Emulation Wii U not providing enough power to HDD in vWii mode

[Victorzer]

I'm currently running into some issues when using a Wii Virtual Console TecoMoon's Inject on my Wii U, basically, the game loads fine, but then after 2-3 mins this error pops up randomly: The Game Disc could not be read. Refer to the Wii Operations Manual for details

At first sight it looked odd to me, since it's running from a HDD, not from a Disc, but i guess that's just how it emulates.
Then i thought the HDD wasn't receiving enough power, so i tried to move the game to the Wii U Internal Storage. Surprinsigly, this time it ran perfectly without issues. This makes me think it's not a problem with the Inject or the ISO itself. It's just the HDD not being powered properly.

But this just doesn't make sense to me, because this HDD IS Y-cable powered, and all my Wii U Games on it runs perfectly fine, it's just the Wii VCs acting strange. So maybe the console is not powering the USB correctly in vWii mode? Maybe it's only using one port? Or is that impossible?

Before you tell me to use the Wii U Internal Storage, i can't. Because this is a Basic Version console and i'm currently running out of space.

 

[Victorzer]

Tried using the two back ports, two front ports, still nothing. I've tested 3 different games, all of them gives me the same error. (yes i use a crt tv lol)

 

[xs4all]

From past experience and also from others, vWii mode can get picky on the type of HDD used. It's not the HDD itself that is the issue but the usb hard drive controller that is inside the hdd enclosure that is the issue in vWii mode, even though the same HDD works fine in WiiU mode.
When you boot a Wii inject, the WiiU has to boot into vWii mode to boot the Wii game, in doing so, the usb hard drive momentarily gets disconnected and then reconnected. It's the reconnect stage of the hard drive part that is the issue, if the hard drive doesn't connect or spin up in time when it needs to you get either black screen or that message.

There isn't any list floating around to what works and what doesn't, it's just a matter of trial an error, in the past, I had a total of about 10 usb hard drives, half was just enclosures where you can connect your own hard drive and the other half was actual usb hard drives in various sizes. Out of the 10, only half worked worked, so for me, it was a hit and miss depending on the type and brand.

In saying that, your issue may not be the same as mine, but going by MY experiences, with the same error message your getting, the various hard drives was my issue. Your custom Wii injects doesn't seem to be the issue since it works fine on your internal storage, you only get this issue on the usb hard drive.

I have read on some rare occasions, before you boot the Wii inject that is stored on your usb hard drive, first boot into vWii, exit back to the WiiU menu, then try booting the Wii game.

 

[Victorzer]

From past experience and also from others, vWii mode can get picky on the type of HDD used. It's not the HDD itself that is the issue but the usb hard drive controller that is inside the hdd enclosure that is the issue in vWii mode, even though the same HDD works fine in WiiU mode.
When you boot a Wii inject, the WiiU has to boot into vWii mode to boot the Wii game, in doing so, the usb hard drive momentarily gets disconnected and then reconnected. It's the reconnect stage of the hard drive part that is the issue, if the hard drive doesn't connect or spin up in time when it needs to you get either black screen or that message.

There isn't any list floating around to what works and what doesn't, it's just a matter of trial an error, in the past, I had a total of about 10 usb hard drives, half was just enclosures where you can connect your own hard drive and the other half was actual usb hard drives in various sizes. Out of the 10, only half worked worked, so for me, it was a hit and miss depending on the type and brand.

In saying that, your issue may not be the same as mine, but going by MY experiences, with the same error message your getting, the various hard drives was my issue. Your custom Wii injects doesn't seem to be the issue since it works fine on your internal storage, you only get this issue on the usb hard drive.

I have read on some rare occasions, before you boot the Wii inject that is stored on your usb hard drive, first boot into vWii, exit back to the WiiU menu, then try booting the Wii game.

wow, thank you so much for this comment... it was really helpful and enlightening! I didn't know vWii was so picky. Also, something curious that i found out is that when the game is just about to crash, loading menus and loading screens get super slow, and then the game crashes. It looks like the HDD is trying to catch up, but it fails and give up right after.

I also tried running Wii menu, leaving, and then running the inject, but it sadly didn't work too.

Curiously enough, i had an old laptop HDD laying around, i plugged into the Wii U, formatted it, copied the inject from the internal storage to the new HDD, and it worked like a charm! If i could, i would transfer all my Wii U games from my old HDD to this new one, but considering i have more than 300GB of games, it would be a pain in the ass. The Wii U built-in data manager is SO DAMN SLOW for transfering games

 

[xs4all]

Yes the WiU data manager is so slow, back in the day, I got a 750gb drive, it was not enough for the all the games installed, so I got a 2TB drive. Using the data manager on the WiiU, I remember it took over 10 hours to complete the transfer, lucky it went without any problems and no power outage.

Glad you managed to sort out your issue in a way, so yes it's a combination of hard drive and the controller inside the usb hdd enclosure, as I said, it's a hit and miss.

 

[Victorzer]

Yes the WiU data manager is so slow, back in the day, I got a 750gb drive, it was not enough for the all the games installed, so I got a 2TB drive. Using the data manager on the WiiU, I remember it took over 10 hours to complete the transfer, lucky it went without any problems and no power outage.

Glad you managed to sort out your issue in a way, so yes it's a combination of hard drive and the controller inside the usb hdd enclosure, as I said, it's a hit and miss.

Yeah, apparently my only option is to somehow transfer all my data to the other HDD i found. Thanks for your answers!