Hacking Wii backup Manager for Windows

[fig2k4]

@ChaosEnergy
The last time I tried that, the partition was destroyed and I had to repartition it anyway. Admittedly it was a few years ago, but I'm not in much of a hurry to try it again..

@oggzee and Wiimm
I've coded the WBFS format routines so that the drive's sector size can be faked. In the pic, you can see the benefit from it. The games limit is increased, which could be useful for larger drives.

Increasing the sector size doesn't always increase the game limit, sometimes it can reduce it. Unless there's a bug in my calculations.

That's why I'm showing the max discs in the format dialog, so the user can make an educated choice.

I'm going to try these partitions later with a small pen drive, but since we've got your attention...

Will CFG load the partition if the sector size in the WBFS header is larger than what's detected from the physical drive?

Edit:
fat probably won't work with 4k because in libfat it's hardcoded to use 512, that would need to be fixed.
i haven't checked libntfs, but i assume it might need tweaking as well..
Ah, that's why people with larger drives are using WBFS.

 

[oggzee]

I'm going to try these partitions later with a small pen drive, but since we've got your attention...

Will CFG load the partition if the sector size in the WBFS header is larger than what's detected from the physical drive?

I don't know, never tried that.

 

[fig2k4]

I just tried and got the obvious error "hd sector size doesn't match".

I'm just checking out the source. It should be quite easy to add this. Although you lose that size check for WBFS drives, since you use whatever is in the header. WBFS files would be unaffected.

 

[ChaosEnergy]

2tb ntfs formatted hdd by win xp work fine since month in cfgloader, and cant remmeber issues in detecting games in backuploader

 

[domino-s]

I ran into a problem suddenly with .48 build. I'm starting to get a error on load and close:

Load:
"31/12/201014:05:11" is not a valid date and time

Exit:
Access violation at address 0068DE79 in module "WiiBackupMangager.exe". Read of address 00000038

and it won't exit without end process in task manager

I tried changing the date to Dec 31st and it still does it.

Any ideas?

 

[fig2k4]

Delete all the log files before starting the app. I've no idea why the error only occurs sometimes. It should always happen.

It'll be fixed in the next release.

 

[domino-s]

Delete all the log files before starting the app. I've no idea why the error only occurs sometimes. It should always happen.

It'll be fixed in the next release.

That did the trick, thanks

 

[dexter222]

I know that CFG has added support for drives with a sector size of 4096. That could probably format the WBFS drive OK.

You realise that if this 3TB drive is using GPT, then the real problem all along was that USBLoaderGX reading the partitions wrong?

Now that it's reading the partition boot sector to get the file system info, instead of the MBR, it'll work fine with GPT disks. (I just had to come to some kind of conclusion after all the investigation.

)

As I seem to recall, WBFS detects the sector size from the drive. Seagate's workaround for the 3TB drive is to make the 3TB drive report a 4K sector size to the operating system, in order to accommodate a larger drive inside. Then, the MBR can manage the fewer number of sectors. So if WBFS detects the sector size by default no modifications should have to be made as WBFS is already dynamic, right? So the 3tb Seagate drive should just work, by default, on all things WBFS... right? lol

The Western Digital (and I believe the new Hitachi) 3tb drives use GPT.

Now if there's a way to get any of these to work on USB loader GX, or even config, using FAT32 or NTFS that would be awesome.

 

[fig2k4]

So if WBFS detects the sector size by default no modifications should have to be made as WBFS is already dynamic, right? So the 3tb Seagate drive should just work, by default, on all things WBFS... right? lol
It should, but some older apps and versions of libWBFS used a hardcoded value of 512. I'm not sure if uLoader has been updated since, but that's where I first saw the problem. I'd imagine WBFS manager is the same.

With the formatting in WBM, I think the problem was with GPT. With GPT disks, I need to use IOCTL_DISK_GET_PARTITION_INFO_EX instead of IOCTL_DISK_GET_PARTITION_INFO to get the partition size etc. otherwise the format would fail. It'll be worth trying again with the next release.

Now if there's a way to get any of these to work on USB loader GX, or even config, using FAT32 or NTFS that would be awesome.
According to oggzee's recent post, it seems that libFAT and libNTFS have the sector size hardcoded to 512 too. Someone would need to rewrite parts of that code..

 

[OncleJulien]

here's one i havent seen before...latest build, drive to drive copy:

03:52:18 Application Exception raised Integer overflow
Stack trace:
[00653446]{WiiBackupManager.exe} Threads.TBaseThread.UpdateStats (Line 821, "Threads.pas" + 15)
[00548020]{WiiBackupManager.exe} Forms.TApplication.ProcessMessage (Line 9733, "Forms.pas" + 3)
[006D9842]{WiiBackupManager.exe} WiiBackupManager.WiiBackupManager (Line 40, "" + 11)

user error?

 

[Meneertje]

The hybrid selection sounds great, selecting items, with a difference in 'selected items' and 'checked items'.

I too have found myself in the WHOOPS forgot to press ctrl situation plenty of times!

ps. Hope you also include mouse dragbox selection, where I click anywhere in a line of a title and drag down with the mouse (just like making a box with mouse to select multiple icons on your desktop in your OS)

 

[kamiro04]

Hi fig2k4, first I want to thank you for the hard work - it's a great app!
Just wanted to ask you if there's plans for adding wiitdb.zip database support (like the titles.txt download button and renaming)
Best regards!

 

[misterqqqface]

Is it a common error for games to get screwed up partitions after being transferred? For example, I have a game with G (game-only) partition, but when I transfer it to my wbfs drive, it becomes an unusable "????" partition. This is quite annoying, and it happens to 90% of my games when I transfer them.

