Hacking WBFS and Back up loader Questions

[alucard77]

Hi All,

New to these Backup loaders. I have been using wiikey and figure I could save some disks using this instead. I just have some questions:

1- What WBFS GUI do you guys think is best for installing games?
2- Once your HD gets formatted by the Backup Loader, how does windows recognize it?

I used a POS USB Connection and power supply (No Enclosure) with my HDD yesterday to do testing to see if I should try this and to practice. I noticed that after I formatted my drive, it was no longer recognized by Windows XP.

I am buying a real enclosure with active cooling for my 320GB Western Digital drive, as I was having all types of problems with what I currently have.

Any issues reported on this enclosure?
AMS VENUS DS-2316B2BK Aluminum 3.5" USB 2.0 Black External Enclosure

It looks solid, and getting great reviews. Also, any reports on the 320GB Western Digital IDE. I think they are fine. But want to confirm.

When I used my non enclosure items, I was getting crashes on copying games through the Wii, and the copy game froze. I bet that was due to CIoS V10 though. But better safe then sorry.

 

[kedest]

Windows itself cannot use the wbfs partition. If you want to use the same HDD for normal use too, make partitions.

 

[alucard77]

I think the drive only has one partition at this point, The wbfs partition. I followed the Tutorial to using USB Loader v1.1 and FAQs sticky. That did not mention anything on needing a FAT32 partition and a wbfs partition.

Is there any way to save this disk?

 

[kedest]

Wait, there may be a little misunderstanding here.
If you only plan to use that HDD for Wii use, there is no need to change anything. Windows itself cannot read the disk now that it's wbfs, but the special application for it can read it.
If you want to use a part of the HDD for normal use too (movies, documents), then you'll need partitions

 

[alucard77]

Nah, this was only intended for Wii use, so no need for PC Use. I already have 2.5TB on the PC at the moment.

But I want to copy games straight from the PC to this, without using the Wii. The problem is that my PC was not recognizing the drive. So I wanted to see how I can install games through the PC, if it doesn't recognize the drive.

Is there a WBFS Tool that will find and recognize the drive. I forget which one I used at home yesterday, but it didn't recognize the drive. Only recognized the drives I already had in my PC, not the external drive.

 

[kedest]

If you plug in the drive, does windows really not see it (so nothing happens), or is it asking you to format?

 

[alucard77]

Windows does not see it at all. I even go into disk management and don't see it there.

Windows does pick up the fact that a USB device is connected, but not the drive connected to the device.

This can be caused by the POS USB/Power Supply I have, instead of the casing. I just want to make sure that Windows should recognize the drive to format it, if I already partioned with WBFS.

 

[kedest]

At least Windows should ask you to format it. It's even stranger it won't show in disk management. For some people, manually assigning a drive letter there fixed it. I'm afraid I don't know a solution for you now. But perhaps other people know more..

 

[alucard77]

In order to manually assign the letter, the physical drive needs to be seen. I have had to assign letters before, which is no biggie. But for it not to see the drive is weird.

I am just hoping it is the dumb usb/power connector I have. Hopefully the new enclosure that is on it's way will do the task I need it to.

Thanks for the help.