Why?

​Even though the Wii U has a built in SD slot, it doesn't support using it as a storage expansion to store Wii U games (unlike it's predecessor). USB pen drives are notoriously unreliable and hard drives are bulky and require extra power or a Y cable, using up multiple ports. Today big reliable SD cards have become cheap. Since a SD is needed anyway for homebrew, it would be nice to use that too as storage for games.
There have been solutions in the past like Loadiine, but this had various problems, the biggest of them performance and is not longer supported by current homebrew environments (Aroma).

SDUSB

​SDUSB solves these problems. It uses a second partition on the SD card, which will be formatted to the Wii Us native file system and therefore run at full speed. The partition will show up as a USB device and can therefore be managed using the built in Data Management in the system settings. SaveMii, WUP Installers etc. all work with this, like it is a USB storage device. Also HAI (VC Wii Titles) work with SDUSB.
SDUSB does all that by patching IOSU (the OS that runs on the ARM processor). It is implemented as a stroopwafel plugin.

If you instead want to partition your USB HDD to use it for Wii U games and other stuff look here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/usb-partition-use-partitioned-usb-hdds-with-the-wii-u.656209/

Prerequisites

​You need two things:

1. a way to launch minute
2. a reliable SD card

For 1. the recommended way is to setup ISFShax, for that we have a guide here: How to set up ISFShax
If you don't want to commit to installing ISFShax yet you can skip the "Installing ISFShax" step in the ISFShax setup guide and instead run it manually through the chosen exploit on every reboot.
Instead if ISFShax you can also use defuse, in case you have that already.

For 2. It is highly recommended that you use an Endurance branded SD card from a reputable brand. Since your save games will also be saved there, you rather want to spend $5 more then to lose all your save games because your cheapo sd card died. Also be aware of fakes, even on Amazon you can get fake SD cards...
The speed of the SD card isn't too important, as the Wii U is limited to 25MB/s (same as the internal memory) anyway. Every somewhat recent SD card should be able to get that speed. Choose Reliability > Access Time > Throughput.

Setup

​

Partitioning the SD card​

On Windows you need to use a third party tool like Minitool Partition Wizard or Easeus, on Linux you can use gparted.
You need to have two primary partitions on the card:

1. FAT32 - (in gparted set lba flag). This is what the PC will see and all your homebrew goes (you should already have this)
2. NTFS - This partition will be the "USB", you use to store the Wii U games on (don't assign a drive letter)

Shrink the existing FAT32 partition to make room and then create the primary NTFS partition after it. It's recommended to align the Partitions on 64MiB boundaries and use a multiple of 64MiB for the size. NTFS won't be the file system the Wii U will be using, it is just there to tell SDUSB which partition to use (it will pick the first NTFS one). The Wii U will later format it with it's own file system.

​

Installing the Plugin​

Get the latest wafel_sd_usb.ipx from here: https://github.com/jan-hofmeier/wafel_sd_usb/releases and place it in your ios_plugins folder. That is either wiiu/ios_plugins on the SD card or /sys/hax/ios_plugins on the slc. For slc you have to rename it to something shorter like sdusb.ipx

Using SDUSB

​If you now boot back up, the Partition shows up as a USB device, which needs to be formatted and can then be used as usual. After formatting the SDUSB, you can also connect an existing USB storage and copy stuff over.

Known Problems

​

• GC VC Injectes don't work when installed to the SDUSB (they still work from Internal Memory)

 

[KirbyChyn]

Isfshax shouldn't even take 3 seconds with the fastboot compared to a normal boot with standby services disabled. With standby stuff enabled it boots a few seconds faster. If ISFShax is installed you always get the slower coldboot even with standby services enabled.

Didn't see a case where USB was faster than eMMC / SD, but that might depend on the game. Maybe you can notice something in a game like BOTW? But I don't think anywone has measured that. Random access stuff would be prbably faster on the SD.
Also gamecoube games works, when loaded through vWii, just playing GC games installed as VC Inject from the SDUSB is a problem.

I tried Botw on my 128gb Sandisk sd, and I must say it works pretty well, the loading screens last the same (or maybe faster) than a 64gb USB I have

 

[XDeltaOne]

Hello @SDIO I noticed that the current version of GameCube Injects does not start again and the Wii U always restarts. In the previous version, it still worked. I meant the SDUSB plugin.

