Load / Save Wii Games From Hard Drive

45 Comments | Posted by Kyle in General, Journal

I hate optical media. I hate its sensitivity to scratches, I hate its loud loading noises, I hate sorting through stacks of discs.

I’ve now found an excellent (albeit somewhat complicated) hack that allows me to save/load my Wii games to/from an external USB hard drive! The final results look a little something like this. I’ve worked off of the guides found here and here and am using a WD Passport hard drive. This was especially difficult for me because, despite the fact I already had the Homebrew Channel installed, I had the Wii system menu 4.0 installed (latest as of the time of this post). Alright, enough yapping… here’s how you can duplicate my results.

First, we need to trick your Wii into thinking it’s running an older version of the Nintendo software. This overcomes the fact that we’re running system version 4.0! We’ll also install “The Homebrew Channel” at the same time.

Copy the contents of SD1.zip to a FAT formated SD card.

Insert the SD card into your Wii and click on the system icon (lower left corner).

Navigate to “Data Management” –> “Channels” –> “SD Card” and wait a moment.

Agree to load “boot.dol” to execute the LoadMii environment.

Select “DowngraderIOS35.dol” and run it by pressing “A” on the WiiMote. Choose “Downgrade IOS35″ and then let it go. After it’s done, select “exit”.

Now select “WAD Manager.dol” and, using default settings (e.g. run as IOS250), install “IOS35.wad”. When it’s finished, hit the “Home” button to exit.

Run “WAD Manager.dol” again, but this time select “IOS35″ when prompted and install “CIOSv7.wad”. After that’s installed, hit the “Home” button to quit.

Next, run “WAD Manager.dol” one last time. This time, select “IOS249″ for the IOS version and install both “IOS36.wad” and “HBC.wad”.

Finally, restart your Wii and you’ll see a new link to “The Homebrew Channel”!

Now that we have “The Homebrew Channel” and the necessary IOS files, we can install the USB loader.

Delete everything from your SD card and extract the contents of SD2.zip to it.

Insert the SD card into your Wii and launch “The Homebrew Channel”.

Execute the “cIOS36″ application and follow the installation instructions.

Be sure to use the “Internet Installation” option to get the very latest custom IOS files.

If you have any problems with this step, it’s probably because you’re using the Nintendo System Menu 3.4 or later. Make sure you’ve successfully completed phase one of this tutorial!

Restart “The Homebrew Channel” and execute the “WADman” program. Using this tool, install the “USB Loader-USBF VForwarder.wad” file.

You should now have a “USB Loader” channel in your Wii System Menu. This is how you save/load game discs.

Alrighty… we’re done hacking the Wii! Now we just need to get the USB hard drive ready for use.

Install the Wii Backup File System manager from here.

Plug the hard drive into your PC.

Right click on “My Computer” and select “Manage”.

Click on the “Disk Management” option on the left

When your disk drives have loaded, right click on the drive to be read by the Wii and choose “Delete Volume”.

Now right click on the disk drive to be used and click “New”.

Be sure to assign a drive letter to your drive, and to choose NOT TO FORMAT the drive when you create your new partition.

Using “WBFS Manager”, select the correct drive and click “Format”.

Now plug the USB drive into your Wii and start playing around with the “USB Loader”!

I hope you find this tutorial useful! I’ve been waiting for a good Wii game saver/loader for a while now, so I’m really excited about this tool. If you have any questions or problems, just leave a comment!

PS: I’m providing this information so you can run games that you OWN from a hard drive. If I find out that any of you are using this to pirate games, I’ll personally find where you live and leave a sack of flaming dog poop on your doorstep!

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45 Comments for Load / Save Wii Games From Hard Drive

Zach | 5/24/2009 at 9:54 pm

This sounds awesome, but what happens if something goes wrong and I want to
restore my Wii to all its original settings?

Author comment by Kyle | 5/24/2009 at 10:10 pm

The information provided above comes with NO guarantee. There’s a real possibility that, if you do something wrong, you could brick your Wii. That said… we’re not actually modifying the Wii System Firmware… so you should be able to uninstall all WADs and restore the system to it’s default settings. The WAD manager that we launched through “The Homebrew Channel” can also remove the WADs we’ve installed (usbloader-forwarder & homebrew channel). Just do a google search on removing WADs for details.

