Hardware Question about NAND and longevity

Videomanman87

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I know that Nintendo put in good quality NAND chips but still they have a limited number of write cycles so I have tried to reduce the number of writes I do with my Wii. As I understand it, the Wii writes a game that is on a SD card to temp flash memory then runs it, and of course game saves are written to NAND. Wiiware games are quite large of course and so I have always either kept them on the internal or use Emunand to run them to save the system's NAND. Save games are generally small and not much writing is going on, and with wear leveling I figured it wasn't a lot to worry about.

However, recently I came across information that says Rock Band loads a song into the temp NAND area then runs it, deleting it after. Is this true? Seems like a crazy (and unnecessary) thing to do. Do other games do this as well? Is it a lot worse than I thought and every time a game loads a level it uses the NAND to store it? Or do only a few games use this technique? And if so which ones should I run on Emunand to cut down on the write cycles?
 

bananapi761

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I know that Nintendo put in good quality NAND chips but still they have a limited number of write cycles so I have tried to reduce the number of writes I do with my Wii. As I understand it, the Wii writes a game that is on a SD card to temp flash memory then runs it, and of course game saves are written to NAND. Wiiware games are quite large of course and so I have always either kept them on the internal or use Emunand to run them to save the system's NAND. Save games are generally small and not much writing is going on, and with wear leveling I figured it wasn't a lot to worry about.

However, recently I came across information that says Rock Band loads a song into the temp NAND area then runs it, deleting it after. Is this true? Seems like a crazy (and unnecessary) thing to do. Do other games do this as well? Is it a lot worse than I thought and every time a game loads a level it uses the NAND to store it? Or do only a few games use this technique? And if so which ones should I run on Emunand to cut down on the write cycles?
I really wouldn't worry about it that much, I'm confident it's rare that Wiis die of software failures, unless your planning on using it a very long time, at which point you should probably be more worried of the laser dying.
 

Videomanman87

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I really wouldn't worry about it that much, I'm confident it's rare that Wiis die of software failures, unless your planning on using it a very long time, at which point you should probably be more worried of the laser dying.

Well I do, but the laser is a LOT easier to replace than a NAND chip. Which would involve moving the keys over to a new chip (if one is available) and resoldreing it in. Laser is a heck of a lot easier, and that I could do myself. But then I am running most of the games off of backups so it doesn't even use the laser much.
 

Ryccardo

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every time a game loads a level it uses the NAND to store it? Or do only a few games use this technique?
I very strongly doubt most games work that way - but if they needed swap/temp space, what else could they use? :)

Other fun facts:
Any game disc detected by Wii Menu has the executable copied to nand and ran from there
Modern CIOS iso/wbfs loading works by having a frontend (usb loader) save a file with the device and list of sectors to use (this is why it works with (in theory) any filesystem, and relatively unaffected by moderate fragmentation)

Don't worry much about it for now, replacing a TSOP chip may not be the easiest thing (without proper tools, that is) but Wii and WiiU prices are at an all time low :)
 

Videomanman87

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I very strongly doubt most games work that way - but if they needed swap/temp space, what else could they use? :)

Other fun facts:
Any game disc detected by Wii Menu has the executable copied to nand and ran from there
Modern CIOS iso/wbfs loading works by having a frontend (usb loader) save a file with the device and list of sectors to use (this is why it works with (in theory) any filesystem, and relatively unaffected by moderate fragmentation)

Don't worry much about it for now, replacing a TSOP chip may not be the easiest thing (without proper tools, that is) but Wii and WiiU prices are at an all time low :)

Very interesting about the game disc executable copied to nand. And this why USB loading can work since the USB loader does the same thing but from a different location? I assume that emunand would bypass the write cycles since it wouldn't be writing to the real nand?

And I agree if they need other temp storage what else could they do. Just really surprised me.

True about Wii and WiiU being cheap now, but I would still like to keep mine going. Not to mention when you get one, who knows, the "new" console might have seen a lot of use and the nand is ready to give out. No way to tell unless you do a bootmii dump and see the bad blocks.
 

KleinesSinchen

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Typical NAND can be rewritten about 10000 times. A quick estimation:
  • The wear leveling distributes the erase/write cycles across all NAND cells.
  • Typically a NAND-chip has actually more cells than the rated memory size (so the wear leveling has additional possibilities) no idea if this is true for the Wii.
How much data does your Wii rewrite each day? Do you think it’s near the complete 512MB? I doubt it. But let’s assume you rewrite the complete NAND each day. You’d expect the NAND to die of rewrite cycles in about 27 years after doing this every single day.

When using the Wii console that excessive it’s more likely some capacitors fail – and using it much or not – the optical drive will kick the bucket earlier.

I’m very worried about long time preservation of games and the original consoles, too. But I would not worry that much about the NAND.

With the already mentioned low prices: Get an additional Wii while they are that cheap. I bought secondary Nintendo consoles of any generation when they were considered to be “old junk” and not yet “cool retro”.
 
