Soft Modding the Wii and Using a USB Loader 4.3U (Guide)

[KDub]

That is up for debate, USB power isn't always as consistent as a steady wall current is. But I never said one or the other is best; lets not derail the thread.

Do you guys get paid to post about ModMii or something? We've moved past that point and should have a fix for the guy.

[fuctfuct]

Yea $1 every time its mentioned! I quit my day job. hehe

[gtmtnbiker]

That is up for debate, USB power isn't always as consistent as a steady wall current is. But I never said one or the other is best; lets not derail the thread.

The only way for USB power to be insufficient would be if you have too many things plugged in to the port. If you have a single hard drive, there are no issues unless your port is defective. The only potential issue I could see is if you have an older 15K RPM hard drive in some USB enclosure. Basically a hard drive that uses a lot of power might exceed the power rating for the Wii USB port.

Do you guys get paid to post about ModMii or something? We've moved past that point and should have a fix for the guy.

I have a Wii that was modded 2 years ago. I recently updated it a couple of months ago with ModMii. It was very simple by just following the instructions. There's no guessing involved.

[EllertMichael]

Thanks for the reply, KDub. I'm waiting for my new Western Digital Elements 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive to come in the mail. This will be my main external and I'll use my current Western Digital My Book For Mac 1TB Desktop External Hard Drive for my Wii. It looks like I'll have to use my girlfriend's PC to reformat my external that is already formatted for Mac. I hope there won't be any issues

Also, I want to be able to load ROMs from the HDD and I understand it will need to be partitioned... (FAT32 for ROMs & WFBS for Wii games) is this something that WFBS Manager can do? or do I need to partition it another way?

I have a Wii that was modded 2 years ago. I recently updated it a couple of months ago with ModMii. It was very simple by just following the instructions. There's no guessing involved.

Yeah, I modded my Wii back when the Twilight Hack was the only option. Maybe a re-mod isn't a bad idea... How did you go about doing this? Did you delete and reinstall the homebrew channel or did you just keep it (not virgin) and run through the rest of the installer?

[fuctfuct]

Thanks for the reply, KDub. I'm waiting for my new Western Digital Elements 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive to come in the mail. This will be my main external and I'll use my current Western Digital My Book For Mac 1TB Desktop External Hard Drive for my Wii. It looks like I'll have to use my girlfriend's PC to reformat my external that is already formatted for Mac. I hope there won't be any issues

Also, I want to be able to load ROMs from the HDD and I understand it will need to be partitioned... (FAT32 for ROMs & WFBS for Wii games) is this something that WFBS Manager can do? or do I need to partition it another way?

I have a Wii that was modded 2 years ago. I recently updated it a couple of months ago with ModMii. It was very simple by just following the instructions. There's no guessing involved.

Yeah, I modded my Wii back when the Twilight Hack was the only option. Maybe a re-mod isn't a bad idea... How did you go about doing this? Did you delete and reinstall the homebrew channel or did you just keep it (not virgin) and run through the rest of the installer?

Kinda beating a dead horse here .. but .. Modmii would answer (and solve) all of your questions. Just try it out. You can run it, go though all its simple steps and read the guide it makes without even touching your wii at all. Doing that will answer all your questions.

[SpaceBooger]

I don't have a usb hard drive, but I have an 16gb SD card. Other than only being able to store a couple games... what would I have to do differently to softmod my Wii to use the SD instead of a USB drive?

[gtmtnbiker]

I don't have a usb hard drive, but I have an 16gb SD card. Other than only being able to store a couple games... what would I have to do differently to softmod my Wii to use the SD instead of a USB drive?

Nothing really. It supports hard drive and/or SD card.

Yeah, I modded my Wii back when the Twilight Hack was the only option. Maybe a re-mod isn't a bad idea... How did you go about doing this? Did you delete and reinstall the homebrew channel or did you just keep it (not virgin) and run through the rest of the installer?

I didn't delete anything. I just updated everything. I think it was something like update HBC, Wad manager, Cfg USB Loader and then updated a bunch of IOS/CIOS. There was no deleting of anything.

The only issue I ran into was the fact that the hard drive was NTFS instead of FAT32. The issue was trying to use CFG loader to download missing covers. Otherwise it works fine. I worked around it by using Wii backup manager to download the missing covers and copying it manually to the hard drive.

[KDub]

Also, I want to be able to load ROMs from the HDD and I understand it will need to be partitioned... (FAT32 for ROMs & WFBS for Wii games) is this something that WFBS Manager can do? or do I need to partition it another way?

Yeah, I modded my Wii back when the Twilight Hack was the only option. Maybe a re-mod isn't a bad idea... How did you go about doing this? Did you delete and reinstall the homebrew channel or did you just keep it (not virgin) and run through the rest of the installer?

I believe you'll need to partition it prior to formatting it with WBFS.

There is no reason to remod, at least I don't believe so. You should be able to use various homebrew apps to update your Wii that bypasses the normal update process and stay soft modded. I haven't tried it though so I can't direct you anywhere but I've seen apps listed during my readings.

I don't have a usb hard drive, but I have an 16gb SD card. Other than only being able to store a couple games... what would I have to do differently to softmod my Wii to use the SD instead of a USB drive?

Are you talking about using the SD card to load games with the USB Loader? I assume so since the guide uses a SD card for the initial Mod process. To use the SD card you would need to have a partition on your card that can be in the proper format I believe with WBFS; but unfortunately I do not believe USB Loader GX supports booting from the SD card, you would need a different USB Loader . You can use a USB flash drive in place of the usb hard drive as well, it would just need to be formatted of course and then inserted into the same slot.

[gtmtnbiker]

To use the SD card you would need to have a partition on your card that can be in the proper format I believe with WBFS; but unfortunately I do not believe USB Loader GX supports booting from the SD card, you would need a different USB Loader .

You should not be using WBFS partitions anymore. FAT32 or NTFS is the way to go with WBFS files. Wii backup mgr takes care of it for you.

If you do use FAT32, you need a special formatting tool since by default, Windows built-in formatting tool won't work. Just google "format windows fat32 program" or something like that.

[KDub]

Care to say why you shouldn't? Outside of not being able to use other files on that specific partition I haven't read about a true downside.

Not having to is a horse of a different color. It does look like USB Loader GX supports Fat formats, I'm sure others do too (some might not though). But USB Loader GX still doesn't seem to support booting/ripping images on the SD Card.