Hardware Recover Games from formatted WBFS drive

[angus528]

I have a USB drive that had previously been formatted with WBFS Manager and had about 70 games on it. The WBFS partition was mistakenly deleted, a new raw partition created, and then formatted back to WBFS using WBFS Manager 3.0.

Is there any way to recover the game ISOs from drive? Normal recovery programs will not recognize the WBFS file system.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks everyone!

 

[Dack]

Yes you can but it's a bit of a nause - I'll try and get some instructions worked out in the near future.

What it comes down to is you need to modify the WBFS partition sector to show there is data in it. This is done by setting the correct fields in the usage table to 0x01 and the disc count to how many games you had.

 

[angus528]

Thanks Dack! I appreciate the quick response and look forward to your instructions!

 

[Dack]

What you need to do (theoretically) is:

1. Get a hex editor that can handle hard drive partitions. e.g. HxD http://mh-nexus.de/en/
2. Search for "WBFS" - this will probably be at sector 63 or 64
3. Change the 0x00's from byte 12 onwards to 0x01 for however many games you have on the disc.
4. thats it

You can find out how many images you have on there by looking at the successive sectors and counting the disc titles you find.

The first 12 bytes in the partition sector are:
"WBFS"
4 bytes of partition size
4 bytes of housekeeping (size of sector, size of wbfs sector, two pads)

The rest of the sector is the usage table and thats what you need to change.

 

[angus528]

Great! So far so good! WBFS manager is recognizing the games now, haven't had a chance to hook it back up the WII yet. Thanks for the FANTASTIC response Dack.
One issue that worries me a little bit, WBFS Manager still shows that there is only .08GB of used space even though it list 68 games on the drive. Not sure how to update that.
Thanks again for all your help!

 

[Dack]

It sounds like you've set too many of the 0's to 1 and it's processing the last entry/entries incorrectly.

How many of them did you change?

 

[angus528]

I have changed 68 of them and WBFS mgr now lists 68 games. Originally I had changed 75 of them but only 68 games listed so I went back and rest 7 of them to 00

 

[Dack]

Does it now show more free space?

 

[Gspoon]

hello
I have no idea how to edit hex so could either one of you add a pic or walk me thru the steps required.

I downloaded the hex editor, then Searched for "WBFS" it was found @ sector - 702106
I found my first game @ sector 64

I don't have a clue what any of this means Help please.

Here is a Screen

 

[hokker]

Hello,

I have the same problem (damn windows format popups).

The WBFS term is on my Sector 2048. Once I change the 00 to 01 I don't see my backup games either. They are still on the hdd as I could find their names, when counting them (7).

The Sector Will look like this (the last 7 01s are my changes):

57 42 46 53 19 00 20 00 09 16 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01

Neither WBFS Manager nor USB Loader GX will recognize these games.

Please help me.

regards

 

[Kimem]

Hello, i had some troubles with my corrupted HD and i fixed it thanks to both of you, Dack and Angus.
I just formated my corrupted HD, edit the 00 for 01 as many games i had, and i could recover all my files. A big "thank you" to you.

 

[grizland]

Great! So far so good! WBFS manager is recognizing the games now, haven't had a chance to hook it back up the WII yet. Thanks for the FANTASTIC response Dack.
One issue that worries me a little bit, WBFS Manager still shows that there is only .08GB of used space even though it list 68 games on the drive. Not sure how to update that.
Thanks again for all your help!

It sounds like you've set too many of the 0's to 1 and it's processing the last entry/entries incorrectly.

How many of them did you change?

I have changed 68 of them and WBFS mgr now lists 68 games. Originally I had changed 75 of them but only 68 games listed so I went back and rest 7 of them to 00

Does it now show more free space?


I had the same problem that angus528 was having.

After following Dack's instructions (thank you a million times over, by the way) I was able to see and even play all of my games. I noticed that my drive was showing almost no used blocks (although I have over 120 games on the hard drive). I figured that this was okay and was hoping that upon loading another game on the WBFS partition the size problem would correct its self.

