So it's been a while since I used my wii and usb loader gx / nintendont.
The last time I did, I used two separate usb sticks, one for almost just gc games, the other for wii games and as far as I could tell, everything worked.
Now, a couple years later, i got some larger sticks lying around so I think, why not put everything on one? So I do that, formating it to fat32, copying the older sticks data onto it + a couple more isos that didn't fit before and usb loader still starts, downloading coverart works fine, but many a (gamecube) game doesn't start.
They're all in /games/name/game.iso / disc2.iso format btw.
Wario World and Cubivore gave me a blackscreen as did billy hatcher, Spyro - A heroes tail sometimes loads, sometimes doesn't, megaman collection worked most of the time.
From what I can tell, Wii Games work normally.
I tried updating to the latest nintendont and loader i could find, but then it started to just load the nintendont menu after chosing a game for a while (which then also couldn't run the games I tried).
Now here's the things I feel could be at fault here maybe:
1. It's the new stick. It's a 128gb 3.0 sandisk that comes with a usb a and a usb c connector. In many many years old threads, I read that loaders and sticks sometimes dont mix well. Is that still true?
I'll try again with the older and a different stick once I'm at home, but generally, would it be better to get a cheap ssd + sata to usb connector instead? Or does it have to be a spinny hdd for best compability?
2. I used GCMUtility to shrink some of the games. From what I remember, I also did that years ago with the other games without issue, but could that be a source for my issues?
3. something to do with ios? I never really quite understood that part of switch hacking to be honest, but is there anything to look out for in that regard?
4. I just copied the games back and forth over the standard windows explorer. Should I have used a program for that? I know there is one for wii games converting them to some other filetype, but I didn't think it was needed for gamecube games.