Wii and Hard Drives

[MeXen]

I know this question has been asked a gorillion times already, but i formatted a blue toshiba 1TB external hard drive (portable) and it wont read it at all, sometimes i still get the infamous whiffing sound even when the drive still works properly on a PC.

I been told USB thumbdrives aint reccomended, and i should use instead an SD card.

But would a normal non portable HDD work?

plus Search engine isnt working for me like i would want it.

 

[Disorarara]

I know this question has been asked a gorillion times already, but i formatted a blue toshiba 1TB external hard drive (portable) and it wont read it at all, sometimes i still get the infamous whiffing sound even when the drive still works properly on a PC.

I been told USB thumbdrives aint reccomended, and i should use instead an SD card.

But would a normal non portable HDD work?

plus Search engine isnt working for me like i would want it.

I think the Wii's USB ports don't draw enough power to drive some of the bigger HDDs and need an external power source

EDIT: also I would recommend an SD card for Wii homebrew especially in the year 2025 where we genuinely have afforable 512GB cards now, although a lot of homebrew and especially backup loaders are coded assuming you have a USB drive somewhere. So definitely I would go for maybe a 64GB USB flash drive and a high capacity SD card just to cover all your bases.

 

[Jayro]

I think the Wii's USB ports don't draw enough power to drive some of the bigger HDDs and need an external power source

EDIT: also I would recommend an SD card for Wii homebrew especially in the year 2025 where we genuinely have afforable 512GB cards now, although a lot of homebrew and especially backup loaders are coded assuming you have a USB drive somewhere. So definitely I would go for maybe a 64GB USB flash drive and a high capacity SD card just to cover all your bases.

I second this... You can get a SATA SSD with a USB to SATA connector for fairly cheap, and 500GB will cover all the GOOD games on the Wii you'd want to play. And you can pair that with a dedicated 256GB SD card for GameCube games and homebrew apps+emulators.

 

[worm28]

The problem is the enclosure any hard drive will work on the wii just swap enclosures i have modded like 12 wii consoles and i always use a 1TB drive with this exact enclosure and it always works. https://www.ebay.com/itm/275939372011

 

[grandosegood]

I personally go with SSDs and one of these enclosures:

https://a.co/d/7sYsZfU

I look for SSDs from reliable manufacturers (crucial, samsung) and even buy used drives. I check their lifespan using crystaldiskinfo, then format them as FAT32 with 32KB cluster using minitool partition wizard (making sure no other removable devices are plugged in to prevent accidental deletion).

This setup works on multiple Wii consoles, and I can just plug and play without any issue (save for special emuNAND cases)

 

[Jayro]

I personally go with SSDs and one of these enclosures:

https://a.co/d/7sYsZfU

I look for SSDs from reliable manufacturers (crucial, samsung) and even buy used drives. I check their lifespan using crystaldiskinfo, then format them as FAT32 with 32KB cluster using minitool partition wizard (making sure no other removable devices are plugged in to prevent accidental deletion).

This setup works on multiple Wii consoles, and I can just plug and play without any issue (save for special emuNAND cases)

The WD Green SSDs are great with the Wii, as they draw less power and only need 1 USB port as a result.

 

[MeXen]

I have a WD blue and a ADATA SU750 to spare, and one manhattan SATA to USB adapter for SDD drives as well, already formatted the latter (both 500GB), but its taking it sweet time transferring files.

Post automatically merged: Jul 18, 2025

UPDATE: Welp, didnt worked, formatted to FAT32, like it should, still does not read on startup, clicked on USB DEVICE on HBC, and now it softlocks.

Used my Red Wii mini

Post automatically merged: Jul 18, 2025

UPDATE 2: One more attempt, STACK DUMP.

Post automatically merged: Jul 18, 2025

UPDATE 3: :Last attempt, with the WD Blue, this one works, but so far only tested mGBA and while it saves SRAM, there's a 2 second pause, which means that on games with playing sound, its gonna screw my ears with sustaining notes. switching between game and apps also has that delay.

yeeeeeaaaah, not ideal, havent tested the other apps.

What are the Apps that demand you to use an USB thumb drive?