I was wrong.

The next game that I loaded actually corrupted the first game on my WBFS partition. I believe this was due to WBFS Manager thinking that the space was free to use up. I did a little more research and found another tool that can inspect the WBFS partition called Wiims WBFS Tool. This tool exposed that all games loaded were "invalid" and that 2 of my games were even sharing sectors on the hard disk. (my ill fated post recovery added game along with the first game that I ever loaded. Thankfully the first game was larger than the new game, because I am confident that I would have corrupted more than one title had that not been the case)

Upon running: (Please read the documentation before blindly running these commands as this is a very powerful tool when it comes to managing the WBFS partitions)
CODE

wwt CHECK -a

I was given a list of how many sectors on the hard disk were busted. For safety sake I deleted both of the games that were occupying the same sectors. This left me with a few less games (easy to load back on since I have all the originals

) and less errors.

I ran the following:
CODE

wwt REPAIR -a

and all of my sectors that were being marked incorrectly as unused were now marked appropriately giving me a clean CHECK from wwt.

My free space is cleared up in WBFS Manager as well as USBLoaderGX.

I was able to load my two games back onto my USB drive without any problems, and all of my games appear to be functioning correctly.




Thank you again Dack, you saved the day.
I hope this information will help others keep their backups safe and running strong.

 

[brinkwill]

hi GBAtemp. i have a situation very similar to the ones in this post with some variances. i recieved a 2tb external hitachi drive to replace the 1tb i sent in for replacement. the replacement drive was actually two 1tb in a large case. i opened the case hoping that when it malfunctioned the drive that the games were actually stored on was still good and the one that was corrupt didn't have any games on it. i hooked the sata drives up one at time in another external enclosure i had and found that one drive was reconized by windows and the other wasn't. on the drive that was reconized when i ran hxd it could not find wbfs when i did a search. so i formatted the drive with wbfs manager and then did a search again. found it at line 63 like suggested and turned the 00 to 01 for the number of games i have. about 257. when i started the wbfs manager again it saw 102 games. cool now i know i'm doing something right. on the drive that wasn't reconized by windows but by hxd when i did a search for wbfs it was found at sector 32 instead of 63 and the 01 were already there. only thing is that windows dosn't reconize the drive when i go to my computer. only when i go to control panel and disk management. what should do. the unreconized drive has the exact number of 01 for the games that i have. thanks in advance for any help.

 

[soulfoot]

TLDR: Tried what was mentioned here, The WWT cannot see my drive and the in game loaders cannot load the games, although they and the WBFS manager can see the drive and number of games installed.


So here is my story

Decided i wanted to use my 2nd partition for VC/Ware

Resized my WBFS drive to take up the slack that the 32gb VC partition left

Lost my WBFS drive, only one of my loader programs could read it on the wii and nothing could see it on my pc

Found this thread

All of my 01s were already 01s so i figured since i had a backup drive anyways i would try the reformat to ntsc quick and then format back into WBFS.

This had the happy effect of removing all the 01s and allowing my programs to see the WBFS drive.

So i happily added the 01s where they belonged.

This caused the WBFS manager to see my drive and list the games installed.


however

the WWT repair utility cannot find my WBFS drive (am i using it wrong)

and

the in game loaders cannot load any game, they just show un named question boxes where the games should be.

Any help would be great

Edit: was able to recover about 80 games, thanks for all the help

 

[oldmanjoe]

SO I've read everything here, and I'm having no luck. Any assistance would be appreciated.....

Currently, I believe my data is in tact.

I have re-formatted the HD (only headers I believe) to WBFS. When I open the drive with WBFS manager, it sees no games.

When I search the HD for WBFS, I get one @ sector 63. I've changed the 00 to 01 starting at the 12th byte, and it seems to change back after I open the drive with WBFS manager.

