Hacking Which SD card to buy for Loadiine?

[BaddGuy]

Does The Wiiu reads NTFS Format or it only Reads Fat32? That's on the SD Cards Formats. Mine Exchanged it for a 64 GB But it Came exfat and the wiiu dosent regonized it so i was just wondering cause it had write speed of 15 mbs now it dropped to 3 Tops When i Formatted to Fat32. San Disk Ultra 64GB.

 

[Captain_N]

wouldn't it be neat if there was a adapter that plugged into the sd card slot and then allowed a SATA HDD to be used in place of an actual sd card......

 

[srbeen]

Does The Wiiu reads NTFS Format or it only Reads Fat32? That's on the SD Cards Formats. Mine Exchanged it for a 64 GB But it Came exfat and the wiiu dosent regonized it so i was just wondering cause it had write speed of 15 mbs now it dropped to 3 Tops When i Formatted to Fat32. San Disk Ultra 64GB.

The wiiU only sees FAT32 yes but the speed statement is simply incorrect. The card speed isn't governed by its file format. I get 40MB on a UHS1 U1 and around 70MB/s on a UHS U3 card I mainly use for photography. These were both in fat32 format. No matter the file format or card speed when you copy thousands of files<1MB to anything it takes a while to initiate the file write and match its block size. This is where the slow speeds kick in. Copy a 3GB file to the card and it should tell you its true speed.

 

[BaddGuy]

The wiiU only sees FAT32 yes but the speed statement is simply incorrect. The card speed isn't governed by its file format. I get 40MB on a UHS1 U1 and around 70MB/s on a UHS U3 card I mainly use for photography. These were both in fat32 format. No matter the file format or card speed when you copy thousands of files<1MB to anything it takes a while to initiate the file write and match its block size. This is where the slow speeds kick in. Copy a 3GB file to the card and it should tell you its true speed.

OK Thank u.

 

[ByteBite]

Here's my loading times with a MyMemory 32GB SDHC Class 10 card, measuring the time from starting SSB for Wii U until the game's splash screen has appeared.

NES Remix Pack - 0:17
Super Mario 3D World - 3:32
Hyrule Warriors - 0:30
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker - 0:19

SM3DW is the slowest by far.

 

[rufuszombot]

I just took the 64GB SD card out of my camcorder, and it hasn't given me any trouble. It doesn't even have what class it is listed on it.

 

[oumoumad]

Anyone who could load Super Mario 3D world in a normal speed, please give us information about your SD card, and then add it to the OP please so this thread would be useful for others.

 

[neomarin]

it would be important to make a list of cards and load times.

 

[Believ3r]

will a microsd card in an sd adapter work for loadiine or does it have to be sd card

 

[Mikenuun]

Since FAT32 is limited to 32GB Partitions on Windows,
I suggest you use exFAT, which is supported on Windows.

Exfat supports files bigger then 4GB (if that ever happens)
And removes the 32GB size limit

 

[0nther0ck]

will a microsd card in an sd adapter work for loadiine or does it have to be sd card

I have two micro SD with adaptateur, 8Go class4 and 32Go class10. Twice works perfectly (the class4 load almost so fast than the class10 )

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Since FAT32 is limited to 32GB Partitions on Windows,
I suggest you use exFAT, which is supported on Windows.

Exfat supports files bigger then 4GB (if that ever happens)
And removes the 32GB size limit

For format a 32+Go partition use a program like fat32formater, free on the net

 

[osaka35]

Since FAT32 is limited to 32GB Partitions on Windows,
I suggest you use exFAT, which is supported on Windows.

Exfat supports files bigger then 4GB (if that ever happens)
And removes the 32GB size limit

This is mostly true. Windows won't allow you to format larger than 32GB FAT32, but there are a variety of third party software that'll format any size to FAT32 (like the poster above me said). I had a 64GB microsd formatted to FAT32 in my New 3dsxl and it ran like a champ.

It still, obviously, has the 4GB file size limit though.

 

[Tesa]

Anyone who could load Super Mario 3D world in a normal speed, please give us information about your SD card, and then add it to the OP please so this thread would be useful for others.

it would be important to make a list of cards and load times.

