Odd issue with usb/hdd and wbfs folder

[ChaosProtocol]

Hi all, having an odd issue and hoping someone can help me figure out what's going on.

I have a 4tb HDD in a USB enclosure. Two partitions, one FAT32 loaded GameCube isos in /games, one NTFS with Wii backups in /wbfs.
I've tried three different 4tb HDDs and they all do the same so I'm confident it's not the HDD.

Using GC backup manager and Wii backup manager, I've loaded both partitions. The GameCube partition I added everything at once overnight, the Wii one I added a handful so I could test.

Loaded the drive in both USB Loader GX and WiiFlow and everything was there and working. They both saw both partitions and the games on them. Games loaded and played, covers downloaded correctly, everything was working fine.

I shut it down, waited for the drive to spin down, hooked it up to my computer and using the WBM I moved the rest of my library over.

Ejected the drive and reconnected to the Wii

When I hooked it back up to the system, I could see and load all the GameCube games just as before, but the Wii games didn't show up in WiiFlow.

I used the file manager and could access the Wii partition and see the /apps and /wbfs folders. I could go into the /apps folder, but going into the /wbfs folder locked up the system.

Rebooting and loading into USB Loader GX, I get a crash to a bunch of (I'm assuming) memory addresses and the top says "Exception (DSI) Occurred"

I loaded the drive back up in Windows and could see all the files just fine, so I deleted the /wbfs folder with the files in it, recreated it and manually copied a couple games over.
Everything worked again.

I copied one additional game over, same crashes.

I tried the exact same thing with three different drives. Every time, as soon as the file structure changed after being hooked to the Wii, everything goes to hell.

I feel I've eliminated hardware, and I'm confident my files are good since they all play in Dolphin. It's not a folder size issue because it happens at 3 files and 1,000 files the exact same way.

I'm guessing there's some sort of indexing going on and the system shits the bed when there's a change, but I'm not sure how or why. Maybe some sort of hidden file or an identifier for the folder stored somewhere that's ignored if the folders recreated (assuming it's at a different physical location on the platters?). Maybe somethings weird because this is a first gen system (Bought at the OG midnight release by me)? I've not dug too deep on most of the modding software since so much of it is so mature that for the most part it just works. Maybe I missed something with the modding precess? I used ModMii and am confident it was done properly and all instructions were followed.

Loading everything all over again isn't a viable option because I'm trying to get this set up so I can work on a side project that will automatically sync a local USB harddrive with files on my server so as I get new games backed up, they'll automatically get loaded onto the HDD hooked to my Wii and WiiU.

I haven't found anyone that seems to have had the same issue, or if they have they didn't get this deep on troubleshooting before asking for help and disappearing.

I've hit the limit of my knowledge.

 

[XFlak]

Generally getting hdd's larger than 2TB to work with the wii is tricky. Have u tried this process with WD drives (which is referenced in modmii guides)? https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-...-on-a-wii-as-a-single-fat32-partition.602038/

There's another thread for Seagate drives

How exactly is the hdd partitioned? Also why use NTFS for wii games instead of fat32?

Have u tried other loaders?

 

[ChaosProtocol]

Here's the Diskpart dump for the drive:

DISKPART> list disk Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- --- Disk 0 Online 3726 GB 9 MB * Disk 1 Online 931 GB 1024 KB * * Disk 2 Online 3726 GB 2048 KB * DISKPART> detail disk ST4000VN 006-3CW104 SCSI Disk Device Disk ID: {A16303DD-915E-4D2C-866E-242CA1CC8375} Type : USB Status : Online Path : 0 Target : 0 LUN ID : 0 Location Path : UNAVAILABLE Current Read-only State : No Read-only : No Boot Disk : No Pagefile Disk : No Hibernation File Disk : No Crashdump Disk : No Clustered Disk : No Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------- Volume 4 G GAMECUBE FAT32 Partition 931 GB Healthy Volume 5 W WII NTFS Partition 2794 GB Healthy

 

[scooby74029]

just throw all games on fat32 and be done

 

[ChaosProtocol]

I'm using NTFS because I want it to be large enough for a complete NA library + covers + some imports.

I don't want to do anything too hacky to get it to work, because it'll need to be able to work with another project I'm working on that will allow it to be managed and synced wirelessly with a local or remote share of backups. I also don't want to use a smaller partition for Wii if I can avoid it because I want to minimize traffic one the end user has everything synced even though I'm well aware most people will never look at half the games. I'd like the be able to match my PS setups which can direct play from a NAS so they have full access to a complete library on demand.

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I have only tried USB Loader GX and WiiFlow Lite, both are current versions now but I've updated both while troubleshooting. It's important the solve is universal to all loaders though for the reason above.

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Maybe someone has some knowledge and can tell me if I'm looking at it wrong, but it seems to me that Nintendo cut some corner in the OS for performance or by figuring no one would ever use anything larger than a 2tb drive, so they cut some support for larger disks and that's why NTFS is getting nuked when it's having to deal with an updated file structure? Like maybe it's caching the drives layout fine the first time, but then tries to update it when it detects a change and loses it's mind?

 

[XFlak]

Looks like the drive is GPT instead of MBR. As far as I know these are the only 2 tutorials to get hdd's larger than 2TB to work on the Wii. You should still be able to use NTFS after first making it MBR. Maybe GPT will be supported natively one day, but for now MBR is required (in fact I'm confused you managed to get a short list of wii games loading with GPT)

https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-...-on-a-wii-as-a-single-fat32-partition.602038/

https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-use-a-larger-than-2tb-hard-drive-seagate-version.648994/

 

[ChaosProtocol]

So it's looking more and more like it's not so weird after all. It seems that I may have been trying too much at once and missing the obvious.

GameCube I can have almost 500 .iso files on the FAT32 partition no problem.
Wii I get the "Error (DSI) Occured" crash when I've got close to 1,000 games on it

I dumped the NTFS partition, made the fat32 2tb, loaded all the games on it that could fit, and got the same "Exception (DSI) occurred!" error.

I'm guessing now that the amount of files WiiFlow and USB Loader are trying to parse is overflowing the memory of the system and causing it to crash.

Does anyone know if someones tested the max amount of games the loaders can display? Is there a setting somewhere I can tweak to get it to display more files?

I'll try switching it to MBR as well and see if that changes anything