Hacking Wii backup Manager for Windows

[thewonderer73]

Hi,

I found a few bugs... sadly I don't have the drive anymore so i won't be able to test for a while...

I cannot export the debug log to a file, no options show up and there is no copy paste option to the clipboard.

I still cannot export a USB WBFS harddrive with 30 backed up games to a NTFS partition... More specifically, it won't export some of the backups to a NTFS drive with no files in the wbfs folder on a NTFS DRIVE. When I try, i can see it created a .WBFS file but when it gets to the end, it deletes it.. sorry i don't have the log as i did it at 5am this morning and am at work.

It would be good to label the drive space used bar, as there is no indication of what the bar is, the size available/used and % free...

Can I request you upload your program to mediafire.com as 4shared sometimes has issues starting up the transfer and is full of ads.

Great to see you have the unrar code inside your program... does it come from the rarsoft sourcecode I pointed out?

Does wii BM decompress and create on the fly from RAR files, or does it decompress to full size and then create? The GUI shows it is create a WBFS from a RAR file from the very start...

{OK i see there is a pull down option that shows more information, it decompresses the RAR first} Q2. Is the temporary decompressed file deleted once the conversion is complete?

Thanks for the great work

 

[redia]

Hi,

I found a few bugs... sadly I don't have the drive anymore so i won't be able to test for a while...

I cannot export the debug log to a file, no options show up and there is no copy paste option to the clipboard.

I still cannot export a USB WBFS harddrive with 30 backed up games to a NTFS partition... More specifically, it won't export some of the backups to a NTFS drive with no files in the wbfs folder on a NTFS DRIVE. When I try, i can see it created a .WBFS file but when it gets to the end, it deletes it.. sorry i don't have the log as i did it at 5am this morning and am at work.

It would be good to label the drive space used bar, as there is no indication of what the bar is, the size available/used and % free...

Can I request you upload your program to mediafire.com as 4shared sometimes has issues starting up the transfer and is full of ads.

Great to see you have the unrar code inside your program... does it come from the rarsoft sourcecode I pointed out?

Does wii BM decompress and create on the fly from RAR files, or does it decompress to full size and then create? The GUI shows it is create a WBFS from a RAR file from the very start...

{OK i see there is a pull down option that shows more information, it decompresses the RAR first} Q2. Is the temporary decompressed file deleted once the conversion is complete?

Thanks for the great work

@fig2k4
I hope you don't mind me answering these..

@thewonderer73,

the log export is not active yet. so it is not a bug per say

about the ntfs, I am surprised. I will do some tests. are you sure your wbfs partition is not corrupted ?

for the rar, fig2k4 managed to embed the dll in his application. don't know if he used the sourcecode you pointed at, but maybe this will be a good hint for you.

the rar file is fully decompressed in the temp directory and process from there. (if you have multiple physical hard drive I advise everyone to set the temporary directory to a different drive than the one hostinf the source/result files) and the decompressed file is deleted afterwards.
the extraction happens only when you are transfering a file (except if you select the "extract rar before adding to the list")

R

 

[fig2k4]

>>I cannot export the debug log to a file, no options show up and there is no copy paste option to the clipboard.

I forgot to code the "log page->log->export..", but it'll take seconds and will be in the next update.

>>I still cannot export a USB WBFS harddrive with 30 backed up games to a NTFS partition... More specifically, it won't export some of the backups to a NTFS drive with no files in the wbfs folder on a NTFS DRIVE. When I try, i can see it created a .WBFS file but when it gets to the end, it deletes it.. sorry i don't have the log as i did it at 5am this morning and am at work.

If it creates a .wbfs file, then it's a bug. it should be a .tmp file up until the transfer is complete, then renamed to .wbfs. Let me know if that's what you meant.

>>It would be good to label the drive space used bar, as there is no indication of what the bar is, the size available/used and % free...

The statusbar shows the free and total space and the progress bar show the percentage as a visual indicator.

>>Great to see you have the unrar code inside your program... does it come from the rarsoft sourcecode I pointed out?