Both of those would probably a bad idea. SM3DW is an exception right now (in v0/v1) due to the fact that it consist of many small files. You'll always experience slow load times as long as Nintendo doesn't patch the game or there will be a possibility to install the game to the internal WIIU storage.

will a microsd card in an sd adapter work for loadiine or does it have to be sd card

Yes it does. A microsd card isn't really different from a normal sd card apart from its size. (This is technically speaking, "normal" sd cards tend to be faster)

Since FAT32 is limited to 32GB Partitions on Windows,
I suggest you use exFAT, which is supported on Windows.

Exfat supports files bigger then 4GB (if that ever happens)
And removes the 32GB size limit

Exactly this is something you should NOT do. Don't think about using exFat or NTFS for your SD card if you intend to use it for loadiine. Your wii / wii u won't recognize the card and you'll have to reformat it to fat32 and copy everything again. Fat32 for cards > 32GB is "supported" by Windows, you'll just have to use a different tool to format it once.




I would advice you to get a decent class 10 card (doesn't matter if microsd or sd). Don't buy some cheap china card, they just won't do the job as good as others. You also won't need some really expensive card because it's wasted money on nothing, I'll try to explain it as good as possible:

There's a big difference in read and write speeds. Writing is (almost always) the deciding factor on the card price BUT it doesn't affect us at all since we're just using the cards to read the games from them.
The "minimum" speed which was posted somewhere (sadly) doesn't mean anything, a card can have some fancy "UHS-3" print on it and be slow af. SD cards are mostly focused around write speed, not read since these good cards are used for fullhd / 4k recording.
You'll come across a lot of "test" and "results" which might be wrong, Bache already explained why.

I'm willing to bet you're using a USB 2.0 SD card reader. Not only that, but that 95MB/s is rated for SEQUENTIAL file transfers, not RANDOM, so your test results are useless.

These are complete results for the microSD version, which has the same specifications.

Sequential Read : 88.450 MB/s
Sequential Write : 81.856 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 75.524 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 60.115 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 6.163 MB/s [ 1504.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 2.185 MB/s [ 533.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 6.160 MB/s [ 1503.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 2.231 MB/s [ 544.7 IOPS]

So this concludes: We're looking for a card with decent read speeds and don't really care about write speeds. I personally really like the new sandisk ultra amazon cards, they have amazing read speeds of around 87MB/s and still decent write speeds of 50-60 MB/s. (You'll only write the game once on the card, don't pay twice as much for the same results). A 64GB card costs around 25€ which is probably the best deal you'll get with good specs, but you have to watch out to not buy the old version. (Sandisk updated their ultra series and a lot of shops still have the old 45MB/s version. Just check the package / description if it states 80MB/s read speeds)

If you have any other questions: Just ask!

 

[MattKimura]

@Tesa So with all that said, something like this should do the job for loadiine:

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extreme-SDSDXPA-064G-X46-Flash-Memory/dp/B007NDL54C/ref=sr_1_24?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1449150713&sr=1-24&keywords=Sandisk+Ultra+128+GB+SD&refinements=p_89:SanDisk


Or perhaps more space would be worth it, for just a few dollars extra:

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-128GB-UHS-I-Memory/dp/B0143IISD0/ref=sr_1_9?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1449039826&sr=1-9&keywords=128+GB+SD&refinements=p_n_feature_two_browse-bin:13203834011,p_72:1248879011


So less space (64 GB) but more read speed (95 mbps) VS More space (128 GB) but less but decent read speed (80 mbps)

Both of these have a five star rating, and are sold through Amazon.

 

[Tesa]

@Tesa So with all that said, something like this should do the job for loadiine:

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extreme-SDSDXPA-064G-X46-Flash-Memory/dp/B007NDL54C/ref=sr_1_24?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1449150713&sr=1-24&keywords=Sandisk+Ultra+128+GB+SD&refinements=p_89:SanDisk


Or perhaps more space would be worth it, for just a few dollars extra:

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-128GB-UHS-I-Memory/dp/B0143IISD0/ref=sr_1_9?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1449039826&sr=1-9&keywords=128+GB+SD&refinements=p_n_feature_two_browse-bin:13203834011,p_72:1248879011


So less space (64 GB) but more read speed (95 mbps) VS More space (128 GB) but less but decent read speed (80 mbps)

Both of these have a five star rating, and are sold through Amazon.

Both are a really good choice! It's really up to your preference here.
What you should do is go and count all backups (not number but space) and see if it exceeds ~60GB, if it doesn't you can save a little and even get the better card. If you get well over 70-80GB I would go with the second, 128GB, card. It's just that if you have >60GB of backups you'll need to unplug it, delete stuff, copy the new ones and replug it.

