Why?

​You have asked for it, so here it is...

USB Partition

The Wii U only allows you to format whole USB storage devices to use them for expanding the storage to store Wii U games. This stroopwafel plugin changes this. It lets you use a partition on your USB storage device for storing Wii U games. You can for example have one partition to use in vWii with USB Loaders and then a second Wii U formatted partition to store your Wii U games.

There are two variants of this plugin: the standard one (wafel_usb_partition.ipx) only mounts the Wii U formatted partition. The sd variant (wafel_usb_partition_sd.ipx) allow you to use a FAT32 partition as a SD card replacement.


If you want instead use a Partition on your SD card as USB storage for Wii U games look here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/sdusb-the-modern-way-to-play-wii-u-games-from-sd-at-full-speed.655744/

Prerequisites

​You need two things:

1. a way to launch minute (usually ISFShax)
2. a USB Storage device, like an external HDD, SSD or industrial USB Flash drive.

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.
If you want to use the SD emulation feature, you need to setup ISFShax to run completely from SLC (as you won't have a real SD card to load the files from)

For 2. you find already enough recommendations and people with strong optinions on what to use and what not, so I won't go into much detail there. Generally flash drives use the cheapest of the cheapest garbage flahs and therefore won't last long, even brand ones. So it's generally advised to avoid them or make sure it is really a good one by checking if it gives numbers for TBW and implements wear leveling.

Setup

​First of all make a Backup. If anything goes wrong, the whole Disk will be formatted and you lose everything* which was previously on it! You have been warned...

*testdisk might or might not be able to recover something if you are lucky, but do not rely on that.

Partitioning the USB disk​

On Windows you can probably use Disk Management with HDDS. If DIsk Management won't work for you or you have Pen drive you can use a third party tool like Minitool Partition Wizard or Easeus, on Linux you can use gparted.

The general rules are: The partition Table needs to be MBR, not GPT. The first Partition (by number, not physical location) is either ignored or used as SD card (depending on which favor of the plugin you use). If you want to use it as SD card, it needs to be primary (not logical) and formatted FAT32. From the other primary partitions only ones with the NTFS (or exFAT) type will be considered. The phsically last one of those will be chosen and used as (wfs) USB storage.

You can either chose from scratch by deleting all partitions and start from scratch or resize an existing partition to make room.
An example setup would be:
two primary partitions on the USB Disk:

1. FAT32 - (in gparted set lba flag). Here goes the vWii games and homebrew if you use the SD variant of the plugin.
2. NTFS - This partition will be seen by the Wii U as "USB", you use to store the Wii U games on (don't assign a drive letter)

NTFS won't be the file system the Wii U will be using, it is just there to tell the plugin which partition to use. The Wii U will later format it with it's own file system (wfs).

Installing the Plugin​

Get the latest wafel_usb_partition.ipx from here: https://github.com/StroopwafelCFW/wafel_usb_partition/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 usbpart.ipx

Using the Partition

​If you now boot boot back up, the Partition shows up as a USB device, which needs to be formatted and can then be used as usual. Before you start installing stuff on it, I would recommend you connect it back to the PC and check if it worked and the partitions are still there. After formatting the partition, you can also connect an existing USB storage and copy stuff over.

Caveats with the SD emulation

The SD emulation is only present in the Wii U OS. It won't have any affect on vWii and also isn't available in minute. So you can't use it to load the ios_plugins or do backups to in minute.
It should only be used without an actual SD inserted to avoid potential corruption. The Wii U FAT driver only supports one device. If two are connected the one which is detected later is used. If both are connected during bootup the USB one would win, since USB is detected later than the real SD.

 

[Intellettuanale2]

What if I copy everything via ftp from storage_usb before to wipe the hdd to restore it again? Can I play my games again or I have to reinstall it anyway?

 

[SDIO]

It might mess up the permissions and it would then also not create the quotas, but just folders instead. It might still work. Also it would be very slow copying everything over FTP

 

[Intellettuanale2]

Thanks for the reply. I could try and post the result.

 

[RoyalGuard]

Hi, just to be sure. Could I have 3 Partitions (NTFS/exFAT for General Use, FAT32/NTFS for vWii, NTFS for WiiU)?
Also, is it better to have NTFS or FAT32 for the vWii partition?

 

[SDIO]

yes you can have more partitions. The Wii U partition just needs to be the last primary partition with the NTFS type.

 

[VashTS]

i might be missing the benefit here - can't two hard drives accomplish the same feat? i suppose that is a small benefit, imo, if you want like a 4 TB build - 2TB for wii u and 2 TB for vWii (including Gamecube).