 

[worm28]

Make sure the hard drive is MBR partition scheme not GPT

 

[MeXen]

Make sure the hard drive is MBR partition scheme not GPT

My Disk Management doesnt give me the MBR option, just Dynamic or GPT

 

[worm28]

My Disk Management doesnt give me the MBR option, just Dynamic or GPT

I think thats because its MBR if you were to change it to GPT then the MBR option would show up.

 

[MeXen]

I think thats because its MBR if you were to change it to GPT then the MBR option would show up.

Well i tried using Disk Management and all i did is disable that damn SDD drive, but accidentally also formatted one of my hard drives because the program got confused with its volume and unit descriptions, and i screwed myself over, good thing i had backups in other portable drives of both my wii stuff and my personal computer stuff, and i am trying way to hard to swear on this board because I AM NOT IN THE DAMN MOOD!

 

[Playerwii357]

Here to add two things
1. most important, some drives that go to sleep will not go to sleep on early revisions but will do in not so older revisions. This affects all but wii games (cios keeps the drive awake) and to be honest i dont remember the exact letters i saw on the wii that keept the drive awake and the dirve that didnt when i pulled out the battery (both were cpu 20, but the letters were different. the good one is LU36 while the other one is LU63) my drive is a 1tb toshiba.
2. Ive used lots of usb sticks and ALL WORKED i dont know if the usb sticks back in the day were worse or something but out of 5 ive used all of them worked. From 3 gb to 32 gb.

 

[nmagod]

If you don't ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO HAVE a lot of games at once, I recommend a SanDisk CZ33 stubby USB. Works great.

Honestly, I'd recommend any stubby USB for the wii, considering how infrequently you really need to access it on PC.

 

[MeXen]

I think ill stick to having just an USB thumbdrive then.

 

[CoolMe]

the thing with usb flash drives is the finicky (wii) game compatibility, you will run into a game where it just won't work. that's why hdds are recommended more because they don't have that issue, the ones that work with the wii that is. that said, if you're planning on only playing a few wii games, going with flash drives is probably not such a bad idea, but if you're planning on having alot of wii games on it expect stuff not working for no particular reason. Oh and gc games work flawlessly, emulators should too (the ones that allow you to load roms from usb).
and btw the drive should be formatted as fat32, with one primary partition, you can't play gc games without fat32. as for hdds, yea it has to be formatted as mbr and with one primary partition as well.

 

[worm28]

And you cant install game discs to your drive with USB Loader GX if its a usb flash drive or so i have heard.

 

[nmagod]

Oh yeah? Well I heard you can get free xbox gold for life if you give bill gates a handy.

 

[CoolMe]

And you cant install game discs to your drive with USB Loader GX if its a usb flash drive or so i have heard.

you can

 

[MeXen]

Reviving this, guess what, i was playing some Metroid Fusion on mGBA, i let the game rest for 30 minutes, i resume playing, when to save NORMALLY (no save stating), and the whole thing, (emulator and Wii) halted and sustain the note for like 20 seconds before saving, then i saved again and the whole thing just locked, so i had to turn it off, now half of my ROM files from my gba folder was deleted and i get this crap!



Is there ANY WAY to fix this or i need to resign, nuke the thumbdrive and go back to my backups again?

I think i am seriously thinking on start investing on a RetroPi4 instead.

 

[sonictopfan]

I know this question has been asked a gorillion times already, but i formatted a blue toshiba 1TB external hard drive (portable) and it wont read it at all, sometimes i still get the infamous whiffing sound even when the drive still works properly on a PC.

I been told USB thumbdrives aint reccomended, and i should use instead an SD card.

But would a normal non portable HDD work?

plus Search engine isnt working for me like i would want it.

Yeah, from my experience Wii systems hates Toshiba brand in general, it's no fan of Sony brands either, stick to western digital and sandisk.
Edit: as for formats, Wii seems to respond to FAT32 with 64 Cluster best, make sure it's FAT32 and not exFAT.

I think the Wii's USB ports don't draw enough power to drive some of the bigger HDDs and need an external power source

EDIT: also I would recommend an SD card for Wii homebrew especially in the year 2025 where we genuinely have afforable 512GB cards now, although a lot of homebrew and especially backup loaders are coded assuming you have a USB drive somewhere. So definitely I would go for maybe a 64GB USB flash drive and a high capacity SD card just to cover all your bases.

Nah, that's a WiiU issue.