Hacking wiiU hdd not being recognized anymore

[Cyan]

I don't know if wfsdump rely on the first sector too.
Maybe that tool can't access the drive if the drive's header is bad.

if you can't access it, we will try to swapp it with a working header.
no idea what I'm doing, ahaha
as long as you have a backup, we can try.

I suppose we can use dd to copy the header.

1. backup your 500gb partition to backup_500.bin
dd if=/dev/usbx of=backup_500.bin
2. format a new drive (small hdd, or flash drive)
3.(optional) dump the new drive to flashpartition.bin
4. dump header's first 64 bytes from that new drive :
dd if=flashpartition.bin (or if=/dev/usbx) of=header.bin bs=64 count=1
5. write good header dump to broken 500gb hdd
dd if=header.bin of=/dev/usbx bs=64 count=1

Am I right?

Edit:
Sorry, it seems bs= can't be less than 512

 

[MO35AB]

Thanks bro.
I'll answer back tomorrow, cause 500 gb isn't easy to backup, using usb 2.0.

 

[MO35AB]

aaaaand it did'nt work,
contacted my brother, when i was away he pluged it into windows 10 twice, and Mac os once -_-, guess thats why, he said he ddnt do any changes.
when using dd there was multiple input/output errors in 29 gb sector point.
i had to do:
sudo dd if=/dev/sdc of=backup_500_gb.bin conv=noerror,sync
so i can fill false data with zeros,
electricity went of at 246 gb -_- ,i statlrted again.
did the rest of the operation.
i pluged the hdd, turned the wii u on, and it started loading for few sec.
then same message again, asking to format it.
@Cyan can i format it now ?
while keeping the 500 gb backup away for future solution ?
i have no more tricks :/

 

[MO35AB]

..

 

[Kafluke]

If your brother plugged it into wimdows it would ask him to format it first thing

 

[MO35AB]

If your brother plugged it into wimdows it would ask him to format it first thing

he didn't,bacause it was all unallocated no partition no file system.

 

[Cyan]

so, you have a (somewhat) valid backup. it contains error, but maybe we can skip these sectors to recover the other data.
Before formating it completely on WiiU again (and lose existing data), do you have a device you can format on WiiU ? a small flash drive, even an SD card inside an USB adapter).

We will try the "64 byte header" trick a user explained in another thread.
unless that's what you already tried when you said above on Post23 that it didn't work?

 

[MO35AB]

that's what i did, what you explained by writing only the first 64 bits to the hdd header,
the problem was around the 29 gb
for what i used to have on the hdd, thats' around the 50% or so
i kept a backup.bin for future solutions
for the hdd its working perfectly fine, after format of course.
i hope we can work on the backup file if i only can extract the save files for the games, that ll be great.

 

[Cyan]

too bad the drive can't be used unless you access the corrupted data/sector.
it could have listed the other data and skipped the bad one.

I don't know how to use the extractor tool (wfsdump) I didn't read much to understand how it works, nor if it can extract using sectors instead of trying to mount all the image first.
maybe someone on wfsthread can help you.

 

[snk4ever]

I don't know if wfsdump rely on the first sector too.
Maybe that tool can't access the drive if the drive's header is bad.

if you can't access it, we will try to swapp it with a working header.
no idea what I'm doing, ahaha
as long as you have a backup, we can try.

I suppose we can use dd to copy the header.

1. backup your 500gb partition to backup_500.bin
dd if=/dev/usbx of=backup_500.bin
2. format a new drive (small hdd, or flash drive)
3.(optional) dump the new drive to flashpartition.bin
4. dump header's first 64 bytes from that new drive :
dd if=flashpartition.bin (or if=/dev/usbx) of=header.bin bs=64 count=1
5. write good header dump to broken 500gb hdd
dd if=header.bin of=/dev/usbx bs=64 count=1

Am I write?

Hi,

My HDD lost its power while I was installing a game from a WUP yesterday. It froze the WiiU and I had to power cycle it.
When rebooting, all my HDD data was gone and the drive doesn't show in the data management in settings.

I did an image of the whole drive with dd:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 299G Oct 30 13:20 WiiUHDDImage.dd

And I tried your trick of formating a USB stick and copying the first 64 B:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 64 Oct 30 16:41 flashHeader.dd

I then flashed this to the HDD (as per your step 5.). When booting the WiiU displays the USB logo in the botom left on the home screen for about 5s but then it is still the same result, I don't have my HDD data and the drive is not showing up in the WiiU's data management tool.

Next step would be to try to format another drive idealy the same space on the same WiiU and try to mount my old and new drive with the wfs lib and fuse. Then copy everything from the old to the new drive ?

Then I need to get my WiiU's otp.bin and seeprom.bin I guess. Not sure how to extract these. I do have a WiiU with the homebrew channel working as my SD is fine.

 

[Cyan]

Get your OTP/SEEPROM from the console, using a homebrew (there's a NAND dumper which has all dumping options, or launch Dimok's OTPdump and SEEPROMdump individually)

the 64byte trick is not something I tried, I only read another user fixed his drive this way.
but that's only when the issue is the partition definition, not the data.
if the table data is corrupted, I don't know if you can recover it. Try with wfs lib and Fuse, but I can't tell you that it will work.

 

[snk4ever]

Thanks, leaving this link here in case someone else reads the thread and is looking for instructions:
https://wiiu.guide/nand-backup.html

I left a message on the wfsdump thread (https://gbatemp.net/threads/wfsdump-pc-util-for-dumping-wfs-devices-wiiu-file-system.478480/page-4), I got the software to run on my Linux box but it cannot mount my drive unfortunately. I guess my saves are gone forever.

me@microserver:~/wfslib/wfs-fuse$ sudo ./wfs-fuse /dev/sdd /mnt/disque/ --otp ../mywiiukeys/otp.bin --seeprom ../mywiiukeys/seeprom.bin
Error: Wfs: Failed to detect sector size and sectors count​

 

[Kafluke]

Thanks, leaving this link here in case someone else reads the thread and is looking for instructions:
https://wiiu.guide/nand-backup.html

I left a message on the wfsdump thread (https://gbatemp.net/threads/wfsdump-pc-util-for-dumping-wfs-devices-wiiu-file-system.478480/page-4), I got the software to run on my Linux box but it cannot mount my drive unfortunately. I guess my saves are gone forever.

me@microserver:~/wfslib/wfs-fuse$ sudo ./wfs-fuse /dev/sdd /mnt/disque/ --otp ../mywiiukeys/otp.bin --seeprom ../mywiiukeys/seeprom.bin
Error: Wfs: Failed to detect sector size and sectors count​

We already have full nand backup instructions in the noob guide. Please don't link users to wiiu.guide. if you want to know why then just search for that term here in gbatemp and you'll no why we don't recommend it.