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Loading and Playing Wii Backup Games from USB HDD
Loading, Ripping, and Playing Wii Game Backups from an External USB Hard Disk Drive
Using an external USB hard disk drive improves the load and play speed of the game. Original Wii game discs spin at 6X; backup discs, in a softmodded Wii, spin at 3X. The USB HDD exceeds the speed of the original game disc and can eliminate problems with stuttering or choppy audio and or video from backup game discs.
The external USB HDD used by the Wii will be referred to throughout this tutorial as the Wii HDD to avoid confusion with the HDD associated with the PC. The entire Wii HDD volume can be formatted in the WBFS format for backup game use or one can create a number of partitions. Before partitioning your drive, think about the partitions you may need. As the PC does not recognize a WBFS-formatted drive, it is a good idea to have at least one partition in a format that allows your PC to access the Wii HDD. This partition(s) can be formatted as NTFS, FAT or FAT32 depending on intended use. Homebrew apps and USB Loader files can be stored on the FAT partition of the HDD instead of an SD card. Only the NTFS format will allow the PC to manage files >4GB.
Preparation
1. Follow one of the two excellent softmodding tutorials on this site:
If you have updated to 4.2, then messie's guide is the one to follow: [Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]
2. If, after successful completion of the softmod, you did not download and install USB Loader GX and WBFS Manager 3.0; download from [Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]
Note: WBFS Manager requires NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (the installer will prompt you to automatically download and install it if you don't already have it.)
3. Type of USB HDD
a. If you do not yet have an external USB HDD- get a Western Digital USB HDD.
b. You have an external USB HDD- check the compatibility of your HDD [Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]
Formatting the HDD
Your HDD will probably come already formatted for "plug and play" compatibility with a PC:
1. Plug your new Wii HDD into a PC USB port
2a. From the WinXP: Right click on My Computer> Go to Manage>Click on Disk Management
2b. From Vista/Win7: Go to Control Panel> Administrative Tools>Computer Manager>Disk
3. With your disk drive loaded and visible: right click on the Wii HDD and choose to delete either the entire volume or a partition
4. Right click on new HDD in lower part or graphical portion of window and click New
5a. Choose to assign a letter to your new drive
5b. Choose NOT TO FORMAT when you create your new partition [note that you can choose size of partition-you can leave some to create additional partitions later
5c. Make your new partition PRIMARY and ACTIVE
WBFS Manager - Format Wii Drive and Adding Game ISOs
Run WBFS Manager 3.0 – Formatting the Wii Drive, drive partition, or USB Flash Drive
1. Select your new drive letter and press Format. If the drive does not show, Press Refresh Drive List
2. To add a game ISO to the WBFS-formatted drive or partition, press the Browse button on the lower right-hand window and locate your ISO.
3. Either double-click the ISO and the game title will now show in the WBFS Manager right-hand window. One can also use Windows Explorer and drag the ISO the the right-hand window. Repeat for multiple ISOs.
4. Select the game title(s) and press the Add button
5. The game(s) will now be added to the Wii HDD. Note that, as extraneous material is not copied to the Wii HDD, the file size will be smaller than 4.37GB.
6. After games have been added to the Wii HDD, clear the ISO list by selecting the game titles again in the right-hand window, and press Remove From List
Rip Game Directly from Disc to Wii HDD
1. Plug your Wii HDD into the OUTERMOST USB PORT (lower or left USB port depending on Wii position). Power up Wii, from the system menu activate USB Loader GX. Load USB HDD. To rip game disc from Wii, push (+) button and insert game disc into Wii drive.
To Play Wii Games from USB Loader GX
Global application settings can be changed by pressing the settings button identified in the above graphic.
Settings can also be set for an individual game; after the game is selected a game disc image will display and another settings option will be available-this time for the individual game.
To select a game from the list use the D-pad: Up/DOWN scrolls by 1 game; LEFT/RIGHT scrolls up and down by 9 game titles, respectively. The scroll bar can also be grabbed to move the highlight bar. Once the desired game is highlighted, press the A button and the game disc screen will display. At this menu, one can either play the game by selecting the disc or change game settings. In addition to the video, more information on USB Loader GX settings has been posted by WiiJohn [Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]
Note for playing out-of-region games - first setting of choice is to set the Video Mode to force the video feed to your own region. Example: to play a PAL game on an NTSC Wii, set Video Mode to FORCE NTSC.
Optional
You can either use WBFS Manager or go back to your PC to format the non-WBFS partition if you chose to create one. Remember that while homebrew applications and USB Loader GX files can be recognized from the FAT partition, an NTFS-formatted partition is required to handle files > 4GB. Wii game ISOs are typically 4.37GB.
Acknowledgements: Dogeggs and messie for superb softmodding tutorials; WiiJohn for posting the USB Loader GX settings; Project Owners for USB Loader GUI -thedarkness1981, dimok, mauricewoelk, giantpune; Team USB Loader GX [Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]; CodePlex Open Source Community.
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Last edited by gen3sf; Yesterday at 10:17 AM.
Reason: updated cfg usb loader46; added wiiflow 1.1, bolded some text
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nice!!!!!!
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My Maxtor PS 3100 works great with all of the loaders mentioned in the guide, just need to make sure the games being put on the drive are near perfect so there are no read errors during transfer. GX v807 is giving me problems DL covers, stack dump error, so I am using CFG atm until GX is fixed.
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LU50 SM4.1U Boot2v4
Original WiiKey v1.9s
BootMii beta5 loaded as boot2
HBC v1.06
USBLoader GX v807
USBLoader_CFG_NForwarder_UCXF_Channel v16
200GB Maxtor Personal Storage 3100 USB HDD USB-HDD Compatibility list
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DOmiNatOR_
Another great tut! Simple and clean.
My Maxtor PS 3100 works great with all of the loaders mentioned in the guide, just need to make sure the games being put on the drive are near perfect so there are no read errors during transfer. GX v807 is giving me problems DL covers, stack dump error, so I am using CFG atm until GX is fixed.
They may have fixed that at version 813 0r 814 There was a problem where images were not being saved as .png files. It is recommended you delete your cached tmp images of any themes to avoid doubles
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Fantastically helpful. I did put my hard drive in the wrong USB port, and didn't have the Backup partition as the Active partition, though. Took an extra half hour finding those bits of info - but this tutorial gave me -so- much great info.
Good guide, but you should add WiiFlow to the list of loaders. I don't know why it's rarely mentioned on these forums. It works great and I think it looks probably the best of any loader I have seen.
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yeah i confirm it it is really nice. also you can update for the new configurable loader, which supports fat32 format
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!!
button.
Linear Mode