 

[tHeWiZaRdOfDoS]

AFAIK that's a possible issue with wbfs format after copying/deleting games - that's why I chose .ntfs.

 

[sideskroll]

I know this probably isn't the right thread to post this but as I'm not sure where the problem lies I'm trying to cover all of the angles.
I had a wbfs fomatted mactor portable basics (fully compatible) working perfectly with all my games. Yesterday I decided to reformat the drive as fat32(32KB if it makes any difference) Cause I thought It would be good to have the extra space available for whatever I could need and seeing as the fat32 support is fully developed by now (I had WBFS since this whole softmod thing started...)
Anyways, long story short it took me FOREVER to backup the games to my hdd, reformat the external drive and then move the backed up games from my hdd to my external AGAIN just to find out my wii doesn't recognize it!!!... The external is the same, the games are the same. Everythings the same.
I'm using the latest revs of everything (at least what modmii downloads for me...) and CFG loader.
Apps stored in the usb drive are not recognized either...
What could be wrong and can you think of something to fix it? (Please don't tell me to reformat my drive again cause I think I'd rather kick myself in the nuts than going through that again...)
Thanks in advance.

PS: I formatted and managed the backups with Wii Backup Manager (latest version)

 

[Spellman]

@fig2k4
Thanks for all!!!

This App is the best!!!

regards

 

[fig2k4]

@OncleJulien
There are a few little math errors in the progress updates. They aren't important, so I should disable the integer overflow checking again so they don't interfere with the transfers. What were you using when it happened? eg. WBFS->ISO or ISO->FAT32 etc.

Since I hope to change the transfer progress to use a queue system, those progress function won't be used for much longer. Tracking down the bugs would be a bit of a waste of time.

@kamiro04
Yeah, it's on the todo list. Already half done, but needs to be finished.

@misterqqqface
I'd recommend you use Wiimm's tools to check and repair the drive. Hopefully Wiimm can post a command line that could help there.

You could try converting a game to ISO, then load it on the files list to see if it's valid. If the games are valid that way, there must be a bug somewhere.

I was messing around with a WBFS drive recently and transfers were OK with any sector sizes etc. It's hard to tell whether it's a bug in WBM, another app that deleted games incorrectly or just the WBFS file system being messed up. If you can give some more info on what you used to create the drive etc. it would help us to help you.

@sideskroll
I'm not sure what you've got installed or version of CFG etc. so I'll just tell you what I'm using so you can try it.

I use Hermes cIOS v5, installed as 222 using the installer's default settings. Any version of CFG using 222 as default should work. eg. cfg63-222.dol. Just replace your boot.dol with that one, or you could try the online update in CFG to get it.

 

[OncleJulien]

@OncleJulien
There are a few little math errors in the progress updates. They aren't important, so I should disable the integer overflow checking again so they don't interfere with the transfers. What were you using when it happened? eg. WBFS->ISO or ISO->FAT32 etc.

hey fig2k4, thanks for responding - i was copying wbfs files from one fat32 drive to another fat32 drive. i think the root cause was free drive space, because if i turned off buffering, it seemed to help the process along, albeit slowly, and when i created more free hard drive space on the drive wbm was running from, and turned buffering back on, it worked like a charm.

 

[misterqqqface]

@misterqqqface
I'd recommend you use Wiimm's tools to check and repair the drive. Hopefully Wiimm can post a command line that could help there.

You could try converting a game to ISO, then load it on the files list to see if it's valid. If the games are valid that way, there must be a bug somewhere.

I was messing around with a WBFS drive recently and transfers were OK with any sector sizes etc. It's hard to tell whether it's a bug in WBM, another app that deleted games incorrectly or just the WBFS file system being messed up. If you can give some more info on what you used to create the drive etc. it would help us to help you.

Thanks for the fast response

I checked out Wimm's tools, but I hard time figuring out how to use them since I'm not too savvy with command line prompts.

When I load the games in "Files", they appear valid and everything (all of the information shows up). It is only during transfer when things get screwed up.

I used WBFS Managger 3.0 to format my drive (32 GB Kingston Data Traveler). I'm thinking about reformatting and seeing if that would help it. Do you have any recommended programs to format my drive into WBFS?

 

[douzebla]

Hi fig2k4,

just a word to thank you for this awesome app !!
After days of trials and search on the net, I finaly discovered why some games were not working on my drive in only ... 5 sec !! (wbm told me that the files were simply corrupted !!! and suggested to erase them)

I recently discovered that the wbfs format has a 500 files limit. After a few search, I've learned that wiiflow has now the ability to read fat32 and ntfs drives and, guess what, wbm can also handle those fats !!! whaou ! So I decided to convert my wbfs drive into a fat32 drive but ...

It seems that I've discovered a small bug here, when I copy games from a wbfs drive to a fat32 formated drive (or a ntfs drive), all is OK (I mean all the games are on the destination drive) but when WBM tries to read the files on the fat32 disk (and build his list), it stop at the 390th game
- the destination drive is a 2To WD20EARS
- I tried to format the disk in FAT32 with fat32 formater -> same result
- I tried to format the disk in NTFS with WBM -> same result
- I looked in the log, no errors, the last message is "UpdateStorageConventionThread | Thread terminated" -> no specific error
- I tried the windows harddrive diagnostic tool -> no error
- I tried to put more games from a folder source (games which are and are not on the destination drive) and the process works perfectly, wbm detects the dupe games and makes his job normally
-- the final list now stops at the 425th game !!
-- interesting detail, this game where it stops is the same, it's "sing it star : r&b"

Could it be a problem with the "&" in the name of the game ?