Just remember that you'll need to format them to fat32 with program (since windows won't let you format it, but it supports it once formatted).

 

[MattKimura]

@Tesa My question is, how do you add 19 GB Wii U games on a Fat32 formatted SD? Fat32 is the only way to go, yet people have tested games like Xenoblade Chronicles X?

I'm gonna go with the 128 GB SD since I'm close to 60 GB already, to get ready for future purposes.
I wonder how games load up with a 80-90 Mbps read speed SD card. Are load times terribly long on most games? I was happy about loadiine and all, but seems like the loading times aren't perfect. A pioneering stage for the Wii U hacks. I cannot imagine how much data has to load for larger games like Xenoblade Chronicles X, must take 10+ mins for everything.

I'll just imagine that I'm playing a game of GTAV on PS3, where it takes a pretty long time to load up the game each time.

 

[Tesa]

@Tesa My question is, how do you add 19 GB Wii U games on a Fat32 formatted SD? Fat32 is the only way to go, yet people have tested games like Xenoblade Chronicles X?

I'm gonna go with the 128 GB SD since I'm close to 60 GB already, to get ready for future purposes.
I wonder how games load up with a 80-90 Mbps read speed SD card. Are load times terribly long on most games? I was happy about loadiine and all, but seems like the loading times aren't perfect. A pioneering stage for the Wii U hacks. I cannot imagine how much data has to load for larger games like Xenoblade Chronicles X, must take 10+ mins for everything.

I'll just imagine that I'm playing a game of GTAV on PS3, where it takes a pretty long time to load up the game each time.

There's a difference between the game iso (wud) and the actual game files.

Your first question: how do you add 19 GB Wii U games on a Fat32 formatted SD?
-> You won't have a file which is > 4GB. After unpacking the wud you'll only have smaller files which you can easily copy on your sd card. Here's an awesome tutorial by fiveighteen:

Firmware Version Required:
5.3.2Downloads:
UWizard (thread)
vgmtoolbox
You may need to use vgmtoolbox if UWizard doesn't extract the files properly. I will provide guides to both methods here.

UWizard:
1. Make/keep a backup of your original game files in case something goes wrong!
2. Open UWizard and go to the Settings tab
3. Click Import Key next to Wii U Common Key, and then find and open your CommonKey.bin
4. Go to the WUD Manager tab and click Open Wii U Game
5. Click Import under Title Key and then find and open your TitleKey.bin for the opened game (typically found in the NFO)
6. Click Extract Game Files and wait for them to finish

VGMToolbox
1. Make/keep a backup of your original game files in case something goes wrong!
2. Put your Common Key in the "vgmtoolbox_bin_<version>\external\wiiu" folder and rename it to ckey.bin
3. Put your Title Key in the same folder as your WUD and rename it to disckey.bin
4. Open VGMToolbox
5. Expand Misc. Tools/Extraction Tools/Generic/ISO/Archive Extractor
6. Drag your WUD into the white space on the right side and it will load the files
7. Right click on the files or folders you want to extract and click Extract To...

The RPX and RPLs (if it has any) are located in the data/code folder
The content files are located in the data/content folder

Your second question: Are load times terribly long on most games?
Yes and no. It really depends on the game. You probably saw all those posts about Super Mario 3D World with 3 minute loading times. It's an exception due to the fact that v0/v1 have a lot of really small files which take ages to load. Once Nintendo patches those into bigger files it should speed everything up. I can't test SM3DW yet, but as said, it's rather an exception.
I would even go so far and say that loading for some games (with a really good card) will probably be faster than playing from a dvd just because you have higher transfer rates (assuming x1/x2 drive here (can't be fucked looking that up) and 70-80MB/s read on SD card). It's really only up to how the gamefiles are saved.

 

[Believ3r]

Bayonetta 2 has a single file which won't fit on fat32 due to size restrictions

 

[Tesa]

Bayonetta 2 has a single file which won't fit on fat32 due to size restrictions

Are you talking about the wud? Or do you mean a specific file inside the content folder? Because the WII U only supports fat32 and Bayonetta 2 is tested so I highly doubt that.

 

[JoeOIVOV]

The 256GB PNY SDXC Card is like around 75$ most places. Works perfect. I want to buy the 512GB but its 250$ I'm not sure its worth it quite yet.