Homebrew Roms and USB - WBFS Manager question

[Beamer31]

I hope I am posting this in the right section, if not I apologize.

I have loads of roms (SNES, Genesis, etc) on a USB flash drive. I want to be able to run ISO games using WBFS from the same drive. Is this possible?

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

you don't need wbfs to run these, you need the emulators for each system, eg: snes9x gx, fcue gx, genplus, vbax, etc. you just need the homebrew channel and you can run roms for all of those.

 

[Beamer31]

Yes I am running all of these already through an SD card. But I would like to run all roms and ISO's through USB instead. The problem I have is the WSFB makes you format the drive and seems to only allow ISO files, and nothing else.

 

[jediyoshi]

You'd have to partition off a section of the drive and format it to fat.

 

[giantpune]

either dual partition FAT&WBFS or full FAT and use a loader that support loading games from FAT.

 

[Beamer31]

Thanks for the help! I'm thinking about throwing all the roms on an SD card and just using the USB for iso's.

 

[iceache]

I can't get Snes9xGX to recognize that I have a USB drive... although im loading the app from a USB hard drive from the HBC... it wont see my roms, it wont do anything.

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

I can't get Snes9xGX to recognize that I have a USB drive... although im loading the app from a USB hard drive from the HBC... it wont see my roms, it wont do anything.

Snes9x shouldn't have to recognize anything....it will only read the rom directory in G:/SNES9x/roms(the letter depends on the format of the drive) it doesn't read from another directory....as long as you have your app in the apps folder and the snes9x folder on the root with your roms in the roms folder all of the roms should show up when you launch the emulator.

On another note....if you fully format a drive to fat it won't read files over 4gb in size so if you have a game that is 4.39gb(the size of a standard dvd) you're screwed....dual formatting wbfs and fat is your best bet....I'd say format around 5 to 10gb fat and the rest wbfs since the stuff you'll be using on the fat portion won't be that big......4gb would probably hold all your wads(vc and wiiware) and roms for snes,nes,genesis,gba and turbo grafx and then some.

 

[Hogmeister]

I can't get Snes9xGX to recognize that I have a USB drive... although im loading the app from a USB hard drive from the HBC... it wont see my roms, it wont do anything.

Snes9x shouldn't have to recognize anything....it will only read the rom directory in G:/SNES9x/roms(the letter depends on the format of the drive) it doesn't read from another directory....as long as you have your app in the apps folder and the snes9x folder on the root with your roms in the roms folder all of the roms should show up when you launch the emulator.

you know, i thought it would work that way.. but i'm having the same exact problem, using a forwarder channel to load it off the USB (i ONLY have the hard drive plugged in, so its definately not reading an SD card and what not... but it will not find the roms in the roms folder. mind you i have used this EXACT setup on another wii and it works just fine... same process on both from start to finish, fresh 4.2u wii's, installed HBC, the forwarders, and then the hard drives are both setup the same, one however is a WD Elements 320gb (the one that works) and the other is a WD My Passport 250gb (doesn't read the roms, but everything else functions usb loader included).. i get an error "failed to read sd:/snes9x/roms"... any way to force it to read USB:/snes9x/roms ??

edit: just figured i'd post to say i finally spent some time trying to fix it, and i ended up solving the issue by simply deleting all the snes9x folders and everything and redownloading and just basically doing a fresh "install" of them

works great now, with or without SD card in

 

[geegee]

On another note....if you fully format a drive to fat it won't read files over 4gb in size so if you have a game that is 4.39gb(the size of a standard dvd) you're screwed....dual formatting wbfs and fat is your best bet....I'd say format around 5 to 10gb fat and the rest wbfs since the stuff you'll be using on the fat portion won't be that big......4gb would probably hold all your wads(vc and wiiware) and roms for snes,nes,genesis,gba and turbo grafx and then some.

When using ISO files with a FAT USB loader the files are split into 4gb chunks. It works fine.

 

[painless]

Hmm, I have a 640gb hdd and I've allocated 110gb to my roms (overkill? yes but that's ok). I partitioned my drive as NTFS and WBFS. My question is do these Homebrew emu's read NTFS or do they HAVE to be Fat32? (Because Fat32 fails @ 100gb format where NTFS works).

 

[WildWon]

I have a similar question along these lines.

Do emulators require a Fat partition to run? Are there any that can run off of Fat32? I have a Fat32 partition for my emulators (and other needed things... wads, apps etc etc) and everything works fine, except for the Emulators that cannot find the USB drive (which i assume is due to the Fat32, but i'm not sure, and i don't want to wipe everything and reformat if that's not the problem... OR theres a way around it.)

Thanks guys!

 

[julz1]

I have a similar question along these lines.

