Wii Hard Drive Hack: Load Wii Games Off a Hard Drive
/* Posted April 22nd, 2009 at 7:07am *//* Filed under How-To, Mods, Nintendo, Wii */
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Nintendo’s system menu 4.0 update provided a long-awaited storage solution in the form of SDHC support up to 32GB. Whoopee. Now we’ll tell you how you can actually load Wii game backups off a hard drive with this Wii hard drive hack for a real storage solution. Taking advantage of Nintendo’s 4.0 update support a costly solution since you are required to buy pricey SDHC cards, and it’s limited in size as well. With the Wii hard drive hack we’re about to discuss, you can load games off any USB hard drive with much higher storage capacities. Expensive 32GB flash? Psh, try cheap 320GB HDD. And not only that, if you’ve got any USB stick pen drives lying around, they will work just as well. Plus to top it all off, you will see a huge performance benefit as your games will load much faster as they’re being read off the hard drive compared to the slower DVD disc drive.
First of all, let’s list the hardware requirements for the Wii hard drive hack:
- Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (if you don’t have Wii Homebrew Channel)
- SD card
- USB hard drive
- Wii system menu 3.3 (3.4 and 4.0 were untested as our Wiis did not have these installed, but anything 3.3 and prior should work)
- Wii mod chip
And now, here are the much anticipated steps:
- Install the Wii Homebrew Channel. If you don’t already have the Wii Homebrew Channel manager installed, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. It’s an absolute must for running great user-contributed homebrew apps on your Wii. If you’ve already got it installed, you can skip ahead to step 11. Otherwise to install it you’ll need to use the Twilight Princess hack. This means you need to have played Twilight Princess at least once on your Wii and had a game saved.
- Format an SD card to FAT16 or FAT32.
- Pick the proper game save to load based on the Twilight Princess version you played. More details can be found in our Twilight Princess hack guide.
- If it does not already exist, make a directory called “/private/wii/title/RZDx/” on your SD card; replace “RZDx” with RZDE (US), RZDP (Europe) or RZDJ (Japan) as appropriate based on the inner circle text which varies depending on the version of Twilight Princess you played. Copy the correct “data.bin” file you chose from the hacked Twilight Princess gamesave package with the matching directory path into the directory you created on your SD card.
- Copy the Wii Homebrew Channel hbc101-boot-dol.zip file to the root folder of the SD card (note that this is for 3.3 menu update and earlier, other versions can be found here). Extract the file which should be named boot.dol. You can delete the .zip package after you extract the boot.dol file.
- Now, put the SD card into your Wii and turn it on. Go into Wii Options –> Data Management –> Save Data –> Wii.
- Find your Zelda save, click on it, and click “Erase”, and click Yes.
- Now, go into SD card, and select the “Twilight Hack” save (the icon says “Wiibrew Loader”). Click copy, and yes. Now, go back out of that menu.
- Insert Zelda, and run the game. Load the file corresponding to the correct save slot as indicated in the table here (US only), and either walk backwards, or talk to the guy that’s standing in front of you. Worst case you picked the wrong file and try the other one.
- Now the Wii Homebrew Channel will install itself as its own channel in your Wii menu. Follow the prompts to complete the install. You can delete the boot.dol from your SD card now.
- Download Waninkoko’s custom IOS36-rev10 installer.
- Create a directory "/apps/cios36r10" on your SD card.
- Extract the cIOS36 zip to a directory. Grab the cIOS36_rev10-Installer.dol file and copy it to the "/apps/cios36r10" on your SD card.
- In the "/apps/cios36r10" folder on your SD card, rename cIOS36_rev10-Installer.dol to boot.dol.
- If your Wii has a network connection to the Internet, you can skip this step. Otherwise, download the IOS36-64-v1042.wad file and save it to the root of the SD card. You will have the option to install this later.
- Now create a directory "/apps/usbloader" on your SD card.
- Download WiiShizzza’s USB Loader Ultimate v7 homebrew to "/apps/usbloader" on your SD card.
