Hacking Wii backup Manager for Windows

[Bloodlust]

So far, this manager is the best I've ever used. But it still unstable in terms of extracting from multi-part rar archives & especially those with a password. Once a while it will just freeze when attempting to retrieve info for a game to be converted.

 

[digdug3]

@fig2k4: I checked WiiTDB for the hashes they currently support.
The current md5/sha1/crc32 are for full discs only. So we currently can't check our scrubbed discs against the WiiTDB database.

See: (http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=164945).

I already asked if we could use the alternate MD5 colums of WiiTDB. But personally I think they should add extra colums for the scrubbed/cleaned versions.
If you complete the verification this would be the first manager that can check the backups. And hopefully all questions due to corrupt images will stop.

Great work!

P.S. You use unrar.dll version version 3.90.100.227 and version 3.91.100.345 is available. Don't know what the changes are, maybe this will stop the freezing some users are experiencing?

 

[fig2k4]

Could you make it as an options. because i really want it. and i think many others will love to get that feature.
I'll add it to the todo list.

So far, this manager is the best I've ever used. But it still unstable in terms of extracting from multi-part rar archives & especially those with a password. Once a while it will just freeze when attempting to retrieve info for a game to be converted.
I was doing something similar for video files not so long ago. I'd extract 4 meg of the file to retrieve information from it. On Vista, the 4 meg file didn't even show up in explorer for some reason. I worked round it by extracting 20 meg instead. It could be something similar that's happening here, so I've increased the size extracted to 20 meg.

I'll also update the unrar dll like digdug3 suggested.

QUOTE

I checked WiiTDB for the hashes they currently support.
The current md5/sha1/crc32 are for full discs only. So we currently can't check our scrubbed discs against the WiiTDB database.

The current WiiTDB hashes would only be useful for checking if your personal rip is OK. Once it's been transferred to WBFS etc. the hash is pretty much useless because there will be changes unless you use 1 to 1 copies. I don't plan to support 1 to 1 copies because they're a pointless waste of space IMO..

Ideally, a database would contain MD5 hashes for the 3 partition selection options that libWBFS supports. Then WBM, or any other app, could use the required hash for the partitions available in the disc you want to verify. Even if the database only stores the "game only" hash, WBM could calculate this hash from any disc without changing it. This would verify that at least the game partition is OK. That functionality isn't available yet, but hashing functions support it.

 

[geedub]

call me thick but this isnt showing the drive letter of my wbfs partition ?

not enough sleep i think , i sussed it out lol

cheers dev

 

[digdug3]

Could you make it as an options. because i really want it. and i think many others will love to get that feature.
I'll add it to the todo list.

So far, this manager is the best I've ever used. But it still unstable in terms of extracting from multi-part rar archives & especially those with a password. Once a while it will just freeze when attempting to retrieve info for a game to be converted.
I was doing something similar for video files not so long ago. I'd extract 4 meg of the file to retrieve information from it. On Vista, the 4 meg file didn't even show up in explorer for some reason. I worked round it by extracting 20 meg instead. It could be something similar that's happening here, so I've increased the size extracted to 20 meg.

I'll also update the unrar dll like digdug3 suggested.

QUOTE

I checked WiiTDB for the hashes they currently support.
The current md5/sha1/crc32 are for full discs only. So we currently can't check our scrubbed discs against the WiiTDB database.

The current WiiTDB hashes would only be useful for checking if your personal rip is OK. Once it's been transferred to WBFS etc. the hash is pretty much useless because there will be changes unless you use 1 to 1 copies. I don't plan to support 1 to 1 copies because they're a pointless waste of space IMO..

Ideally, a database would contain MD5 hashes for the 3 partition selection options that libWBFS supports. Then WBM, or any other app, could use the required hash for the partitions available in the disc you want to verify. Even if the database only stores the "game only" hash, WBM could calculate this hash from any disc without changing it. This would verify that at least the game partition is OK. That functionality isn't available yet, but hashing functions support it.

Let's hope WiiTDB will add the md5 hashes for all 3 partition selections. Adding the full disc check will only be for the purists among us.

Are you planning to create a 64-bit version as well? This would improve unrar/hash calculation times!

 

[XFlak]

call me thick but this isnt showing the drive letter of my wbfs partition ?

not enough sleep i think , i sussed it out lol

cheers dev

go to tools --> settings --> drives, and u'll figure it out

 

[fig2k4]

Changes in 0.3.3

Added: Full scrubbing (clean) mode. Full scrubbing will use only used Wii disc sectors, the rest will be filled with zeros. Without full scrubbing, some junk data will remain.
Changed: RAR extracts 20MB of data to get disc info, instead of the previous 4MB.
Added: "Game titles->Rename ??" functions use custom titles as well as WiiTDB. Custom titles have priority over WiiTDB just like on the fly renaming. So the titles displayed are the titles that are used when renaming. This was added in previous versions, but I forgot about it.
Added: Automatic WBFS file split size. Unlimited on NTFS, 4GB on FAT32.
Changed: Totally rewritten ISO/CISO writing routines to use the Wii disc exactly like the WBFS partition AddDisc().
Added: Various functions in the drive tools menu for calculating/verifying MD5 hashes. Verification results are shown on in the log for now.
Fixed: With Add->Folder function, pause and cancel buttons didn't work when the files were being added.
Fixed: Multiboot disc transfers didn't work correctly when the disc contained anything other than game partitions.
Fixed: Some multiboot disc titles had a couple of ones (0x0101) after the real title, which caused an error -32 when loading the wbfs partition in CFG. I fixed this before the first release of the multiboot handling code, but uncommented the line that caused it for some reason. I've removed this line of code completely now.