Do emulators require a Fat partition to run? Are there any that can run off of Fat32? I have a Fat32 partition for my emulators (and other needed things... wads, apps etc etc) and everything works fine, except for the Emulators that cannot find the USB drive (which i assume is due to the Fat32, but i'm not sure, and i don't want to wipe everything and reformat if that's not the problem... OR theres a way around it.)

Thanks guys!

well your pretty new to this so im assuming you didnt do this. go into settings and it will show you where your emulator is looking for roms. default is like sd/snesx9/roms so you would have to change it to usb/snesx9 etc etc

 

[WildWon]

I have a similar question along these lines.

Do emulators require a Fat partition to run? Are there any that can run off of Fat32? I have a Fat32 partition for my emulators (and other needed things... wads, apps etc etc) and everything works fine, except for the Emulators that cannot find the USB drive (which i assume is due to the Fat32, but i'm not sure, and i don't want to wipe everything and reformat if that's not the problem... OR theres a way around it.)

Thanks guys!

well your pretty new to this so im assuming you didnt do this. go into settings and it will show you where your emulator is looking for roms. default is like sd/snesx9/roms so you would have to change it to usb/snesx9 etc etc

You assumed wrong.

Already tried that. That's why i get the error of "unable to locate USB drive." So, does it require a fat partition or is Fat32 ok, or do i just have emulators which can't use Fat32?

Emulators in question:
GenpluxGXr370
FCEugX 3.1.3gxc4
Snes9x GX 4.1.5

(side question: any good Snes emus with Cover support? I saw there's one in the works on the boards here, but i didn't know if there were any more floating around. Thanks

)

 

[julz1]

A way you could confirm that the partition works is if
you move your SD Contents to the Fat32 part go to homebrew with no SD in and see if they even show

btw are you on WBFS & Fat32 or just Fat32 and the snes cover mod that is on here works great

 

[WildWon]

Do emulators require a Fat partition to run?

I have a Fat32 partition for my emulators (and other needed things... wads, apps etc etc) and everything works fine, except for the Emulators that cannot find the USB drive

I've just simplified my post in the quote.

So, once more, all homebrew runs fine. It's ONLY the emulators that cannot locate the USB drive after i've selected the USB drive in the options of the emulators. None of them properly locate it.

So, do emulators require a Fat drive to run? Are there any emulators that can read a Fat32 partition?

(And, i'm on a WBFS partition for Wii games, and a Fat32 for homebrew, same drive.)

Which Snes emulator are you talking about. The one thats currently under tests for a cover mod? Or is there another one that i've missed that's fully complete?

 

[Jacobeian]

yes, emulators require a FAT partition (FAT16 or FAT32, does not matter)
if compiled with a recent libfat/libogc, they should be able to autofind the first FAT partition on your harddrive (not verified, I always put the partition with roms as primary active)

oh, btw, the version of emulators does not really matter, but the version of the libraries they were linked with, USB/SDHC support is build in those libraries

if that does not work, it might be your harddrive that is not compatible

 

[julz1]

Try this i think this sounds about right

You must have a FAT 32 partition on your USB device and this partition must be set to ACTIVE.

A. To set the partition to active, go to your Control Panel, then Administrative Tools, then Computer Management.

B. Under storage, select Disk Management. You will get a list of all your drives and partitions on the right.

C. Select the drive with the Fat32 partition you are using. You will see it highlighted below.

D. Right click on the drive and select Mark Partition as Active.

i think the WBFS is primary so it is not detected it shouldnt affect your usb loader because you can select the partition

 

[WildWon]

I have the WBFS first, which is automatically set to Primary, then the Fat32 (followed by an NTFS, for PC backup... its a 600gig drive lol). I set the Fat32 (2nd) partition to Primary as well, so WadManager (1.4, extended mod) can actually reach that, but haven't set anything to Active.

I'll be trying that out as soon as i'm out of work tonight. Thanks

UPDATE:
Alright, so i just set it to Active (which it was not) so hopefully this'll work! I'll comment back as soon as i find out! (currently watching Chuck with Wife®, so i gotta wait a bit

)

Thanks!

 

[WildWon]

Update-

Ok, i set the drive to active, and... i didn't work :\

Heres what my setup is looking like:

600gig SATA HD in an External case.

Order (order is actual order on drive, Letters are included, just in case it helps

)/Partition Type:
K: WBSF(500gig) - Wii games
J: FAT32(50gig) - Wii Homebrew/etc
Z: NTSF(50gig) - Extra CPU Backup Space

Both the WBSF and the Fat32 drives are set to primary (so the Fat32 can be read by WadManager 1.4 expanded mod, which works w00t!... fyi heh) and i've now just set the Fat32 to Active.

Any other thoughts?

(ps, thanks for the help thus far, greatly appreciated!)