- In the "/apps/usbloader" folder on your SD card, rename UltimateV7.dol to boot.dol. For extra credit, you can read up on how to set up a config.txt for the USB loader, or else just use ours. Yes the screenshot’s directory name doesn’t match up, but we’ve changed the folder name in case you wish to go the extra mile and install the USB loader wad which is hard coded to look in the usbloader directory. WAD installation is covered in our Animal Crossing/WiiKey guide from step 13 onward.
- Insert the SD card into your Wii’s SD slot and turn it on. Then open the Wii Homebrew Channel and start it.
- The homebrew channel detects any homebrew you’ve saved to the SD card. Load the cIOS36-rev10 installer by clicking on it.
- At the prompt, click “Load” to run the cIOS36 installer.
- You’ll hear some cool music. Read the disclaimer carefully, and if you agree press the A button on your Wii remote.
- At the next screen, choose whether you wish to perform a network install or not by pressing left or right. Then press A to continue.
- As the install commences, do not panic if the music stops. Once the install completes (about 2 minutes), restart by pressing any button.
- Now let’s test if the USB loader homebrew will work correctly. Load it from the Homebrew Channel.
- If the install went through correctly, you should see this:
Now your Wii is ready to load games off the USB port in the back. Getting games onto the USB hard drive is a whole other process. You will need to have Wii game disc ISO backups available if you wish to play them off the Wii hard drive.
- Download WBFS Manager 2.2.2 (other editions available here). Believe us, it’s the best WBFS game hard drive manager we’ve tried and we’ve tried a lot.
- Extract the zip to a folder and open it. Double click setup.exe to install it. Note that it will install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 if you don’t already have it installed.
- Connect your USB hard drive or USB stick to your computer. Note the drive letter that Windows assigns it.
- Now launch WBFS Manager. Select the drive letter of your soon to be Wii hard drive and click the “Format” button.
- At the lower right of WBFS Manager, click the “Browse…” button and browse to a valid Wii ISO file.
- Then also on the lower right, click the “Add to Drive” button and it will begin copying the ISO file over to the Wii hard drive.
- Even if your Wii ISO’s are full 4.7GB images, the WBFS manager is smart enough to strip out the empty unused bits so many games will actually be less than 4GB. Keep repeating steps 5 and 6 until you’ve loaded as many ISO game backups as you wish. Keep your eye on the free space of your hard drive though.
- Your Wii hard drive is now ready to be used. Load the USB Loader homebrew and when it displays “Waiting for USB device,” connect your new Wii hard drive and the USB loader will show all the games you’ve copied to your Wii hard drive in the menu. To play any game, just press the A button on your Wii remote.
Now you can play any game as if it had been inserted through the DVD disc drive except with better load times.
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[...] USB hard drive running. I haven’t tried it yet, but will find out if it does really work. Click here for the link</p> <p>BTW, piracy is illegal and not encourage. Don’t get [...]
Thanx for reply.. Your link is not work..
Hi there!
I received an error code while I try to install the cIOS36-rev10.
My wii is updated to the 3.4 version.
Is there any way to make it work?
How are you doing? I have my Usb loader running thanks to your instructions and I also added my covers to it… Changed the config to find my covers, and added link so it will automaticlly add covers..
Can you help me to get my usb loader change my backgrounds I’ve tried to get it to work for the last week and it wont change backgrouds.. I am using the usb loader from this site..
Thank you in advance
Hi i just read your usb message i wondered if u might be able to help me my usb is up and running but i cannot get it to downloasd my covers just says cannot mount usb any ideas cheers mandy
hi amte wat website do u use to get u games from
this works perfectly what format are the games :)
What file system formats do this loader support? NTFS(need to know!)? FAT16? Fat32?
Only FAT32.
PLEASE HELP MY COMPUTER FORMATERONLY LETS MY HD GO TO EX FAT OR NTFS
if ur using vista then it wont let u format to fat 32,use win xp,other wise format it to ntfs the only difference is u wont be able to load covers.
