Hacking USB Hard Drive conversion question

[Resident Stevil]

I'm looking to convert the current USB hard drive that I'm using from the native Wii U format to FAT32 for several reasons, chief among them being so that I can make it easier to install games and open up storage. However, I don't want to lose all the games that I already have currently installed on the drive. Now I do have access to it via FTP through the USB Helper app, and I can copy files between the Wii U drive and my PC.

My question is if I copied everything from the drive in its current state to a temporary place on my PC, convert the drive to FAT32, then copied everything back, would everything still read as normal or would I still end up having to reinstall all my games after the reformatting process again?

 

[Deleted User]

I'm looking to convert the current USB hard drive that I'm using from the native Wii U format to FAT32 for several reasons, chief among them being so that I can make it easier to install games and open up storage. However, I don't want to lose all the games that I already have currently installed on the drive. Now I do have access to it via FTP through the USB Helper app, and I can copy files between the Wii U drive and my PC.

My question is if I copied everything from the drive in its current state to a temporary place on my PC, convert the drive to FAT32, then copied everything back, would everything still read as normal or would I still end up having to reinstall all my games after the reformatting process again?

You d´still have to redownload all games again! Because WiiU doesn´t accept non-encrypted FAT32. WiiU uses a very-highend-protected (unknown) filesystem. Thus no matter what you do, the WiiU sses that Fat32, says "What`s this?" & formats it again with it´s own filesystem.Then, since it´s empty all content has to be coming from somewhere. You download the content.
When you download content it´s specifically encrypted with your WiiU´s hardware, only readable by your WiiU (own key). For this security each WiiU comes with an own key, that is stored in your machine.
And that is why "FAT32" can´t be used on WiiU. Because the WiiU only allows encrypted filesystems.

 

[JayMathis]

Yeah you'd lose everything that was meant for the Wii U. You cannot "transfer everything meant for the Wii U" to your computer even through FTP, and transfer it all back doesn't work that way.