Hacking Wii backup Manager for Windows

[fig2k4]

@Ato Puro
I could add an option to ignore archives, or maybe even a check list, so you can select which archive types to use. So you'd be able to untick 7zip and they'd be ignored.

@Anyone that's interested
I spent the whole of last night reworking the logging system. I've added a stack trace for exceptions that can even show the exact line number in my code where the exception happened.

I should be able to easily track down the the problems with threads terminating early using this. I can now go through all the debug messages and add more detail to them, memory dumps, more details about partition tables etc.

The info is also saved to file just in case the app hangs, the log is still available. It was a lot more work than it seems, a few times I wished I hadn't started it

, but it was worth it.

http://yfrog.com/jbnewlogj

 

[icebrg5]

Ran some tests on the drive i was having issues with on the transferring speed where it would crap out at like .2mb per second when normally i would get around 25mb per second and it turns out the drive has bad sectors so I'm going to RMA it to western digital and get a replacement.

It worked fine before when i had it formatted to wbfs and was using it but then i wanted to convert everything to fat32 so i reformatted the drive and tried transferring the games and that's when i ran into the issues i had.

Any chance that formatting the drive to fat32 using the latest beta could have caused the bad sectors on the hard drive?

 

[redia]

The info is also saved to file just in case the app hangs, the log is still available. It was a lot more work than it seems, a few times I wished I hadn't started it

, but it was worth it.

http://yfrog.com/jbnewlogj

sweet.. I like the way your logs look now.. great work.
I wonder if people will realize that you hinted them on the new release

R

 

[Ato Puro]

@Ato Puro
I could add an option to ignore archives, or maybe even a check list, so you can select which archive types to use. So you'd be able to untick 7zip and they'd be ignored.

@fig2k4
I don't know how much work it'd be for you to do that; nor do I know if anyone else cares about this. I just find it easier to select "folder" and "select all" and let WBM de-select items already present at Drive 1, than to choose "file" and find the one I want amidst all the .ISOs I keep as backups. It's the lazy way. hehehe. Since reading .ISO is much faster than extracting files (I need at least 4mb or I get error), I just think it'd be nice if WBM ignored compressed files or showed the file name as the game name (so no unzipping is necessary, but no details on the game, as region, partitions, etc.). If no one else cares, just leave it alone. The logging update, for instance, is a much better time spent.

 

[fig2k4]

@Ato Puro
It should be quite quick to add the "none" suggestion. But better to name it "Ignore archives", since just blindly adding archives to the list would mean that there could be loads of invalid files added when adding a folder.

@redia
Cheers. It took me a while to spot what you mean myself, because it was unintentional.

I'm just about to start work on it again after the little side-step to rework the logging system.

I've added a simple feedback form too. It takes seconds to send me a bug report, or just send some feedback, so there's no excuse. lol
http://yfrog.com/c9feedbackp0j

Another feature that would be really handy is an online update, so I could make more regular beta releases and get a lot more feedback. There's just the problem of web space and bandwidth. There's been a few hundred thousand downloads from official sources so maybe a free host wouldn't be enough. They'd probably frown upon me using it for that too.. I'll need to find something..

 

[redia]

@redia
Cheers. It took me a while to spot what you mean myself, because it was unintentional.

I'm just about to start work on it again after the little side-step to rework the logging system.

I've added a simple feedback form too. It takes seconds to send me a bug report, or just send some feedback, so there's no excuse. lol
neat idea and can be pretty handy...

Another feature that would be really handy is an online update, so I could make more regular beta releases and get a lot more feedback. There's just the problem of web space and bandwidth. There's been a few hundred thousand downloads from official sources so maybe a free host wouldn't be enough. They'd probably frown upon me using it for that too.. I'll need to find something..

see my PM.

Cheers,
R

 

[Ato Puro]

"Ignore archives" sounds better indeed. Online update would also be a great feature. By the way, how about WBM looking for titles.txt or custom-titles.txt in its folder, instead of using "last opened path", from settings.ini ? WBM could search the path in settings.ini and if not found it looks for in its folder, so manually editing isn't necessary. (You see, all my suggestions are for the lazy guy

Don't bother with them if they mean hardish work)

 

[fig2k4]

By the way, how about WBM looking for titles.txt or custom-titles.txt in its folder, instead of using "last opened path", from settings.ini ? WBM could search the path in settings.ini and if not found it looks for in its folder, so manually editing isn't necessary.

Duh, I was checking if the custom location string was empty, instead of checking if the file existed there. A simple change Length() to FileExists() did the trick. It'll now use the files in the app folder if the file doesn't exist in the custom location. That reminds me, I'll need to do something similar for the temp folder. That's been on the todo list for a while.

@All
As some people know, I'm working on using the WiiTDB database to show game info etc. The question is, should I completely replace the titles.txt with the WiiTDB.xml? I don't see the point of having both. Unless there's a decent reason not to, I was thinking about removing the titles.txt support and replacing it with the titles from the xml.