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Videomanman87

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Typical NAND can be rewritten about 10000 times. A quick estimation:
  • The wear leveling distributes the erase/write cycles across all NAND cells.
  • Typically a NAND-chip has actually more cells than the rated memory size (so the wear leveling has additional possibilities) no idea if this is true for the Wii.
How much data does your Wii rewrite each day? Do you think it’s near the complete 512MB? I doubt it. But let’s assume you rewrite the complete NAND each day. You’d expect the NAND to die of rewrite cycles in about 27 years after doing this every single day.

When using the Wii console that excessive it’s more likely some capacitors fail – and using it much or not – the optical drive will kick the bucket earlier.

I’m very worried about long time preservation of games and the original consoles, too. But I would not worry that much about the NAND.

With the already mentioned low prices: Get an additional Wii while they are that cheap. I bought secondary Nintendo consoles of any generation when they were considered to be “old junk” and not yet “cool retro”.

While I agree with your stats, one thing to keep in mind is how full the NAND is too. As I doubt it moves things around. The wear leveling is restricted to unused space. And there isn't that much space on the Wii, have a few channels in it, and maybe a wiiware game and it is full (or almost). use it a lot in that condition and the area that is being written to is restricted and speeds it up the wear.

Now if I am wrong, by all means correct me lol. It would be nice if the Wii moved things around but I have yet to see flash move stored data around. It will use spares of course if it has them. Maybe if you did a BootMii dump, then wrote it back it might put data in different locations. But that is risky and since I think that dump is image, it will put the data back in the same exact location instead of using the wear leveling. Not sure though, perhaps someone can confirm or deny this? On other devices I have dumped flash cards/drives then written them back to "refresh" and get different sectors in use. Not often of course, but occasionally. Especially if the device is over half full most of the time.

As for the capacitors, they are easy to fix, as is the optical drive (which if you do USB loading, you don't use it much anyway except for doing backups). But replacing NAND? Now that is hard lol.
 
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KleinesSinchen

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While I agree with your stats, one thing to keep in mind is how full the NAND is too. As I doubt it moves things around. The wear leveling is restricted to unused space. And there isn't that much space on the Wii, have a few channels in it, and maybe a wiiware game and it is full (or almost). use it a lot in that condition and the area that is being written to is restricted and speeds it up the wear.
Good point. Didn't think of that. I doubt the Wii NAND uses a very advanced wear leveling algorithm and moves existing data around. It's old, it's small... Modern SSD drives do all sort of tricks and definitely have actually more NAND cells than rated memory. In this case wear leveling has a lot of possibilities and even if the drive is 90% full, it does not have to "torture" the remaining 10%.

On the other side, my example was extreme as well. If your NAND is almost full, what could you possibly do everyday to write 512MB torturing the few remaining parts? If you only have 100MB free, do you think 3 hours normal playing each day would cause 100MB of daily writing without forcing it (like loading different channels from the SD with temp copy every few minutes)? Honestly I've no idea.

Would be nice if one could just measure how much data is written. (SSDs tell this in the SMART diagnosis)
As for the capacitors, they are easy to fix, as is the optical drive (which if you do USB loading, you don't use it much anyway except for doing backups). But replacing NAND? Now that is hard lol.
If you think so... I can't do SMD soldering for tiny capacitors.

Some people can and even add a second NAND:
https://hackmii.com/2008/06/dual-nand-flash-hack/
 

Videomanman87

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Good point. Didn't think of that. I doubt the Wii NAND uses a very advanced wear leveling algorithm and moves existing data around. It's old, it's small... Modern SSD drives do all sort of tricks and definitely have actually more NAND cells than rated memory. In this case wear leveling has a lot of possibilities and even if the drive is 90% full, it does not have to "torture" the remaining 10%.

On the other side, my example was extreme as well. If your NAND is almost full, what could you possibly do everyday to write 512MB torturing the few remaining parts? If you only have 100MB free, do you think 3 hours normal playing each day would cause 100MB of daily writing without forcing it (like loading different channels from the SD with temp copy every few minutes)? Honestly I've no idea.

Would be nice if one could just measure how much data is written. (SSDs tell this in the SMART diagnosis)

If you think so... I can't do SMD soldering for tiny capacitors.

Some people can and even add a second NAND:
https://hackmii.com/2008/06/dual-nand-flash-hack/


Ohhh very cool about adding a second NAND gives me hope that it is more possible to fix than I thought. As for what I could possibly be doing, if your NAND is mostly full and you are downloading DLC say Rockband songs that are 40mb a each and trying to backup all the songs you had, welll that adds up fast. But I agree in the general day-to-day it is going to be a lot less.

But I did have one interesting thought about "moving the data around". If you dump your NAND, and in SHOWMEWADS wad up all the channels, IOS, and data. Then if you reinstall said wads, it would (or should at least) put the data in a different place, and with wear leveling it does have, should even it out. Of course I am no expert but from what I have learned so far should work? Not that I am saying this should be done much, once in a great while after a lot of use. But in theory should help level out the wear?
 

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