Ready to Buy a Wii, with a view to modchips, should i look for an older 2nd hand?

Hi, No wii purchased as yet but.....
from research done on here, what I would ideally like is the ability to play back-ups from a Wii HDD, still be able to play any original discs and back them up to the HDD via the Wii. The snag is I'm thinking of buying new and in Black. (UK version)
The kids will have primary use of it !!

Have read the softmode guides (I'm tempted, but worried about bricking and the kids messing it up) so I am leaning towards the solderless hardmod.

Wode seems to offer what I want (but pricey and in white), Wiikey fusion seems alright but a compromise in features.

My question is, would I be better off looking at an older (white) virgin Wii on second hand market (ebay) and being guided by the serial number tables to filter my purchase to find a wii with older chipset and drive. (i would have to ask the seller of course)
Or, is that too hit and miss and I'm just better off sticking to plan "A" & getting a new one.
The other option I considered is replacing the wii drive with an older one of a certain type but I imagine that could be frought with problems too and the costs start to go up considerably.

Now I think I'm convincing myself to softmod a new black wii and have all the features I want. Ahhhhh!!!

Any experiance to help me decide would be welcome. Thank you.:confused:

the newer wii's (newer white, black, and red) have drives in them that can't read games on dvd-r's, a modchip won't work with them (somebody correct me if I'm wrong)
if you softmod, you can install something called priiloader which gives brick protection, it can also block updates (disc and online), so it's really suggested you install that
any wii can run backups through usb (you don't have to get up to change games:), and they play at faster speeds)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by us3rname

the newer wii's (newer white, black, and red) have drives in them that can't read games on dvd-r's, a modchip won't work with them (somebody correct me if I'm wrong)
if you softmod, you can install something called priiloader which gives brick protection, it can also block updates (disc and online), so it's really suggested you install that
any wii can run backups through usb (you don't have to get up to change games:), and they play at faster speeds)

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Thanks for the reply, Yeah, I'm actually not interested in a drive reading DVD-R because I would have back-ups from HDD or SD. But I do still want original games to work as normal and to write back-ups from them with the wii.
When you say "any Wii can run back-ups from USB", I assume you mean after modding. And there is one of my sticking points. You see, if I hard-mod, I believe that it takes a certain modchip, coupled with a certain wii drive to play from a wii HDD (With the exception of Wode it seems).

So, I think Im coming to the conclusions: -

An "Older" wii is no help to me unless I want to play back-ups from DVD and / or care about playing Non UK (PAL) games. (Neither of which I care about).
With a new Wii, were talking softmod or perhaps Wode to get all the features I want such as playback from a USB HDD and ripping original to HDD via Wii.

Correct, after softmodding can the wii play games through usb.
Since all disc drives can read wii games (obviously), I would imagine that all wii's can backup the games to usb. This is one of the things I am unsure on however (if the usb loaders can use the newer disc drives and backup games to the hdd) . Someone else on here probably knows.

You don't need a wode to play wii games through usb, just custom ios's (which get installed during the softmod process), a hard drive, and a usb loader.

Another thing that is different about older and newer wii's is that the older wii's can have bootmii installed as boot2 (which is the best brick protection). Newer wii's can only install priiloader (which is brick protection, but not as good as bootmii as boot2). Boot2 is earlier in the boot process of the wii. Priiloader only installs before the system menu and can be overwritten by a new system menu install.