Tutorial: How to prepare your USB HDD to play Wii Backup games

I decided to make a tutorial about how to setup your USB HDD to play Wii BackUps (Soft modded Wii) after successfully modding my Wii (4.3e) by using the following tutorial:

http://www.techkings.org/nintendo-wi...t-version.html
[Thanks to sinno and wheelo]


This is more of a follow through of the thread above, going to throw everything that I have learnt whilst softmodding my wii in this thread.

The two loaders that I'll be referring to are uLoader and CFG USB Loader (there are many more loaders out there but i prefer CFG). Both of these loaders are able to make your Wii play your BackUp games. I prefer the CFG USB Loader over the uLoader, and I will explain as I'm writing this tutorial.

Now you might be familiar of the .iso format. Its a format that you will likely end up with when making backup of media such as DVD's and Games. The thing with the original wii game discs is that not all disk space is used, and because of this, the remainder of the disc is filled with unnecessary garbage. Nobody wants to waste any disk space when it comes to backups which is where the .wbfs format comes into play.

There is a program called WBFS manager and Wii Backup manager. Both of these awesome apps are able to get rid of this garbadge from the .iso's and leave you with just the game itself. So an .ISO of a file size 4.3GB can be easily reduced to as little as 1.6GB (.wbfs). Now how much its reduced by depends on how much garbadge nintendo has put onto the disc.

WBFS Manager: With this Backup manager you will have to mark a partition with .wbfs file system. This file system cannot be read by Windows, but just the soft modded nintendo Wii. So you will have to mark a partition on your USB HDD to go forward with this one.
This manager is best used to prep your USB HDD for the use of "uLoader"


Wii Backup Manager (my choice): Or there is the WiiBackup manager. This is the upgraded version of the previous WBFS manager. This app will allow you to store your .wbfs games onto a Fat32 or NTFS hard drive. Now this probably makes more sense, maybe you dont have much backups and so dont want to dedicate a HDD to a filesystem that is useless to you other than on the Wii, well now you dont have to with this loader.

I will now show how both of these loaders work and will give abit of advice/tips at the end:

How to prepare your USB HDD with WBFS manager for use with uLoader (.wbfs file format)

Download the WBFS manager from here (32bit X86 ONLY - You will need the most up-to-date Microsoft .net framework to run this application.):
WBFS Manager for 32bit(86) - Downloads - TechKings



Here is a quick overview of WBFS Manager 3.0:

(Warning be careful that you chose the correct drive, you dont want to format the wrong drive to .wbfs, there will be no way out but to reformat the wrong drive again for it to function and as a result lose all your data on there)

If your drive does not show up then simply click on Refresh Drive List.

Information about your Wii HDD is at the bottom. (This is what i'll be calling the HDD that you'll be using for Wii backups in this thread)

If you have a .wbfs file format on your Wii HDD and you want the original ISO back, then just select the .ISO in WBFS Manager and click on Extract iso and then save.



Once you have selected the CORRECT drive (Wii HDD), click on format and then press Yes (read the warning).



Great! Now you have succesfully formatted your Wii HDD to ...yes the .wbfs file system



I've added the relevant info in the screenshot to keep this one nice and simple.



..and if you try to access your drive in My Computer, you will find that you wont be able to as Windows doesn't recognize this file system. (formatting will make you lose all your .wbfs Wii Backups)

*Now that you have done this, your drive is ready! Simply just plug it into the USB port that is near to the edge of your Wii for this to work)
Then select uLoader on your Wii's main menu and it should detect the Wii HDD and your games will show up."


How to prepare your USB HDD with Wii Backup Manager for use with CFG USB Loader (FAT32 or NTFS):
Wii BackUp Manager 0.3.8 - Downloads - TechKings
You will need the most up-to-date Microsoft .net framework to run this application.)


