Hacking USB too small

[Lux420]

I spent days waiting for Wii Sports to rip from a legally purchased copy, and I just figured out that my only USB stick is slightly too small for the ISO.

My USB stick is 3.84 GB, FAT32.
Wii Sports.iso is 4.37 GB.

I've read somewhere that the file size of the actual game data can be very small while the initial size can be deceptive. Is this true? Can it help me?

Can USB Loader GX play an ISO from a compressed file? If I put it in a .rar or .zip and compress it to fit on the drive, can I then play it on the Wii?

Can I separate the file into two parts and put one on USB and the other on the SD card and play it that way?

I'm desperate! Help is appreciated

Also, does there need to be something on the USB stick for USBloaderGX to recognize it? Or should I not be using Ftt32? It freezes up when trying to initialize USB device?

EDIT: I trimmed the .iso with a scrubbing utility. It now fits on the drive but the loader still freezes!

 

[PPSainity]

I spent days waiting for Wii Sports to rip from a legally purchased copy, and I just figured out that my only USB stick is slightly too small for the ISO.

My USB stick is 3.84 GB, FAT32.
Wii Sports.iso is 4.37 GB.

I've read somewhere that the file size of the actual game data can be very small while the initial size can be deceptive. Is this true? Can it help me?

Can USB Loader GX play an ISO from a compressed file? If I put it in a .rar or .zip and compress it to fit on the drive, can I then play it on the Wii?

Can I separate the file into two parts and put one on USB and the other on the SD card and play it that way?

I'm desperate! Help is appreciated

Also, does there need to be something on the USB stick for USBloaderGX to recognize it? Or should I not be using Ftt32? It freezes up when trying to initialize USB device?

EDIT: I trimmed the .iso with a scrubbing utility. It now fits on the drive but the loader still freezes!
Since you are using a FAT32 formatted drive, and USB Loader GX, you should be using WBFS files instead of ISO files. WBFS files are scrubbed by default so that they only contain the game partition. In most cases, this results in a drastically smaller file. In the case of Wii Sports or Wii Sports Resort, from a normal single layer Wii ISO size of 4.37 GB (4699979776 bytes) you can get:
CODE* Wii Sports (NTSC-U).......................................... [0.31GB]
* Wii Sports (PAL)............................................. [0.62GB]
* Wii Sports Resort (NTSC-U)................................... [0.68GB]
* Wii Sports Resort (PAL)...................................... [0.83GB]

Much smaller eh?

You can use almost any game manager, like Wii Backup Manager for Windows, to convert the game ISO file into a WBFS file. Afterward, just place the WBFS file in a folder named WBFS in the root of your USB drive, and USB Loader GX should see it fine, if not make sure USB Loader GX is set to look into the right partition and folder on your USB drive.

If USB Loader GX is freezing when trying to mount your USB drive, your drive may be incompatible. I would try reformatting the stick first, and/or trying different cIOS to verify compatibility before buying a new USB HDD, though a USB HDD will make things easier in the long run...

-[]D

 

[Lux420]

Whoo! Thank you, that's a big help. I don't know how that didn't show up in all of the searching I did.