 

[XFlak]

I think there has to be a reason why usb-loaders support both the xml and the titles.txt... I can't for the life of me think of it though. I think that if Dr. Clipper (or someone from the configurable team) were to share why CFG USB-Loader supports both, it may help u decide what to do with your app.

edit: I PM'd Dr. Clipper with a link to this post, so we'll just wait and see what insight he has to offer

 

[Dr. Clipper]

I think there has to be a reason why usb-loaders support both the xml and the titles.txt... I can't for the life of me think of it though. I think that if Dr. Clipper (or someone from the configurable team) were to share why CFG USB-Loader supports both, it may help u decide what to do with your app.

edit: I PM'd Dr. Clipper with a link to this post, so we'll just wait and see what insight he has to offer

We support both because some people prefer one or the other method. We also add custom-titles.txt as that won't be auto-updated via download, so the user has full control over that file, unlike titles.txt and WiiTDB.

 

[XFlak]

that was fast, thx a lot for the quick reply!

 

[fig2k4]

custom-titles.txt will always have priority over the WiiTDB titles.

For the next release, I'll disable the titles.txt in favour of the database.

If there's a public outcry to bring it back, I will LOL. But I think most people will just see the benefits of using the database.

Using a database structure, I can keep track of all "seen" games and download the covers in the background using this info. Obviously I could store that somewhere else, but it's easier this way. I can add other tags to the game info as requested (eg. wanted games, game ratings, scrubbed sizes, WBM's MD5 hashes so they can be compared without another drive). The WiiTDB will be read only, but will be updatable without losing the tags. On the database page there'll be a filter so you could for example, view all the games you own, without even plugging in your drives. Maybe some of this info could be uploaded to WiiTDB in the future. It would be quite good to get an average rating for the games etc. similar to IMDB. Anyway, just a few ideas..

 

[dexter222]

So......
40Gb in 10min (eSata) = about 10 games in 10mins, meaning 248 games would take about 248min = 4h 10m, while USB3 would work out to be ~2h 30m (in theory)

What huh?

USB 3.0 and SATA/eSATA are going to be about the same.

10 games (23.37gig) transferred from SATA to:

eSATA - 6:09 minutes
USB 3.0 - 6:18 minutes
USB 2.0 - 26:33 minutes

A larger sample - 950 games (1662.27gig) takes 8hrs on USB 3.0 - A little faster on SATA.

Using WBM 0.3.4

Whoops - forgot to mention to keep in mind the average size of a Wii game is 1.75gigs - that's all your transferring...
so 10 average games would be 17.5 gigs but you can't really go by that. The above is in practice, not theory, and the
same 10 games were used (23.37gigs worth)

 

[KazoWAR]

I would like to know if there are any negative effects that may come from only keeping the game partition and removing any U, C, and O partitions a game may have.

 

[fig2k4]

The only negative would be if you want to later burn the game to disc and use one of those removed partitions. If you're only ever going to play that copy of the game from a USB loader, then there's only the positive effect that it takes less space on your drive.

 

[fig2k4]

@icebrg5
Sorry, I missed your message.. I don't think just formatting the drive would cause bad sectors. More likely to be faulty, or sudden power loss by unplugging it while it's in use. Maybe unplugging it while the Wii is turned on or without using "safetly remove hardware" in Windows. You'd know better if you've done anything like that. Dropping the drive at all could obviously cause it too.

Edit: BTW, the formatting code in WBM is converted from the FAT32Format source to Delphi, so WBM does exactly the same thing as that app when formatting to FAT32.

 

[Jman69]

The only negative would be if you want to later burn the game to disc and use one of those removed partitions. If you're only ever going to play that copy of the game from a USB loader, then there's only the positive effect that it takes less space on your drive.

Is there a way to easily remove unwanted partitions from games already on a USB drive? Currently the only way I've found is to move the game off the USB drive, then re-add it with "Keep game partition only" enabled.

Is there a quicker way?

 

[WalkerOfTheDay]

Don't know if this was mentioned before (too lazy to wade though 102 pages), but when I try to extract password protected RAR-files it doesn't ask me for the password.

Not a big problem I can extract first and then later use WBM for .WBFS conversion, but I thought it might be a bit more convinient if WBM had this option.

 

[Knocks]

Are people in this thread using a more recent beta version than I have (0.3.5 beta 1)? Is a public release planned soon?

 

[Cyan]

this one is newer :
3.6beta1
http://www.4shared.com/file/JKC0heB7/WiiBa...r036-beta1.html

It's on a new account instead of the usual repostory.
Fig, maybe you could add it to the same folder? so we can find all the versions at the same place every time?
http://www.4shared.com/dir/24334463/b010f236/WBM030.html