I found a little trick that lets me store the unrar DLL inside the exe and I use it straight from RAM instead of loading the DLL from the drive.

>>Q2. Is the temporary decompressed file deleted once the conversion is complete?

If you extract before adding to the list, the file isn't deleted. If it's extracted only before the transfer/conversion, the file IS deleted. The reason for this is that the temp file in the first case could be getting used to transfer to drive 1 and 2 at the same time, so if any one of those threads delete the file, or it gets deleted when removing from the list, it would mess up anything else that's using it. I need to figure out the best way to check for that in all situations. Right now it's safer to just not delete it, or don't enable "Extract RAR before adding to the list" and use the second case..

 

[thewonderer73]

Hi,

The wbfs partition on my USB drive does not seem to have any issues as I used the nc... tool which is on this forum to try extracting the problem backups from the USB drive to the pc's ntfs parition (i have 3 ntfs paritions, i tried them all... and these few failed using your program but not the nc... tool0>

Yep, i am pretty sure it was creating a .tmp file first... i didn't explain myself well. However when it had completed it deleted it and the log had a red entry which i can't recall.

Sounds cool with the way you have unrar working and the logic behind the way it works in your program.

I noticed in 0.24r2 you have WBFS recovery.. will you have the back in your program... or better still one that does a check first and advises you if there are any issues and if you want to fix it...

Sadly it's going to be a couple of weeks b4 i get the USB drive back which is giving me issues...

Will keep following your work even though i don't have a Wii! lol

 

[fig2k4]

The fact that the temp file gets deleted means that an error occurred before the end of the operation. The red entry (error) in the log would've told you what happened..

You were using the 0.3.0 beta when this happened? Silly question, but you make it sound like you did this a while ago, but i only released it a few hours ago.

Edit:
BTW, I've just started a resplit operation on all 188 games on my FAT drive. I loaded them all on the files page, then went to transfer->.wbfs, selecting the same wbfs folder as the destination. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[TeenTin]

Hi,

The wbfs partition on my USB drive does not seem to have any issues as I used the nc... tool which is on this forum to try extracting the problem backups from the USB drive to the pc's ntfs parition (i have 3 ntfs paritions, i tried them all... and these few failed using your program but not the nc... tool0>

Yep, i am pretty sure it was creating a .tmp file first... i didn't explain myself well. However when it had completed it deleted it and the log had a red entry which i can't recall.

Sounds cool with the way you have unrar working and the logic behind the way it works in your program.

I noticed in 0.24r2 you have WBFS recovery.. will you have the back in your program... or better still one that does a check first and advises you if there are any issues and if you want to fix it...

Sadly it's going to be a couple of weeks b4 i get the USB drive back which is giving me issues...

Will keep following your work even though i don't have a Wii! lol

Would you please give the name of the games you were having problem ?

 

[thewonderer73]

Harvest Moon Tree Of Tranquility and lego indiana jones 2 spring to mind

 

[pontomedon]

could you do me a favor ?
could you try mounting the drive and running test both version of fig2k4 app ?
and then dismount the drive. reboot the computer.. and tell us if prior to any dismount operation you are having any problem ?

Alright, after remounting the drive i had unmounted before both the format dialog and the drive selection work properly, but now i see 2 of those 0.00GB drives in the list. I'm pretty sure those are the crypted partitions because:

after reboot and not mounting any TC volume, everything works, but then i see 2 drives without letter in the drive list, having the correct sizes of the 2 TC partitions. So this is perfectly normal, because these two partitions don't have letters assigned.

after mounting both volumes it still works, and now shows the two virtual (truecrypt) drives with their correct letters and sizes, and two drives without letters but this time both a reported to have 0.00GB. Seems it cannot stat the drive once it's in use by truecrypt.

after unmounting both truecrypt volumes it gives me an error again, but this time with the Letter H (will explain later what H is), and it shows the H: drive 3 (!) times in the format drive dialog as well as both unlettered drives with their correct sizes again.

ok i'll post a list of all my drives and their sizes now to make this clearer:

Harddisk0:
\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1: C: 56.3 GB (internal ssd)
Harddisk1:
\Device\Harddisk1\Partition1: D: 465 GB (internal hdd)
Harddisk2:
\Device\Harddisk2\Partition1: 931 GB (internal hdd, crypted, gets mounted to X

E/F/G: physical and virtual dvd drives, not too interesting here.

