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)

 

[OminouS]

I've had the exact same issue you described a few weeks back, and from what I can tell it's part random luck, part whatever downloader you're using not fully downloading all the files, and part not all files being written to the SD card right. Only way to is to keep redownloading the same game and keep trying to install it again, and I've found that using the Copy To SD function by Wii U USB Helper getting good results when it comes to getting everything onto the SD card right - try that from now on.

As for XCX's DLC: don't worry about it, it's already included in the US/PAL versions so you don't need it.

Funny, but after my last comment I realized this XCX's DLC is only needed for disc version (it's only for better loading times) and I deleted install files immediately, because I own digital version. From now on, I installed successfully 5-6 titles without any stops, and only several games I need are left, so it's looking good. Nevertheless, thanks for confirmation about that DLC and advice about copy function I think when we have a lot of .app files etc. in folders, it has high chance of slightly corrupting files. In contrast, when I was in PS3 CFW stuff, its games are fully compressed into one file (.iso for discs, .pkg for digital content) and I haven't ever had any issue with wrong ROMS.

#edit
Yesterday I installed about 10 games without any freezing.
TL;DR: When problems like mine occur, just backup and format your FAT32 partition. And don't install XCX' DLC, it isn't neccessary

 

[Tofu_mommy]

Anyone having issues with modding the vWii on this setup? I was trying to get an USB loader GX setup going in the vWii to get Metroid Prime Trilogy working, as the eShop inject can't boot into 1 and 2 even when running off MLC when using an option on minute to boot with no patches applied. I've sent feedback to the vWii compat installer, as it crashes my WiiU on the splash screen when I use it to try to set up the homebrew channel. Loading it up with the WiiU booted without the SDUSB patch doesn't fix the issue either.

Is there some way to manually set up the Homebrew Channel on the vWii?

 

[4d1xlaan]

Anyone having issues with modding the vWii on this setup? I was trying to get an USB loader GX setup going in the vWii to get Metroid Prime Trilogy working, as the eShop inject can't boot into 1 and 2 even when running off MLC when using an option on minute to boot with no patches applied. I've sent feedback to the vWii compat installer, as it crashes my WiiU on the splash screen when I use it to try to set up the homebrew channel. Loading it up with the WiiU booted without the SDUSB patch doesn't fix the issue either.

Is there some way to manually set up the Homebrew Channel on the vWii?

you have either tiramisu or aroma right?

 

[ElmBroken]

do i need to exploit my wii u with isfhax to use this?

 

[Tofu_mommy]

you have either tiramisu or aroma right?

I'm on Aroma, set up with a stroopwafel plugin to automatically launch into it by default as per tutorial.

 

[4d1xlaan]

do i need to exploit my wii u with isfhax to use this?

defuse is also an option

 

[ElmBroken]

defuse is also an option

dont i need soldering for that?

 

[4d1xlaan]

I'm on Aroma, set up with a stroopwafel plugin to automatically launch into it by default as per tutorial.

you could try the older methods if compat installer fails

https://wiiubrew.org/wiki/Wuphax

dont i need soldering for that?

yes

 

[ElmBroken]

you could try the older methods if compat installer fails

https://wiiubrew.org/wiki/Wuphax


yes

ok thank you, i think ill just use ISFShax

 

[Tofu_mommy]

ok thank you, i think ill just use ISFShax

Wuphax worked for me. I just had to set up Tiramisu alongside Aroma to use the Homebrew Launcher. Since the documentation on modding the vWii points towards other ways, I think it might be worth documenting that for those who get around to modding their vWii after setting up SDUSB. I don't know if it's necessary, but I was paranoid and ensured that the SDUSB patches are not loaded while using Wuphax, as it mentions to unplug all USB storage when setting it up.

 

[ElmBroken]

Wuphax worked for me. I just had to set up Tiramisu alongside Aroma to use the Homebrew Launcher. Since the documentation on modding the vWii points towards other ways, I think it might be worth documenting that for those who get around to modding their vWii after setting up SDUSB. I don't know if it's necessary, but I was paranoid and ensured that the SDUSB patches are not loaded while using Wuphax, as it mentions to unplug all USB storage when setting it up.

i think ill still use ISFShax instead cause its just seems rly easy and i dont want to install tiramisu

 

[Tofu_mommy]

Some other things I've ran into when using vWii with an SDUSB setup:
- USB loader GX can run problematic games inside of Metroid Prime Trilogy, I assume they don't work from injects for whatever reason also breaks GC injects.
- Disabling USB storage power saving fixes vWii randomly shutting down (happened to me about 3 times, so far it's been rock solid after disabling the problematic option) EDIT: scratch that, it happened again, I'll keep digging why it's happening, and it turns out that using a USB cable to power the gamepad off the Wii U caused the problem.

Both of these might be worth documenting as well, especially for those intending to rely on SDUSB for their Wii U setup.

 

[ElmBroken]

i need some help. ive created the partition, installed sdusb, changed the partition to primary instead of logical, set the drive letter to none, and the wii u says "could not format drive

 

[Tofu_mommy]

i need some help. ive created the partition, installed sdusb, changed the partition to primary instead of logical, set the drive letter to none, and the wii u says "could not format drive

What partition table are you using? For me, GPT wasn't recognized and I had to convert to MBR after the fact. If you're using gparted, that would be creating a "msdos" partition table, and then creating primary partitions with FAT32 and NTFS, in that particular order. If you've already spent time preparing the data and the partition layout is good outside of having the wrong type of table, there are tools out there to convert.

 

[ElmBroken]

What partition table are you using? For me, GPT wasn't recognized and I had to convert to MBR after the fact. If you're using gparted, that would be creating a "msdos" partition table, and then creating primary partitions with FAT32 and NTFS, in that particular order. If you've already spent time preparing the data and the partition layout is good outside of having the wrong type of table, there are tools out there to convert.

no, i actually got it working when i fomatted the ntfs partition again i just couldnt find out how to delete my previous post. thank you for you help!

 

[marhalloweenvt]

Sorry for this dumb question but How can I "ISFShax setup guide and instead run it manually through the chosen exploit on every reboot."
Currently, I am using Aroma. I have copy every file into SD card and I am in this screen:

Edit: When I choose "Patch (sd) and boot IOS (slc)", after it patched and show "Go Go Go", it's just black screen in gamepad

 

[OldGnashburg]

So GameCube Virtual Console Injects don't work but Wii Virtual Console Injects do? Any reason why? Is that something that can be fixed or is that a hardware limitation?

 

[SDIO]

@marhalloweenvt Make sure to have both the wafel core and the sdusb plugin in the plugin folder folder and then use the third option in minute

Post automatically merged: Jul 5, 2024

Nintendont based GC injects probably don't work because Nintendont also wants to access the SD. You can still put the GC injects on the mlc and there they should work

 

[OldGnashburg]

Wait? Does the SDUSB disable SD access on vWii? Or can it not read both partitions at once? How come Nintendon't can't be loaded off USB? I thought that it could on an original Wii?

 

[SDIO]

No, that only affects the injects, as the HAI IOS is emulating the disc drive from the SD and apparently it wants the SD exclusive for that.