 

[pepxl]

nice update fig, i see you implemented a few new features

good work

 

[giorgosh]

I got a 150g drive and do not want to use ALL storage for storing my WII games.. Would it be ok, if i separtate it into 2 partitions, one with NTFS and one with WBFS? Will i be able to use both partitions ok, one on my PC and the other on the WII??? What do you think

 

[Bloodlust]

Nice update, does the full scrubbing really do away with more junk data & still preserve the integrity of the game?

 

[TeenTin]

Changes in 0.3.3

Added: Automatic WBFS file split size. Unlimited on NTFS, 4GB on FAT32.

The change actually adds restriction and may cause trouble to someone.

e.g. Someone may want to make .wbfs backup on NTFS with 4GB split files, such that he can easily copy them to FAT32/NTFS drives in the future.

 

[shaunj66]

Very nice program which I am now using.

Only complaint I have is that when you click the 'Drive' button to select your external HDD, there is a slight delay, when I assume it's scanning your drives, but this happens repeatedly (program doesn't cache drive letters). Is there any way to speed this up?

 

[fig2k4]

I got a 150g drive and do not want to use ALL storage for storing my WII games.. Would it be ok, if i separtate it into 2 partitions, one with NTFS and one with WBFS? Will i be able to use both partitions ok, one on my PC and the other on the WII??? What do you think
Sure, that'll work fine. If you're using CFG, you can actually use both partitions on the Wii too by pressing 1 twice and change the used partition. As a personal preference, I'd have the NTFS partition first, then WBFS. But it really makes no difference.

Nice update, does the full scrubbing really do away with more junk data & still preserve the integrity of the game?
As far as we know, yes. Wiimm recently made some changes to libWBFS to make this possible. The main benefit of the scrubbing is to create even smaller sparse ISOs, since more of the junk data is being replaced with zeros.

The change actually adds restriction and may cause trouble to someone.

There's a been a lot of confusion about what the WBFS split size is actually used for, so this will stop that. The benefits outweigh that one obscure situation IMO. The only problem that situation would cause is that WBM would need to be used to transfer it to FAT32 drive.
QUOTE

Only complaint I have is that when you click the 'Drive' button to select your external HDD, there is a slight delay, when I assume it's scanning your drives, but this happens repeatedly (program doesn't cache drive letters). Is there any way to speed this up?

I really wanted to avoid the "Refresh" button.

I rely on Windows caching the drives. For me it has a slight delay the first time, but it's instant thereafter. I could cache the list, like you suggested and add a "refresh" menu item. Most delays are due to network drives, which are slower detect the first time since Windows mounts them on first use. I'll think of something..

 

[Cyan]

Thanks for the new version.
I'll try it (but I'm back home, I don't have another hdd to test direct transfer)

The change actually adds restriction and may cause trouble to someone.

There's a been a lot of confusion about what the WBFS split size is actually used for, so this will stop that. The benefits outweigh that one obscure situation IMO. The only problem that situation would cause is that WBM would need to be used to transfer it to FAT32 drive.

I agree with Teentin, splitting .wbfs at 4Go for NTFS have to remains as a user choice.
You could set "automatic" by default on the drop-down menu for the split size, but let the user choose if he want to make splitted files on NTFS. That way, the user can copy .wbfs files from NTFS drive to FAT32 drive using explorer only, without the need of a manager to re-split the file.

 

[fig2k4]

You could set "automatic" by default on the drop-down menu for the split size
That's probably the best idea.

QUOTEOnly complaint I have is that when you click the 'Drive' button to select your external HDD, there is a slight delay, when I assume it's scanning your drives, but this happens repeatedly (program doesn't cache drive letters). Is there any way to speed this up?

I just remembered that I could use the device insert notification to trigger the drive menu refresh. So the menus can just get updated when something gets added or removed from Windows. I need to use that anyway to detect when an active drive is unplugged.

 

[digdug3]

@fig2k4: In 0.3.3 you can't transfer to an iso anymore from the files tab without any other drive. Is this a bug or by design? Before I could select a folder and then transfer (and therby scrubbing and trimming) the file to another directory.

Still best tool available.

 

[fig2k4]

Files->ISO should be working. I just tested again to see if I had overlooked something, but...

1. Load your files as normal
2. Select->All
3. Transfer->ISO..

Do you get some kind of error?

 

[Cyan]

Could it be possible to add a graphical representation to the WBFS formated drives ?
like a defrag utility, to see how are fragmented the games (for example each games with a different color, or color overlay on mouseover)

Maybe it's not useful at all to defrag the drive, but I just like gadgets like that, seeing how messy is the data

ah, one questions, did you used the corrections from Wiimm ?
As there are still loaders and managers with writting/deleting errors, It may be why I'm having corrupted games, and it could be everywhere, not only on the header :/
The MD5 hash will be useful when we could compare it to a database

 

[DGenerateKane]

Just tried your program for the first time and love it. The one I've been using hasn't been updated in close to a year, and is much slower adding games, especially if they are compressed. One question, you don't mention any other compression formats besides rar. Do you support others, specifically zip and 7zip? If not, would it be possible?

 

[leo_bsb]

I'll try your tool later tonight.
I have 350 burned DVDs that I'll need to convert to .wbfs files that will be stored in a NTFS HDD and it seems the perfect tool for the job. No other manager I found could do this with a practical GUI to use.
Thanks.