I DONT KNOW HOW TO FORMAT TO FAT 36 ONLY TO NTFS OR EXFAT
Fat32 can hold max of 4000 mb.
so do that, and Fat32 should come up.
either use linux or just google it and find a 3rd party formatting/partitioning software instead of expecting windows to do it.
So I followed this step by step (except for the twilight hack part because I’d already done that before) and get stuck on step 25. I skipped step 15. and got the wad from the network. I also used the config.txt that is provided above. When I try to run usbloader it says ERROR Custom IOS could not be loaded.
Any help on this would be appreciated.
I have the same problem
you can use this URL for more information about softmodding. http://www.wiihacks.com . the softmod is more later than this current website.
Thanx!!
I try it and its working perfectly..!!
Now i’ll buy an external disc because my usb is only 4gb
No discs
The hardware list for this project includes:
Wii mod chip
Why is a mod chip needed? Charsta, did your system have a mod chip? If yes, which one? Thank you.
Can anyone confirm that this works with 3.4u?
it works on my LU65 3.4u
How did you get homebrew on your LU65? I have one with 4.1 and can not get homebrew on it
hackmii, bannerbomb. google it
i’ve been trying to install the custom IOS but it gives me an error! (ret= -2011)
can I get some help?
Received error (step 24) “Installing ticket … ERROR RET = -2011. Using the .was from the internet on firmware 3.4u.
Any suggestions are appreciated.
I had the same error, I don’t know what caused it but I Used this guide to get past the issue.
Use the “OFFLINE Downgrade/Upgrade” section.
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=144835
Just to let you know I have 3.4E and its worked perfectly – cheers for taking the time to do these instructions, I have followed many and they have been incomplete missing out what I can only see as the obvious, but if you’re not used to doing this kind of thing, the obvious needs to be stated!
Thanks again, works like a charm!
p.s I have no modchip, just soft modded
I got 1tb running on mine with no chip!!!
Just put MAME, NES, SNES, GBC, GBA, SEGA MS, GENESIS on it!
Having fun with more to come! ! !
hi there i just got my wii moded a softmod now i was just curious how big a hard drive the wii will suport
hi there i just got my wii moded a softmod now i was just curious how big a hard drive the wii will suport can someone pls help me my email is mr_clean_2006@hotmail.com add me 2 msn or email me pls and ty very much
[...] you do some mod described in here. I don’t follow all the guide verbatim, I use wii cover flow loader instead. It’s looks [...]
I’ve done all the steps, but when I load the USB loader, my wiimote disconnects :(
have you been able to sort this? I have been having the same problem and can’t find a fix.
Thanks heaps for the perfect guide. I used a Astone external hard drive case with a seagate barricuda 1.5TB partitioned to 500gb for WBFS.
It works perfectly.
Just some advice. When backing up your games with USB loader, sometimes the wii will stop the percentage transfer to your external hard drive or you get a black screen. After alot of playing around, all you need to do is go to the wii internet connection setting and delete all wired and wireless connection settings. It can now rip copied games perfectly 100%.
Thanks again.
Can someone please clarify these questions for me?
1. Maui said “When backing up your games with USB loader”…..does this mean that by following everything above we are able to make backups directly from the wii/usb loader to the external hard drive?
2. What do you use to backup gamecube games?
yes you can backup your copy directly from the wii to the hd
Does this work for Wii 3.1?
It works on wii 4.0 btw flawlessly. Thanks for the guide! This is more than awesome!!!!
I got this working but when I run animal crossing from the usb hard drive wii speak does not work. If I run animal crossing from the disk wii speak will work.
does anyone know if there is somkething I did wrong or if there is a fix?
your animal crossing problem i believe is due to your cIOS version. the new cIOS38 rev13b supports other usb devices. like the microphone.
i should mention that if u do upgrade to cIOS38 rev13b the usb hdd support is a little buggy. well it was for me. i had to reconnect my drive or completely power down to run back ups. so i went back to rev12. depends on how bad you really wanna use ur microphone i guess.
so I want this cios38 13b not Hermes cIOS 222/223??
How do I install this cios38 and where do I get it from?
thanks sooo much for your reply…
Thanks so much. It works perfectly!!!