Harddisk3:
\Device\Harddisk3\Partition1: H: 116 GB (usb hdd, partition 1)
\Device\Harddisk3\Partition2: 116 GB (usb hdd, partition 2, crypted, gets mounted to W

so:

1)after a clean reboot when nothing is (and never was) mounted i get no errors and the correct sizes for both the unlettered drives (931 and 116 GB).

2) after mounting both TC volumes i still get no errors and the correct sizes for X: and W: (931 and 116 GB), but incorrect sizes of both unlettered drives (0.00GB).

3) after unmounting both TC volumes but leaving the usb hdd connected (so H: sill exists) i get the error with H: and it shows H: 3 times in the list, everytime with the correct size of 116 GB.
Note: seems i can't reproduce this one, works perfectly now, same result as test 1

4) after ejecting the usb hdd (so no Harddisk3 anymore) everything works fine again, and shows the remaining unlettered drive with correct size (931GB)

5) after mounting \Device\Harddisk2\Partition1 to X: again it gives me the error with X: and shows one unlettered drive with 0.00GB and two X: drives, both with 931GB.

did all those tests with the original 0.3.0 exe, i can repeat them with the fix if you like.

Pontomedon

P.S.: i got this "\Device\Harddisk3\Partition2" representation for unlettered drives from truecrypt, but maybe you could use the same (or a similiar) syntax since this is far more intuitive than e.g. "HarddiskDrive8"

P.P.S.: Let me know if i can test or help with anything else, I'm a student of computer science myself, so I'm pretty familiar with the usual proplems in software develpment ;-)

 

[bootsector]

Great app! Any chances of releasing the source code (are you using Delphi or C++ Builder?)?

Cheers,

bootsector

 

[DIXES]

You can convert ISO to .wbfs on any drive. You have the option to transfer to single .wbfs on the files page or you can mount the drive and transfer to it that way.

Files page->Transfer->.wbfs
or
Files page->transfer->Drive 1 (with the C drive mounted in the drive 1 page)

But I can't choose C drive in drive 1 page.

 

[fig2k4]

There was a little flaw in .wbfs->.wbfs using the same folder as source and destination. It's fixed in the version below.
My resplit operation has been going strong for over 7 hours now (Total time says 10:29:44). It's quite slow IMO, because I'm reading/writing to the same USB drive. I'm wondering if it would be faster to copy to the temp folder first, then write to the destination drive. Definitely worth a test.

@pontomedon

It is quite an unusual setup.

I'll need to install truecrypt to reproduce it.

@bootsector

I probably will release the source. I'm not sure when though.

1. Release it soon and benefit from other people finding bugs and making improvements, with the risk of kiddies relabeling it as something else and claiming it to be their own.
2. Release it later when it's more stable, when I couldn't care less if kiddies relabel it as their own because I've finished what I started.
3. Release the WBFS code without the actual app, so anyone with a good knowledge of Delphi can write their own.
4. Make it open source and start a real project with it. I think this is a bad idea though. Did I mention I was a bit of a control freak? LOL

@DIXES

It is a known bug in the 0.2.4. Can you use the version below for the file transfers?

Edit: Sorry about another quick update, but i think the addition is important.

Note: This is a new link. I've just replaced the file, since it hasn't been up long..
Version 0.3.0 beta 2


Change log
Fixed: Duplicate drives in the drive menus and format dialog in some situations.
Fixed: Changes to "Show USB drives only" are reflected in the format dialog.
Fixed: .wbfs->.wbfs using the same folder as source and destination (for resplit etc.)
Added: Check if the destination file is going to be exactly the same as the source. eg. .wbfs->.wbfs with the same split size is pointless. The transfer list is also sorted by size to rule out smaller files as soon as possible because they don't need re-split.

