Hacking USBLoaderGX Black Screen -- SSD Incompatible?

[dragonkoh]

EDIT: Concluded the drive is likely the issue. Switched to a 5TB WD P10 HDD and have no issues now.

---

Hi all! This might be a simple answer since I've been troubleshooting quite a bit already.

I've been working on trying to get a Wii set up to play WBFS and I've been successful but not with the hard drive I ideally wanted to use which is a Samsung T7 2TB SSD. However I have been successful with a Samsung T5 250GB SSD using the exact same setup. The answer might simply be that the 2TB one isn't compatible. I know it's overkill and there are cheaper options out there but this one was available so I figured I'd try it. If it simply won't work that's okay and I'll switch to a 2TB HDD instead which it sounds like people have been successful with.

With both drives I'm able to load into USBLoaderGX r1272 and see the list of Wii games but any that I've tried playing with the larger one results in a black screen. I've tried loading as IOS 249, 250, and 251 but it's always the same result. I've also tried using Wii Flow but it just says it can't detect any games when using the larger drive, although I've mostly been testing with USBLoaderGX.

I think I've got everything right since it seems to work perfectly with the 250GB SSD although I haven't tested for more than a few minutes of playtime yet since ideally I'm looking to have at least 2TB of storage. For reference, I only care about loading Wii and WiiWare files so any methods that can achieve that would be fine but for now my goal is just getting the WBFS files to load on a 2TB drive.

I've tried formatting the larger drive as FAT32, NTFS, and WBFS and none have been successful at loading a game. It's formatted as a single primary partition MBR. I'm mainly using Wii Backup Manager to format and copy the files although I've tried a few other things as well.

The 250GB drive which works well so far is formatted as WBFS and I haven't tried any other formats for comparison yet but I've had no issues with it so far.

So, is the likely answer that the larger drive simply won't work for this and I should switch to a 2TB HDD instead? Let me know if I overlooked anything or if there's anything else worth trying. Thanks in advance for any help or advice!

Here's my sysCheck.csv log:

Spoiler

SysCheck HDE v2.4.0 HacksDen Edition by JoostinOnline, Double_A, R2-D2199, and Nano
...runs on IOS58 (rev 6176).

Region: NTSC-U
System Menu 4.3U (v513)
Priiloader installed
Drive date: 02.13.2007
Homebrew Channel 1.1.2 running on IOS58

Hollywood v0x11
Console ID: XXXXXXX
Console Type: Wii
Shop Channel Country: United States (49)
Boot2 v4
Found 94 titles.
Found 47 IOS on this console. 15 of them are stubs.

IOS4 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS9 (rev 1034): No Patches
IOS10 (rev 768): Stub
IOS11 (rev 256): Stub
IOS12 (rev 526): No Patches
IOS13 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS14 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS15 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS16 (rev 512): Stub
IOS17 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS20 (rev 256): Stub
IOS21 (rev 1039): No Patches
IOS22 (rev 1294): No Patches
IOS28 (rev 1807): No Patches
IOS30 (rev 2816): Stub
IOS31 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS33 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS34 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS35 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS36 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS37 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS38 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS40 (rev 3072): Stub
IOS41 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS43 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS45 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS46 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS48 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS50 (rev 5120): Stub
IOS51 (rev 4864): Stub
IOS52 (rev 5888): Stub
IOS53 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS55 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS56 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS57 (rev 5919): No Patches
IOS58 (rev 6176): USB 2.0
IOS60 (rev 6400): Stub
IOS61 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS62 (rev 6430): No Patches
IOS70 (rev 6912): Stub
IOS80 (rev 6944): No Patches
IOS222 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS223 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS249[57] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v10beta52): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS250[56] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v10beta52): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS251[38] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v10beta52): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS254 (rev 65280): Stub
BC v6
MIOS v10
Report generated on 02/08/2022.

 

[XFlak]

Your syscheck generally looks fine, one thing you could do is install bootmii as IOS. Even if u have bootmii installed as boot2, it's nice to also have it installed as IOS so it can be launched by the hbc, priiloader, etc. This won't have any impact on your issue though, sounds like an incompatible drive.

 

[mueller13s04]

try to format your drive to fat32, because in some cases it might work better. You could also use CFG. For me it worked better

*Or try to use an USB-Stick. Than you will see if he the blackscreens are because of the SSD or your config

 

[CoolMe]

Does it pass the usb initiation screen normally when you launch USBLoaderGX? Does all games appear in USBLoaderGX? Are you the same hdd enclosure and is it plugged in the right-most port on the Wii? You could try with a Y-cable instead if you have one lying around.

 

[XFlak]

You could also try base 38 or even base 58 cios to see if it improves compatibility with your drive

 

[Sypherone]

My feeling says that when all games appear in gx loader, to this point everything is right. And that gx-loader recognize the ssd and shows the games is a good sign, too. But something seems not to be optimal configured. If the WiiU would not like the drive, it would even be recognized.
The big question, are u using Y-Cable?

U changed the different loader ios. U can do the same with the global game cios.

Stay in fat32, wich is your cluster size? It should minimal 64kb. Because small clustersize on big drives can theoretically causes slow load times. Maybe wait a moment at the black screen.

U using the right cios v10-beta52. Try the ports one by one. But u need to configure in gx loader the exact used port, not both.

Search for gx loader 1272 mod. It has some better compatibility.

