Hardware So the 32GB USB flash drive I used for my Wii U no longer works...

Lukandon

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I didn't know flash drives weren't recommended by Nintendo, it was just supposed to be temporary until I could get an HDD, but it turned out to be a pretty long temporary... over a year and a half. I was forced to get an HDD as well as a Y cable.

So I found out about this sector to sector copy thing, I tried it with HDD RAW Copy Tool, but it seemed to copy the corruption as well as it couldn't be read by anything after. It looked liked there was no partition so I put it back then formatted it.

I then looked up other tools to do it better, I tried AOMEI Partition Assistant using copy disk, but it creates more than one partition: One for the copied data and one for everything else which is empty and it doesn't look like there's even a file system. I can't merge the partitions together either.

So how do I do it? I REALLY DON'T want to lose all my save data which includes:
Mario Kart 8
Mario Party 10
Nintendo Land
Skylanders SuperChargers (my nephew's probably going to be sad about possibly lost progress)
Super Smash Bros.
Splatoon (Not much progress really, but still... I know I was under level 20 and I didn't do the single player thing)
Xenoblade Chronicles Wii (It may not be X which is bigger and non linear, but still, I DO NOT want to start again. I was at the part after beating Xord, it's still a lot of possibly wasted progress)
And a bunch of indie games including Runbow and The Cave... my nephew's going to be sad if I tell him I lost our progress on the latter.

That's all I can think of of the games I possibly lost my progress in.
Not as much as what other people probably have, like over a 100 hours of playtime in XCX and stuff... but it doesn't matter because lost progress is still lost progress and I don't want to lose it. :(
 
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Captain_N

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I have cloned flash dries before for the wii u before. I used Acronis true image home. It has to be a written to a drive of the same size or larger. You cant edit the partition as its encrypted with your consoles key. There are not tools for editing Wii U formatted drives. All you can do is make a 1:1 image of the drive.

Since the data was corrupted it will clone the corruption. I use a 128 gb Flash on my Wii U. I don't think your data is usable since you said you formatted it. I usually keep a copy of the saves on a second device. Data corruption happens to often.
 
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Lukandon

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I don't think the data was corrupted. I found out somewhere else that the flash drive would just stop being read by the Wii U because flash drives can't handle the read/write process as often as HDDs on the Wii U. It still gets detected by my PC of course, it asks me to format it since it can't do anything with it but I clicked cancel because I need to get the game data copied.
I didn't format the flash drive, at least I don't think I did, I formatted the HDD though because because it wasn't working properly after the copying from the flash drive.
So am I stuck then?
 

Captain_N

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It sounds like that flash drive is failing. Id get another 32gb drive and make a 1:1 image of the drive with your data on it. Then write that image to the new flash drive. Then see if you can copy the data from the new drive.
 

Lukandon

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Sigh... I really don't want to spend more cash. I'm supposed to be saving my money.
I do have a 32GB micro SD card which I am currently using with my 3DS, can I copy from the flash drive to the SD? At least with the SD card, I can backup the 3DS's data from it just fine onto the PC.
How do I copy the data from the new drive anyway? It would have the Wii U's format on it, so do you mean the Wii U will read the new one with the data just fine?

EDIT: You know what? I give up. I'll just accept the fact that I'll never get my save data back.
Here's hoping that NX doesn't have issues with storage of any kind.
 
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528491

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I didn't know flash drives weren't recommended by Nintendo, it was just supposed to be temporary until I could get an HDD, but it turned out to be a pretty long temporary... over a year and a half. I was forced to get an HDD as well as a Y cable.

It sounds like that flash drive is failing. Id get another 32gb drive and make a 1:1 image of the drive with your data on it. Then write that image to the new flash drive. Then see if you can copy the data from the new drive.

I truly need to bump this thread because it outlines EXACTLY what happened to me, and I am trying to resolve it for almost a month now. I do not want to give up on my save files, I want to recover them by cloning the problematic flash drive to a healthy external HDD.

I used 32GB flash stick for my saves and one day decided to make room and copy (not move) some of the save files to the WiiU internal storage. The process reached 99% and then the error message popped up saying:
Code:
cannot finish operation the disc is write protected
which is a weird message to begin with. After that WiiU simply stopped recognising that usb stick, the channel windows (those that were read from the usb drive) on the home menu went empty, and every time I try to enter the WiiU Data management in settings, while this stick is plugged in, the error 150-3032 pops up (photos: https://goo.gl/photos/LJadHVzcdsNPGxuR7).

My plan is to make 1:1 clone of the problematic drive to a healthy external drive, but first I am doing a series of 1:1 cloning attempts of a smaller drive, to see if this is even possible. @Captain_N, you say Acronis makes this possible? This is 100% true?
For testing purposes I put my perfectly working Crunchyroll save files (around 150MB) on a 8GB usb flash stick. When I use this flash stick, the WiiU recognises it perfectly.
However, when I clone this drive to another equal 8GB usb stick, this clone drive is NEVER recognised by the WiiU. It even does not offer me to format it. It is like it isn't there.
I tried ImageUSB and HDClone, with numerous different settings, and it never succeeded. Are you sure Acronis True Image will work?
Also, is it important on which format the target drive is formatted prior to cloning? Or does the cloning process overwrite everything on the target drive including the format? For instance is it important to prepare the target drive as a WiiU formatted drive, or does it have to be NTFS/FAT32 formatted, or it doesn't matter?
 
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Captain_N

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Yeah i used acronis and older version on an xp machine. You can torrent a copy to test it. i tested it with a 256mb flash drive with one game (that nano assault neo game on e-shop)on it to test and i cloned it to a different 256mb drive and it worked. i also wrote the image to a 1 gig drive and that worked. I was able to play the game and save on the new drive. I know it works. Remember if the drive is got bad blocks it will copy those to. But maybe there is enough data good to get the saves out
 
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528491

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@@Captain_N Thanks so much, this gives a lot of hope. I just tried with USBIT, as advised on this thread, and found that it works, but only and solely if you write an image to that exact literally same usb drive that you created image from. It did not work with different usb drive. Before I proceed with that, I will now try with Acronis.

So it doesn't matter how formatted is the target drive, correct?
 
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528491

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Hello, just as a heads up, I am posting my progress so far. I need to stress that Acronis True Image versions 2016 and 2015 do not recognize WiiU formatted Usb flash drive as a source for clone job. They simply do not show up in the source dialogue window. Interestingly enough, they do show up in destination dialogue window, but this is useless, since I need to choose them as a source. Acronis 2014 installation did not work for me, so right now I am installing version 2010, in hopes for better luck.

Edit:
Tried version 2010 and it does not even allow cloning (it only recognizes the internal HDD, it does not see WiiU formatted usb drives).
 
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