 

[XFlak]

@ fig2k4, great work... and honestly, I'm not complaining, but I'm just wondering if you will continue to update the first post in this thread with the most recent version of the app... for awhile there you did, I almost overlooked the last update because I was getting lazy and only checking the first page!

either way, no biggie

 

[fig2k4]

Yeah. The only reason I didn't was because I was sure there would be a few quickfire updates since it was a re-write from scratch.

 

[icebrg5]

Is there something with this program that would cause all my hard drive space to get eaten up?

Last night i transfered over 100 games from one wbfs drive to an empty wbfs drive.

Now my c drive which is my windows drive is showing 0 free space.I havent installed or downloaded anything to it other then this program and last night i deleted a bunch of stuff from the C drive and had over 38GB of free space and now after using this program to transfer gams i have less then 1GB free for some reason.

 

[fig2k4]

Direct WBFS drive to WBFS drive shouldn't use anything more than a little memory buffer. Nothing would be written to the C drive at all, except for the settings.ini. You could check the temp folder.. And also your swap file size.

 

[icebrg5]

how do i check the swap file size?



any other idea what might cause this?

 

[fig2k4]

pagefile.sys on your C drive..

Other than a massive memory leak, which is practically impossible since I use a memory manager that reports leaks when I'm debugging, I've really no idea.

Edit:
Unless you're using an older version that doesn't do direct drive to drive. In which case, you should check the temp folder for files just in case they haven't been deleted.

 

[icebrg5]

Finally figured it out.There were about 40GB worth of files in the WBFStemp folder on the computer.

Looking in the folder through windows showed nothing there.

I downloaded a program to defrag the computer and ran an scan and it showed all the files and allowed to open the containing folder.Once i did that i was able to manually delete everything.

No idea why this happened.

I was using the latest version from the first page.

Also i don't think it was because of this program im thinking it was wbfs manager 3.0 that was the issue because i think that was the temp folder where everything was.

Also wbfs manager 3.0 and an older version of this program would not work for me at all.
Wbfs manager 3.0 would lock up every time and this program would say games were transfered successfully but then nothing would show on the new drive.

I downloaded the latest version after that and then the games show up after being transfered.

Only thing is they went up in size on the new drive but i was reading that its something to do with sector size.

 

[fig2k4]

Were the files found anything to do with the transfers you did last night? I don't think they could be since direct drive to drive doesn't use any temp files.

I'm glad you solved it anyway.

Edit:
>>Only thing is they went up in size on the new drive but i was reading that its something to do with sector size.

If the new drive is larger then the WBFS block size will probably be larger too, resulting in the discs taking up more space than they did on the smaller drive.

 

[icebrg5]

They had to be associated with the transfers i was trying to make last night.

I had version 2.2 of the program and no matter what i did it would not show the games after transferring them to the new drive.It would say it was successfully but when it was done there was nothing on the new drive.I then tried wbfs manager 3.0 and it wouldn't even transfer a game at all.It would just freeze or lockup every time i tried.

I then downloaded version WiiBackupManager0.2.4r2.rar and it worked and would show the games after transferring them.Only issue is the games are now bigger in size but i really don't care as its not my hard drive.

Before i tried all of this my computer had over 50% free space left on the drive.

I tried to transfer a file from a sd card to the computer and it said there was not enough free space and that's when i noticed the whole hard drive space had been used somewhere.

Looking in the C: drive i found where the amount of space went but if i went inside the folder it was empty.Downloading a defrag program finally let me see the files taking up all the space and allowed me to delete them.

They were all 4.38GB in size and all had random names and extensions.None of them were iso files.


No idea why this happened.This was the first time i have ever used the laptop to try to transfer games.
I use an older version of wii backup manager on my desktop at home and have no issues at all with games not showing up.

This will be the last time i use the laptop for anything wii related thats for sure.