There is also a "duplicate" sector at 2048 that appears the same. After that is where I start seeing titles. Sector 2049 says EA Sports.... then 2054 is another title, and every 5 sectors is another "title" all totals up to be 32 "images"

Thoughts?

Unfortunately, this was a borrowed disk and I'd really like to fix if before I give it back broken.

 

[PsyBlade]

Do not do anything until you backed up the whole drive.
A failed recovery will only cause further damage.

Sector 63 was the old standard location for starting the first partition.
Sector 2048 is the new default.

I guess you deleted the partition, created a new unformated one and formated that to wbfs?

Assuming my guess as correct it would follow that:

The first Game (or whatever else was stored at 2048) is fubar.
You will need to create a partition with the same start and end as the original one.
Do not format it to any FS, just create the partition.
Then wwt should be able to recover it.

PS
necromancing threads is frowned upon in this parts

 

[oldmanjoe]

Do not do anything until you backed up the whole drive.
A failed recovery will only cause further damage.

Sector 63 was the old standard location for starting the first partition.
Sector 2048 is the new default.

I guess you deleted the partition, created a new unformated one and formated that to wbfs?

Assuming my guess as correct it would follow that:

The first Game (or whatever else was stored at 2048) is fubar.
You will need to create a partition with the same start and end as the original one.
Do not format it to any FS, just create the partition.
Then wwt should be able to recover it.

PS
necromancing threads is frowned upon in this parts

I'll see what I can do......

What is necromancing?

 

[oldmanjoe]

Do not do anything until you backed up the whole drive.
A failed recovery will only cause further damage.

Sector 63 was the old standard location for starting the first partition.
Sector 2048 is the new default.

I guess you deleted the partition, created a new unformated one and formated that to wbfs?

Assuming my guess as correct it would follow that:

The first Game (or whatever else was stored at 2048) is fubar.
You will need to create a partition with the same start and end as the original one.
Do not format it to any FS, just create the partition.
Then wwt should be able to recover it.

PS
necromancing threads is frowned upon in this parts

Recover seemed to work, it told me I had the right number of images, and I've exported the ISO's but haven't tested yet.

Google tells me necromancing is communicating with the dead. So again I'm lost. Is this because I bumped an old thread?


Anyway, thank you for your help.

 

[PsyBlade]

Recover seemed to work, it told me I had the right number of images, and I've exported the ISO's but haven't tested yet.
Google tells me necromancing is communicating with the dead. So again I'm lost. Is this because I bumped an old thread?
Anyway, thank you for your help.

No problem
Unless you did format the drive to fat or ntfs in between the games should work.
Except the one at 2048. It WILL have some flaw.
But it could be one singled garbled texture if you are incredibly lucky.

And Necromancy is magic concerning death.
Like bringing dead back too.
Used as a figure of speech on threads is means bringing a thread where on one posted in several months back to the frontpage.
How this is looked upon varies from forum to forum and on how long it was not used.

 

[brett22smith]

What you need to do (theoretically) is:

1. Get a hex editor that can handle hard drive partitions. e.g. HxD http://mh-nexus.de/en/
2. Search for "WBFS" - this will probably be at sector 63 or 64
3. Change the 0x00's from byte 12 onwards to 0x01 for however many games you have on the disc.
4. thats it

You can find out how many images you have on there by looking at the successive sectors and counting the disc titles you find.

The first 12 bytes in the partition sector are:
"WBFS"
4 bytes of partition size
4 bytes of housekeeping (size of sector, size of wbfs sector, two pads)

The rest of the sector is the usage table and thats what you need to change.

THAAAAANNNKSS!!!!!!!!!

This worked - but I had to first re-allocate/create a raw partition, then re-format in WBFS manager, then finally edit with Winhex (HxD wouldn't show my wbfs partition for some reason.

Anyway thanks - u saved me days of re-installing my games.