Hacking Trimming Wii isos

[LufianGuy]

I am using a 60GB WD Passport as my external Wii HD. I tried looking for the answer to my question, not sure yet.

I want to know how to get games to their smallest WORKABLE forms for backing them up on another external and playing them using a USB Loader.

I copied my Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn to my external using the wii and it installed as 3.05GB. I extracted the iso using WBFS Manger 3.0.1 as 4.37GB.

I just downloaded Wiiscrubber 1.4 today. I understand that scrubbing it allows you to compress it into a .rar or .zip using less space.

Do all scrubbed games work 100%? (I have read there is some debate on this question)

Does scrubbing an iso make it install using less space on an external?

Do trimmed games work 100% when played? (Fire Emblem trimmed iso is 2.90GB) It worked!

Does it help further to scrub and trim an iso together?

Thanks!

I plan to test these questions out myself later when I can actually play my wii.

 

[Bloodlust]

WBFS manager does the job of scrubbing and trimming. With deca sports 2, it was around 500mb in compressed rar files. After being added to the hdd, it's only 190mb. Beat that.

 

[Dteyn]

I've always scrubbed my backup DVD-R copies as well as removed all updates with Wii Update Manager, and never experienced problems with any of them.

If you want to store a backup copy of the original, untouched ISO file on an external or internal NTFS hard drive, you can create a folder with compression enabled (right click, properties, advanced, compression) and store the scrubbed ISO files in there. They won't be quite as small as if you use RAR or 7zip on maximum compression, but they'll take up significantly less than the 4.37gb they would normally take up, and you have the added benefit of the ISO files not taking 30-60 minutes to extract before you can use them.

The nice thing about WBFS format hard drives is the WBFS tools (and USB Loader) when installing a game, they only extract the game partition, ignoring the updates and unused data. This is why, as Bloodlust mentions, games installed on a WBFS hard drive will take up the least amount of space as possible. This is cause you're not storing the whole ISO file, just the game partition.

The "disadvantage" (I use the term loosely) of this is if you want to extract the game, it rebuilds the ISO using a template that doesn't include the original updates. So, for example, if you ever planned to use the backup game on WBFS to update another Wii, you'll be out of luck since the update won't be included. This is remedied of course by using Wii Update Manager to install an update into the ISO, if so desired.

Thus the best way to store backup games is on a WBFS formatted hard drive, as then each game will take up the least amount of space. Even if you aren't planning on playing the games with USB Loader (for some ungodly reason), and just having a game storage database, WBFS is still the best option. Some Wii games 'game partition' are incredibly small, for instance Wii Play only takes up 90mb!

Edit: Also if you have another external HDD as a storage database (like you mention, you are using the 60gb as the playing HDD and another one to store games), you could split it and have part of it as NTFS for general storage, and the other part as WBFS for Wii game storage. Then you can get one of the many WBFS tools that supports USBUSB transfer, and to change the games on your 60gb you would just hook both up, delete games off the 60gb to make space, then copy directly from the storage WBFS hdd to the 60gb hdd. Or you could just hook up the other one to the USB Loader and use it that way, whichever you prefer.

 

[LufianGuy]

I was quite shocked this morning to see that the scrubbed no headers version of Fire Emblem (compress) iso came out to be the same exact size as a not scrubbed version with winrar best compression at 3.05GB.

Did I do something wrong?

Also I think updating my WBFS Manager is also probably the reason some games install smaller than they used to (on 3.0, it installed Fire Emblem as 3.05GB. On 3.0.1, it installed it as 2.91GB).

 

[LufianGuy]

I'm just going to trim the games, then compress the trimmed iso into a rar afterwards for storage.