the first instance and would love to hear how I can make this set up work for me.

Really appreciate any info and suggestions. Ta!
USB Loader GX is more up to date, specifically it has some extra features that improve the video quality. Some prefer the GUI of WiiFlow though.
SD should be FAT32.
If you want to use the USB for other things along with Wii U games/Wii VC then you need to use https://gbatemp.net/threads/usb-partition-use-partitioned-usb-hdds-with-the-wii-u.656209/
Conversely, you can also do the same with the SD: https://gbatemp.net/threads/sdusb-the-modern-way-to-play-wii-u-games-from-sd-at-full-speed.655744/
 

Deleted member 735331

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Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. That's pretty much in-line with the info I've read. Being able to partition both USB and SD offers a lot of flexibility. I didn't know that about the USB Loader GX - does it offer any other benefits?

Can I ask how you would set up your WII U if you had the same hardware options as me?

SD Card - WII and GC games on FAT 32? Does the SD card need to be partitioned to store both systems?
USB SSD - WII U and ROMS with the WII U proprietary format and the ROMS partitioned in FAT32?

What about increasing the size of the NAND to 64gb, is that straightforward to do?
Any ideas about N64? on the WII U How do Injects work? (I think I'm a little confused by that)

Much appreciated to anyone who wants to answer these questions, thanks!
 

Deleted member 735331

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Back with further questions if someone is willing to offer advice

Aroma is now set up with ISFSHax installed and I'm ready for drive partitioning. Now favouring one larger drive with multiple partitions. I appreciate anything over 2TB the last partition must start before 2TB resulting in a Wii U partition over over 2tb which is unnecessary but it does make the set up simpler in some ways.


Some questions:

1) Can I add a small partition that acts like an SD card with all of the Homebrew stuff installed? I wasn't quite sure from reading the tutorials whether anyone had this working.

2) The Wii U menu system is noticeably slow. Is there any hack to speed up the load times? I already had fastboot installed for ISFSHax

3) I understand that when using a SSD then WII U games need to be stored on the proprietary format on the partition. What is the most efficient file format for WII U games?

4) Similarly what is the smallest/most efficient format for WII games?

5) When used via Retroarch can retro games be stored in new compression formats like CHD etc? I realise I can technically store whatever I like on an external drive but if the Wii U cannot read the files then it's of no use.



Really appreciate any advice. The forum is brilliant for someone who has zero Wii U experience but it does tend to take hours or trawling to get the right info and often there is some contradictory advice due to personal preference so it can make it hard to work out the best way to set up the Wii U from scratch for someone new. Thanks!
Post automatically merged:

Would be great if someone had any thoughts on the questions above? I'm surprised how quiet the forum is despite the number of active threads.

In the meantime I came across a separate issue.

When loading a custom theme (I've tried several ) via sdcafiine, the theme works as expected but if I also try to change the splash screen (splash.png) at the same time, it causes the console to give an " Abort Called" message on boot up and the png file needs to be removed before normality is restored . The splash.png is the recommended size 1280x720. Anyone have any ideas why this behaviour is happening?
Post automatically merged:

EDIT - I've now been able to resolve the splash.png error. Essentially I forgot that you cannot save an image file directly as a png file and you have to convert it first. Once I had converted the image to png it shows up without error as a splash screen. Hope that helps someone else. I did notice that the original splash screen still appears briefly before the custom one is shown. Any way to remove the original splash screen completely?
 
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Deleted member 735331

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Due to forum restrictions to new joiners, I've had to split my previous post as I cannot include links until I have posted a minimum number of times. Hopefully I have now reached the point where i can add links.

I also noticed that any new update post isn't recognised and is simply merged with previous posts which is a terrible feature as no-one receives any notification of the new post and it goes unnoticed. A very poor forum feature in my view.

Additional Questions
6) I looked at some youtube videos on set up. Can anyone comment on the set up in the video link below? Please forward to 13 mins to see the set up I'm asking about?
Wii U and vWii Set Up

7) The link above looks like Wiiflow from my basic understanding? Is this easy to set up? Any tips on how to ? I know others have suggested USB Loader GX, can that do anything similar.

If anyone can answer the questions above or the questions I asked previously in earlier posts it would be appreciated.


Thanks!
 

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