I see the game in the USB loader, but the sensor goes dark and I can’t sync the controller- anyone else having this problem?
Everything worked great the first time I ran through all the steps and got everything working. Now when I try to load the usbloader it either hard locks my wii or gives me a stack dump. I’m running 3.3, btw. Anyone have any ideas?
thanks so much for the guide – I had to go to a fair few others to downgrade etc.. whatever you do don’t try and do this on 4.0, it’s guaranteed not to work! Theres a couple of good downgrading guides though, and after a good 8.5 hours i’m putting some games across onto my hard drive :]
hey why do you say its guaranteed not to work on 4.0? some of these posters are saying otherwise. I myself am running 4.0 on a wiikey 2 moded system and cant get the IOS36 rev10 to load through, applies all the patches then always comes up with…
installing ticket…. ERROR! (ret =-20011)
if you or anyone else knows how to solve this please let me know, this is my first attempt.
why do you need a modchip?
Hi, I am trying this with CIOS v7 and it has loaded everything successfully, the only problem I am having is that when usbloader comes on, the wii remote freezes up, so I can’t get it to do anything else. I have noticed a few people have commented on this happening to them, but can’t see a reply on this or any other website. Can someone please point me in the right direction, as I am close to commiting murder.
Thank you in advance from the lucky person whose life you have saved ;)
same was just bout to give up and then when it counts down put ur hard drive in and when it reads ur hd the wiimote started working
Do you need a portable hard drive to do this? Or would it work with a cheaper, desktop hard drive? I am getting a gift for my boyfriend who hacked his Wii, and I don’t know much about hard drives.
So I got it working, but the problem I’m having is I have a lot of PAL games that I use with the reg. homebrew bootloader (just use the FORCE NTSC Option). When I run off the HD, It plays in PAL (Black and white). How can I force NTSC using the HD bootloader (USB)? I’ve tried the Force Game Default, System Default and Patch game options.. Not sure what they are for.. Force system gives a green screen and locks the wii up, force game does nothing and patch makes the screen scroll up and down still in black and white.
Im having the same problem. My games are playing black and white.
OK i figured out how to fix the Black and White issue.
Go to Homebrew channel.
Load the usb.
make sure the cursor is on the game you want.
press the “B” button to edit settings.
then Go to the video setting and press the right or left arrows until you get the setting “patch”
press the + button to save the setting and then launch the game.
OMG!! Thankss so much, this really worked :D Lifesaver!x
Can your Wii be softmoded? or does it have to have a chip? in order for this to work?
Hi,
I have the game copied to my pc’s hard drive and when i try to unzip it, it fails with the message that your file system doesn’t support files bigger than 4Gig. How can i unzip the game so that i can copy the iso to an external hard drive?
Hi—Problem is your disk is formatted to FAT16 or FAT32. Files over 4Gig need to be formatted to NTFS.
hi people dont no a lot about this as i got someone else to install 1tb external hdd and crack the wii no mod chip
and he isnt here no more the problem is they dont always load got home brew + version 3.2e
+ios 249,250,+ a couple of overs that just say cant load with this ios is there anyone that coul help please
Does anyone know about what hard drives work for the wii and which ones do not? I have a seagate free agent and it will not work with the wii. any suggestions?
This list seams more complete than most:
http://wiki.gbatemp.net:8080/wiki/index.php?title=USB_Devices_Compatibility_List
did you format it ?
Hello, I have all that but i always get the problem that it gives an error 2… No matter what game.. isnt there a patch that solves that?
Thnx ahead
so, i have not seen a reply to the question: why do we need a mod chip? there is not really an explanation at all in the instructions and no one has individually explained anything about it. I have seen someone say they could soft-mod it. is there a link to a site that tells you how to soft-mod instead? the answer cometh!
You need a mod chip so you can run game Zelda (if you have a US wii) otherwise you have to buy the original which cost about 45 euro or something like that
thats really a common sense
whichever wii you have you must have the a copy of the game Zelda
I followed every step but when I reach the last step which is to start the usb loader I got the next message
custom ios could not be loaded (ret = – 4100)
my wii is 3.4E I read some comments of people who claimed to have had this worked on 3.4 wii,please would you mind giving me an explaination
Same here…
When I load the USB loader i get an error !!