Here's a quick overview:

The files tab will allow you to load your .iso file into the program ready for processing/transferring.
The Drive 1 and Drive 2 both refer to your Wii HDD's. I'll be just looking at 1 drive as i'm sure most of you will be using 1 Wii HDD, right?
ISO .images are split into 4GB parts if you use the fat32 file system.




On the Drive 1 tab, select the drive letter for your HDD, in my case its drive F:/
The program will detect that its a valid drive letter and will create a wbfs folder in the root of your Wii HDD for you.
(notice here your not changing the file system, you can either use a fat32 or NTFS Wii HDD)


Under the Files tab, click on Add | Files, then locate your .ISO. (The file I have loaded is a wbfs file, this is because I have no .iso's to convert at the moment, so just pretend I loaded a .iso file )

Once you have loaded and checked the tick box of the appropriate iso, you have two options here, either you can convert the .iso to WBFS by doing Transfer | WBFS or if your backup is already a .wbfs file then you can simply transfer it to your Wii HDD by Transfer | Drive 1.
(If you already have a .wbfs file format then I guess you can use Windows Explorer to transfer the file? Yes, your right, but a naming structing is used, otherwise the games wont show in CFG USB Loader, so just use this loader to do it everything correctly. I will post the file structure towards the end of this tutorial.




Just a quick overview of your USB HDD (WBFS Folder (FAT32 or NTFS))



Transfer is taking place, and thats about it, the Wii Backup Manager will store the file on your Wii HDD and make the appopriate folder(s)/filename.

*It has been said that FAT32 file system is more stable than NTFS, but NTFS also still works well, take your pick...
*

FILE STRUCTURE:

(.wbfs)
D:\wbfs\GAMEID.wbfs
D:\wbfs\Title [GAMEID].wbfs
D:\wbfs\Title [GAMEID]\GAMEID.wbfs
D:\wbfs\GAMEID_Title\GAMEID.wbfs

(.iso)
D:\wbfs\GAMEID.iso
D:\wbfs\Title [GAMEID].iso
D:\wbfs\Title [GAMEID]\GAMEID.iso
D:\wbfs\GAMEID_Title\GAMEID.iso

Attention: When I ran the CFG USB Loader and ran a backup (.wbfs) I came across an error telling me to update either one of:

cios249 rev18
cios222v4
cios223v4
cios224v5 or higher is required.

Upgrade ios249 or choose a diferent ios.

Changing the IOS in CFG USB Loader to something else will probably eventually get the game to load. But I set out to fix this problem instead of trying to find a workaround. So i decided I will install cios249, but rev18, tried to find the latest one and came across rev 21 so I will be using this.

*
ios = Official Operating System
cios = Custom Operating system
*

Here is how its done:

Download the following: cIOSXrev21Installer - Downloads - TechKings

Extract the folder cIOSrev21Installer and copy it to your apps folder on your SD card i.e. SD:\apps\cIOSrev21Installer

Now to the Wii, insert your SD card, click on homebrew channel (you should have this already with the tutorial linked right at the beginning of this thread [softmodded Wii])

Then click on the loader, and choose the following settings:

IOS to use = 249
then choose <IOS36 3607>
Install it on slot 249
Choose network install and press A to continue, the loader should then do its thing and then restart your Wii when your press the appropriate combination (show on screen)

Now the game that wouldn't load because of the missing IOS249 will now begin to work on IOS249.



Tips/Advice:
When loading apps onto the SD card make sure not to use any spaces otherwise you will find that the loader will not show up on the homebrew channel.

Once your Wii is softmodded you will be able to use SDHC cards (CFG USB Loader), this is because it will be used via the loaders and not the official Wii system software.

Use the Wii BackUp Manager to prep your USB, doing it manually will probably cause you to rename the file wrong and it wont show up.

The CFG Loader can do a whole lot! You can change themes, use your SDHC cards/HDD, download cover images, custom IOS selection for better compatibility with USB drives and so much more!


*If theres any questions please do not hesistate to ask*.