U can also try puting cios 251 with base 38.

 

[dragonkoh]

Thanks for the replies! Some of the suggestions I've already tried or mentioned but here are a few things and some clarification:

• I'm not using a Y-Cable and don't have one readily available. This is a 2TB portable Samsung SSD that plugs in via USB, not a HDD in an enclosure, so I assume it doesn't want power.
• This is a Wii -- not a Wii U. I've only tried using USB port 0 (the left/bottom one) since that seems to be the suggested one. I haven't tried using port 1 (the right/upper one).
• With the drive as FAT32 I had been testing with a 32kb cluster size but I just tried 64kb and it didn't change the outcome.
• I haven't tried CFG since I didn't see any information about that elsewhere so I'm not sure where I'd even begin. However I don't want to sacrifice compatibility loading certain games just to get this specific drive working so I'd prefer to use the suggested IOS versions and FAT32.
• I hadn't tested base 58 but I just did (as IOS 251, if that matters) and it still resulted in a black screen however it kicked me back to the system menu after a few seconds whereas all others just remained at a black screen. I've tried waiting for quite a while so I don't think it's just a slow load. I just put IOS 251 back to base 38 since that wasn't successful.
• I'm using USBLoaderGX r1272 and it loads just fine and all games show up, but none successfully boot and each results in a black screen if I try to play them with a game IOS that has base 57, 56, or 38 (IOS 249, 250, and 251 -- see sysCheck spoiler in first post), and I've now tried base 58 as well (as IOS 251).
• The files and setup work properly and successfully load the same games without issue when using a different drive (a 250GB SSD).

I'm pretty sure the 2TB SSD is the issue and it's simply incompatible but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything or if getting the games to display in USBLoaderGX showed promise. I've ordered the 5TB WD P10 HDD that's suggested in a post by @ca032769 to try that instead since ideally I just want something that's 2TB or larger and I think I've exhausted all options with this SSD. If anyone has any final thoughts or can confirm that the drive may be incompatible even if the games show up in USBLoaderGX feel free to let me know but I think I have my answer and the black screen issue is due to the drive itself.

 

[XFlak]

Very clear and detailed response, thank you!

I agree it's probably an incompatible drive, but I have one other thing to suggest you try... which is neek. Both sneek+di and uneek+di. Modmii can help u set this up. It's difficult to get working, so first I would try running it with your other working hdd and confirm it's working, then copy over the sneek, bootmii and nands folders to the sdd in question and see if you have any success. You can access the di menu from neek's emulated nand's system menu by pressing 1 on the wiimote, and detect games in your wbfs and games folders, select a game and it gets loaded in the disk channel... or is it 2 instead of 1? The other number will take u to settings, you'll figure it out. Modmii will do a more thorough job providing helpful neek set up tips if it's your first time dabbling with it and emulated nands.

Oh and another question, sorry if this was already covered, but can the hbc see/launch apps from the problematic ssd?

 

[Sypherone]

OK, u already tested every possible solution.
There are other threads on gbatemp and reddit with the same problem. But without a solution. The Y-Cable is like everything else for try and error, that we can be sure. Ya, normaly its not needed if the drive is compatible with usb 2.0.
The last idea is trying this gx-loader mod. It has a lot of fixed issues, so it loads first the external drive over ios 58 (usb 2.0) and then changes to the loader cios 249/250/251. https://gbatemp.net/attachments/usbloadergx_r1272_mod_v7-7z.271863/

 

[dragonkoh]

Thanks again for the replies!

The 5TB HDD I ordered already showed up and I had it working right away so I'm probably just gonna stick with using that instead. The larger storage space is ideal anyway. I'll do some testing to see if a Y splitter ends up being necessary but so far I've had no issues.

@XFlak it sounds like SNEEK would be a different loader? Although I've only been messing with this for a few days I really like both USBLoaderGX and WiiFlow so I'd prefer to use a setup that works with both to maximize compatibility in case I run into issues with any specific files and want to use them interchangeably, so for now I'm not going to bother testing SNEEK especially if it can be tricky to get working. As you mentioned the SSD may not work for this anyway so I'll just use it for other things instead. To answer your other question I'm currently only loading apps off the SD card so I never ended up testing that with the SSD. EDIT: I'm reading more about SNEEK right now since I'll be setting up an EmuNand on my SD card.

Thanks again and great work with all of this and the notes/documentation and being so active here answering people's questions. Aside from the larger SSD giving me trouble everything was very straightforward.

 

[XFlak]

In theory you could run sneek, then launch gx via the emulated nand. I'm not sure how smooth it will run this way, I know other loaders like post loader were designed to specifically run on neek, but in theory most other apps should still run normally. Just clarifying, I'm not trying to push you in this direction given what you already decided.

Cheers

 

[some1ne]

Had the same issue with the exact same drive and capacity. It seems like the SSD goes to sleep too aggressively and that makes the Wii not recognize it when needed. You can get around this by unplugging and plugging the drive back at the right moment, but it's not feasible, as you need to do it several times just to get the game to boot. You gotta do it on the Wii Menu right before starting the USB Loader GX Forwarder, then you have to cancel the "waiting for hdd" step, replug the drive and remount the drive in the loader's settings. After trying to start a game, it will freeze on a black screen and you'll have to replug the drive again. If you're lucky, the game will boot, if not, it will kick you back to the Wii Menu and make you start the whole procedure over again.