 

[spenat]

Thank you! Took me actually nearly 4 hours of troubleshooting to realise I have uploaded the wrong plugin to my Wii U (the SDUSB instead of USB Partition) and used a different folder when working with ISFShax (/storage_mlc/ vs /storage_slc/)

Oh well, working absolutely great now without any SD card now with my 2TB drive.

Thanks again for the guide!

 

[ukigh4ie2]

Hi @SDIO !

Moving software and saves from old disk (500GB) to new disk (1TB) using WiiU's data management gives an 160-2706.

The old disk uses 100% WFS, the new one 50% WFS with the partition plugin. Formatting was fine.

My WiiU has the USB power mod so both USB ports provide enough power to the disks.

 

[tchp123]

yes you can have more partitions. The Wii U partition just needs to be the last primary partition with the NTFS type.

Hi SDIO,
Firstly, I'd like to express my gratitude to you for creating these incredibly useful tools (USB Partition and ISFShax...) for the Wii U community.

Secondly, I'd like to inquire about the possibility of implementing a new feature in the future version of your tool.

In my house, we have four Wii U consoles for me and my three younger siblings. I want to use one large hard drive and divide it into 4 or 5 separate partitions so that each of the 4 Wii U consoles can use its one specific partition for WiiU's games on the same one big USB hard drive.

I have tried using your tool (USB Partition installed on 4 WiiU) and creating four partitions on one USB HDD, but each time, the 4 Wii U consoles only format and use the same one partition of this one USB HDD, ignoring the other three NTFS partitions on the same USB HDD.

So I wonder if in the future, can you implement this feature (that allows multiple WII U consoles to use separate partitions on a single USB HDD) in your tool or create another tool for this purpose ?

 

[SDIO]

I don't really see the point in having one HDD for multiple consoles, since you can only use it on one console at a time anyway. So why not just have one console with the HDD?
I deliberately made the plugin in such a way that it works without config, because that would add much complexity. But your case would need a config to tell the plugin which partition to use.
If you really wanted, you could modifiy this function for each console to select a different partition and compile a separate version the plugin for each console: https://github.com/jan-hofmeier/waf...6417d77960502377d2b0a854/source/sal_mbr.c#L18

Also keep in mind that MBR limits you to 4 partitions

 

[tchp123]

I don't really see the point in having one HDD for multiple consoles, since you can only use it on one console at a time anyway. So ....

Hi SDIO,
Thank you very much for your detailed reply.

In my case, because my younger brothers are not very good with these editing tools, they feel confused about what to do with many HDDs for WiiU. Additionally, we use our Wii U at different times due to work and school.

So I want to make it easier for them to use a single USB HDD. Anyone can take this HDD and use it whenever they need without the fear of using the wrong HDD on other Wii U consoles, and possibly formatting the HDD data incorrectly.

I appreciate your guidance on this matter a lot and will look at your advice on this subject.

Thank you again, Sido.

 

[luk234]

I've been using this and it works great! I was able to add all my games back to USB Loader GX using my old Wii config files. But there's one strange issue... there are two Wii injects that I keep on the Wii U menu for gamepad support (Smash Bros Brawl and DBZ BT3). If this plugin is active, said games will ALWAYS reboot back to the Wii U menu. Wii emulator injects suffer the same fate. Is this how it's supposed to be? I would really prefer to have both options available at all times, but if it's impossible I might have to just format my Wii U HDD again Thanks in advance!

EDIT: I forgot to add the testing environment, I tried this config both in Aroma and Tiramisu, and both with HDD plugged in and no HDD. Same result in all the tests, Wii injects reboot back to the Wii U menu. If I disable the plugin, Wii injects work as intended.

 

[SDIO]

It should work. Can you try launching Wii VC from internal memory to see if at least that works?

 

[luk234]

I just gave it a try with a game and the nintendont forwarder, the problem seems to be present on both internal memory and USB.

 

[Tofu_mommy]

Sounds like the same issue I ran into, Wii games that reboot the system end up just rebooting back into IOSU.

 

[MrBlanko]

Havent been into WiiU homebrew for a while so whats my best option now ? I already got an external hdd for my wiiu i have been thinking about buying a second one for the vWII but this tool would allow me to split my hdd into two parts right ? How troublesome would the whole preserving data and moving it thing be ? thx

 

[Anrei]

Sorry if I'm being dumb, so the SD and this with the SD variant can't be used together because of corruption risk. But if Minute can only be loaded on the sd and is needed for this, I'm wondering how it'd be possible ? Is it safe if only the minute files are on there? I feel like I'm misunderstanding something major lol

Thank you for all your hard work

**Oh I can get it to run the minute patch from the SLC instead. Somehow missed that part, sorry