+ Error Custom IOS could not be loaded
ret = -4100
the magnificent – you’re a fucking idiot!
I installed the Homebrew and I can see apps on it but when I try to run ciosr10 I get only a black screen. My version is 4.2e. Do you know what can I do? I’m getting stuck between setp 21 and 22. I can press load on step 21 but I cannot see image on step 22.
thanks
http://gwht.wikidot.com/ios249 Try this link out. i just used it and i’m happily playing games off of my 4.2 system. the trwilight hack is outdated
Hi, I followed the steps & managed to get games running from an 8GB Pen-Drive, but my LaCie 250GB HDD doesn’t get recognised. I followed the same steps & added games using WBFS 2.2.2, but still no luck…
Any suggestions?
hi guys, i had a lot of problems with this procedure probabily because i was running black wii with 4.2e dfirmware but i used cIOS from this page (http://gwht.wikidot.com/ios249) and everything works perfect.
THANKS EVERYONE!!!
step 24 ftw
HEY WIISTERS <<< i can only format my WD ex-drive to exfat…. will that work? I have vista… is exfat the same as fat32 ?
When I load the USB loader i get an error !!
+ Error Custom IOS could not be loaded
ret = -4100
any help with that plz
So for the folder names you say to put a “/” in them? my computer does not allow that? what do i do
will this allow me to play usa games on my wii as my wii will only play pal games as it is (hard modded and with homebrew too)
this will allow you to play games from any region.
i’ve install cios36r10 sucessfully but unable to install utimate usb loader, got black screen when try to install usb loader,please help
this guide is too old, try cios38rev17
every time i try to load cios 36 the screen turns black
restore your ioses with trucha bug restorer and install a newer cios. rev17 is the newest at the moment.
Hey, I got the whole process to work and I was playing okami for an hour and realized that it wouldn’t let me save my progress. Is this just cause it’s an ISO from the Internet? Or do ISOs not save? This is my first time
usb loader crashed out
all worked by using the snazzier
“usb loader gx”
this is the best guide but needs updating
b
hi when i try to save folders it wont let me use these symbols \/: can any one help plz
can I also play gamecube games off the hard drive on the wii?
i tried to load gc games but they didnt work think sd card might – tx for the guide though excellent stuff – far better than trying to copy them to dvd :)
Hi this is an excellent tutorial :) i already had homebrew but i had difficulty burning iso’s to dvds they never worked or froze – but this is perfect every game works :) however did have trouble formatting using wbfs but i found a site to explain how to format the drive – so that was only a minor downside – by the way has to be fat32 partition then primary raw partition for games – i used the guide to format my 120gb drive as follows- 4gb(fat32)- half of remainder(primary raw)- otherhalf(ntfs)ntfs is so u can use drive for other things aswell :)
it worked a treat! -Nice One CODERETARD
Hi Chris,
Which tutor did you use to format USb disk into 3 partitons. I have 5GB FAT32, 250GB WBFS, 200GB NTFS, but WII doesn’t see FAT32. I tried to store game covers onto FAT32 (1st partition) but it didn’t wok.
Everything works great until I load the game. Then I get the #002 error with blue screen. WTF?
UPTIME: 9:00am up 27 day(s), 23:30, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Hi! Fantasctic, Tkx. I fixed my 4.3u updated system and couldn’t play burned dvds. I followed your tutorial and succeed to play every game.
I just facing a problem with WBFS Manager 2.2.2 to install New Super Mario.iso into HD, it decreases so much the size from 3,5 Gb to 0,35 Gb, can’t load with USBloader
ok, i have a question. i play mostly online games with the wii, codmw, mohh2, mh3,and waiting on these ither titles to come. now if you do all this to your system, can you still play these games online?
I generally only play online games on the wii, if i do this, will the games i play still work? Mario kart, Call of duty, Monster hunter, and the upcomng titles?