Hacking Partioning Hardrive to play wii games and Gamecube

[Cmjsmith10]

Ok. So i want to be able to play both wii games and gamecube games from the same harddrie I got to partions but can only figure out how to make one active. Which one needs to be active. I use nintendont to play gamecube games. I used easy us partion master to partion it. Please help.

 

[TecXero]

Easiest thing to do for most users would be just format the entire drive as a FAT32 Primary partition. That way it will be compatible with everything. Some Wii games are larger than 4GB, but you can have USB Loader GX (or whatever you use to dump it) split it into two WBFS files that it can use. Some homebrew also support NTFS, if you really don't want to do any splitting, but very few do so you'd have to make two different partitions. Just make sure the first partition is FAT32. USB Loader GX can also support EXT2/3/4 if really don't like NTFS.

 

[Cmjsmith10]

Easiest thing to do for most users would be just format the entire drive as a FAT32 Primary partition. That way it will be compatible with everything. Some Wii games are larger than 4GB, but you can have USB Loader GX (or whatever you use to dump it) split it into two WBFS files that it can use. Some homebrew also support NTFS, if you really don't want to do any splitting, but very few do so you'd have to make two different partitions. Just make sure the first partition is FAT32. USB Loader GX can also support EXT2/3/4 if really don't like NTFS.

i had my whole hardrive formatted to fat32 but when i tried to play my GameCube games nintendont said i had to make two partions. So do they both need to be active If so how. It only lets me do one.

 

[TecXero]

i had my whole hardrive formatted to fat32 but when i tried to play my GameCube games nintendont said i had to make two partions. So do they both need to be active If so how. It only lets me do one.

Make sure you're using the latest version of Nintendont. I'm not sure why you're getting that error. Asking on the Nintendont thread would probably yield better results.

 

[Cmjsmith10]

Make sure you're using the latest version of Nintendont. I'm not sure why you're getting that error. Asking on the Nintendont thread would probably yield better results.

So I should be able to run both off of one harddrive without partioning. I have the latest nintendont.

 

[TecXero]

So I should be able to run both off of one harddrive without partioning. I have the latest nintendont.

Yeah, I'm running a single FAT32 partition on my Wii's 250GB USB HDD. Nintendont and everything runs fine off of it.

 

[Cmjsmith10]

what did you use to format it an did you have to set something up in settings maybe that my issue. All my gamecube games were on my sd card and booted from that then I swapped over was running short on room. I have a 250gn hdd as well.

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what did you use to format it an did you have to set something up in settings maybe that my issue. All my gamecube games were on my sd card and booted from that then I swapped over was running short on room. I have a 250gn hdd as well.

I also had a games folder for gamecube and a wbfs folder for wii

 

[TecXero]

what did you use to format it an did you have to set something up in settings maybe that my issue. All my gamecube games were on my sd card and booted from that then I swapped over was running short on room. I have a 250gn hdd as well.

I just used GParted to format my drive. Make sure you're using MBR and the partition is primary. Also, it might have problems with drives running 4K sectors or clustering over 64KB.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

If I can chip in here, I have successfully gotten a single exHDD to have both a FAT32 and a NTFS partition and work just fine, on many occasions. I use the MiniTool Partition Wizard software, create the different partitions according to what sizes I want them to be, and make one NTFS for my Wii games, the other FAT32 for my GameCube titles. After that it's just a matter of defining your paths in USB Loader GX (or preferred front end loader homebrew). The nice part about having the Wii games partition as NTFS is not having to deal with splitting the disc images. I would also suggest trying your games in .ISO format. I personally think they function slightly better like that, but maybe it's just me

 

[TecXero]

If I can chip in here, I have successfully gotten a single exHDD to have both a FAT32 and a NTFS partition and work just fine, on many occasions. I use the MiniTool Partition Wizard software, create the different partitions according to what sizes I want them to be, and make one NTFS for my Wii games, the other FAT32 for my GameCube titles. After that it's just a matter of defining your paths in USB Loader GX (or preferred front end loader homebrew). The nice part about having the Wii games partition as NTFS is not having to deal with splitting the disc images. I would also suggest trying your games in .ISO format. I personally think they function slightly better like that, but maybe it's just me

Just make sure the FAT32 partition is first. Other than that, yeah, having drives with multiple partitions works fine.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

Just make sure the FAT32 partition is first. Other than that, yeah, having drives with multiple partitions works fine.

Ah, yes, good point. Forgot about that one, lol.

 

[Cmjsmith10]

I got it i just had to make sure it was marked primary and active and i can run both without partitioning.

 

[TecXero]

I got it i just had to make sure it was marked primary and active and i can run both without partitioning.

Active? You mean under Windows? That doesn't do anything for the Wii.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

Active? You mean under Windows? That doesn't do anything for the Wii.

I've had issues not marking a partition as "Primary" and instead keeping set to "Logical". Anyway, cool that you got it to work ^^

 

[Cmjsmith10]

No i mean when i was going to partion the hardrive it just said none and logical. I changed them to active and then primary and now it works without having to partion it.

 

[TecXero]

I've had issues not marking a partition as "Primary" and instead keeping set to "Logical".

Yeah, I mentioned that in an earlier post. I don't think any Wii homebrew properly uses Logical, probably due to the libraries they use. No real reason to use Logical anyway.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

Yeah, I mentioned that in an earlier post. I don't think any Wii homebrew properly uses Logical, probably due to the libraries they use. No real reason to use Logical anyway.

Yeah, even Windows barely touches it

No i mean when i was going to partion the hardrive it just said none and logical. I changed them to active and then primary and now it works without having to partion it.

So, you basically just made a giant FAT32 partition set to "Primary"?

 

[Cmjsmith10]

Yeah, even Windows barely touches it

So, you basically just made a giant FAT32 partition set to "Primary"?

yes and now it lets me play both wii games with usb loader and gamecube games through usb loader but with nintendont

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

yes and now it lets me play both wii games with usb loader and gamecube games through usb loader but with nintendont

Hey, sounds like a win to me. I'd seriously consider swapping to a dual partition, one with NTFS for the Wii games, that way you don't have to bother with splitting the disc images (something that seems to be a tad unstable, at least for me). But either way that's just my personal preference, so it's nice that you've got it up and running. Have fun playing!

 

[DiscostewSM]

yes and now it lets me play both wii games with usb loader and gamecube games through usb loader but with nintendont

That's exactly what I want to try and do. Some time ago, I attempted it, but either Nintendont locked up, or Wii games locked up. Don't recall the reason (might have been an older version of Nintendont), but if updated versions allow it, then I'll give it another go.