 

[ikn0w1]

Good luck!
use this forwarder: Nintendont-CrisMMMod.ver.7.30.0005000248058BE1.zip

I have spent less than a fortnight with the Wii U and I had everything working as I wanted to with my initial setup (an old 8 GB SD card paired with another old 32 GB flash drive). I purchased a 256 GB High Endurance SanDisk SD card this week to streamline my setup with SDUSB.

The partition setup was fine and the Wii U part works fine. However, I found that any Nintendont forwarder simply causes a reboot after the Wii splash screen when installed to NAND. When installed to USB, it cannot find the FAT32 partition. I get the exact same behaviour when using Wii64 as a WiiVC inject.

The exception is USB Loader GX forwarder which works as expected, reboots fine and detects the FAT32 partition. Nintendont also works fine within vWii.

So, is there anything that can be done with SDUSB in this scenario to get the Nintendont forwarder and Wii64 to detect the SD card?

 

[ikn0w1]

I have spent less than a fortnight with the Wii U and I had everything working as I wanted to with my initial setup (an old 8 GB SD card paired with another old 32 GB flash drive). I purchased a 256 GB High Endurance SanDisk SD card this week to streamline my setup with SDUSB.

The partition setup was fine and the Wii U part works fine. However, I found that any Nintendont forwarder simply causes a reboot after the Wii splash screen when installed to NAND. When installed to USB, it cannot find the FAT32 partition. I get the exact same behaviour when using Wii64 as a WiiVC inject.

The exception is USB Loader GX forwarder which works as expected, reboots fine and detects the FAT32 partition. Nintendont also works fine within vWii.

So, is there anything that can be done with SDUSB in this scenario to get the Nintendont forwarder and Wii64 to detect the SD card?

@SDIO I see that v2.4 was released a few hours ago and I immediately updated to the same. However, I still cannot get Nitendont forwarder to boot into vWii. I was using my own forwarders for Nitendont and Wii64 previously, but for quick testing I used the ones from the link below, which worked with the SD and USB setup previously. I have all the IOS plugins loading from SLC with the SD ones as backup.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1y4KDO52wImmoETJYF0UAap9nTNAUmnqq

Also, GC injects created using TeconMoon's latest WiiVC Injector installed to NAND exhibit the same behaviour. It is mentioned that GC injects work fine when installed to NAND but that isn't the case for me with SDUSB.

 

[SDIO]

do you also have the latest stroopwafel?

 

[ikn0w1]

do you also have the latest stroopwafel?

Thanks! Missed the stroopwafel update.

Nintendont and Wii64 (with cafe2wii patching) launch fine now when installed on NAND, so I can play those on the Wii U gamepad alone.

GC inject also worked fine installed to NAND, though I prefer not having to install anything else to NAND (even though I have the Toshiba one) and instead load it from the SD card within Nintendont.

One bug that I encountered each time though is that the injects would get stuck on the WiiU-side splash screen if I launched them immediately after installing to NAND. However, they work fine after a reboot.

 

[DankFire]

Okay, so I did all the steps required, yet when I boot my Wii U I do not get the format pop-up and when I go to my System Settings to Data Management and Format USB Storage Device and proceed to the "ensure the USB storage device...", going on from that when it says 'Checking USB storage device..." it doesn't get anywhere after that. Yes I have waited, no it doesn't go forward.

(I probably missed something so if this is an issue someone can figure out please lmk-)

 

[SDIO]

You either didn't partition the SD correctly or didn't install the plugin to where you are loading the patches from

 

[DankFire]

You either didn't partition the SD correctly or didn't install the plugin to where you are loading the patches from

I think I installed it to both of the ios_plugins folders, the one in the internal storage (SLC/sys/hax/ios_plugins) and the one in the SD card (wiiu/ios_plugins) but I will try this again and make sure i didn't mess up
(i forgot the exact file paths cba to check before replying)
im gonna check to make sure i partitioned it correctly as well
first of probably several edits: partition doesn't show up in partition wizard so im gonna redo that step rq
edit 2: nvm figured out what i fucked up gonna try again thanks
edit 3: it worked, thanks for the help brother have a good day

 

[toleratesrex]

Interesting.
However, I can't see any real advantages. This setup is way complicated vs a simple usb pendrive. Or, if you care about reliability, an endurance sdcard with an usb adapter.
Has its merits, of course.

I mod consoles for people who don’t have a lot of tech knowledge and so having just one place for all the files rather than an sd for some things and a usb for others is extremely handy