Zach | 5/25/2009 at 9:27 am

Thanks for the info Kyle. I just wanted to make sure I could uninstall the files if something happened

Tester | 5/25/2009 at 3:40 pm

Hi. Thanks for the easy steps!

BTW, will this work if I’m on 3.3U ? Will it “upgrade” me to 3.5 when I load the “DowngraderIOS35.dol” file?

Author comment by Kyle | 5/25/2009 at 3:47 pm

If you’re using a version of the Wii System Menu prior to 3.4 you should only need to do the last two blocks of instructions. If you run into any problems, checkout the original sources at http://www.mikeandheth.com and http://www.staticanime.com. I didn’t develop any of these hacks… I just tried to combine all of the instructions into a single, straightforward tutorial.

NekoIncardine | 5/26/2009 at 4:37 am

While attempting to follow the instructions to install the USB loader, I unfortunately am being stymied at the WADMan program operation; It is asking me to select an IOS version, and trying both 254 and 36 (the most intuitive one from what I’d done before) resulted in an error:

Installing ticket… ERROR! (ret = -2011)

Any suggestions as to what I’m doing wrong here?

NekoIncardine | 5/26/2009 at 4:39 am

Ignore comment; the default of IS250 works just fine. It might be good to edit that into the tutorial though, since that substep did sorta jump me.

RPM | 5/26/2009 at 10:56 am

So, how can I download a disc to the HD ? Only via the Wii ? Or can I do that on the PC ?

Author comment by Kyle | 5/26/2009 at 3:55 pm

You can put games on the hard drive with a PC… but only certain DVD ROMs are able to read Wii Discs (do some googling on the subject). The easiest thing to do is just use the the Wii for everything. The only thing that wouldn’t work for is pirating games… which I DON’T approve of.

Skinn | 5/26/2009 at 4:45 pm

Fine work! 100% on an older Wii I have. Anyone know if this will work for recent Wii hardware revs? (i.e. Serials LU64 or higher?) A caution may be in order…

help | 5/27/2009 at 2:10 am

When I open the SD card it begins loading and then crashes. Any ideas?

Brigden | 5/28/2009 at 10:48 pm

This will not work for me no matter what I do. I get to the point where I have to go into WBFS manager and format the drive. Every time I try that, it says it can’t do it. I’ve formatted a drive to FAT32 before and then gone into WBFS and it has allowed me to make it a WBFS drive, but it doesnt matter, it will not show up on any of the USB loaders at all. I can copy files over without a problem on the mac and pc with the WBFS Manager, but the drives dont show up on the WII at all. Any suggestions?

Author comment by Kyle | 5/28/2009 at 11:08 pm

I actually ran in the the WBFS problem myself. First… make sure that you’re formatting the external drive properly (it sounds like you are).

Second, make sure your drive isn’t a Seagate. It seems that most Seagate external drives have problems with this (and many other) hacked systems.

Next… try powering off your Wii, then plugging in the drive before powering it back on. My problem seemed to be related to my drive not spinning up when I launched the USB loader and this solved the issue.

If that doesn’t work, all I can say is just start trying different permutations on when you plug the drive into the Wii. If you’re unsure if anything is happening, listen the the drive carefully to see if it is spinning-up or not.

Good luck!

Brigden | 5/29/2009 at 9:34 am

Thanks for the suggestions. I’m running a Toshiba drive from my old Macbook.

So I have a game on the drive, it shows up just fine in WBFS Manager, the drive spins just fine when powering up, i’ve gone though the whole install process of what to do and I still get no USB drive showing up.

Do I have to do anything at all other than copy the iso file over to the hard drive? It should just show up once I open the USB loader app should it not?

Brigden | 5/29/2009 at 10:04 am

And now for some odd reason it worked for me. Go figures. I kept trying it over and over and it eventually worked. Fingers Crossed. Thanks again.

EricS | 5/29/2009 at 10:20 pm

Wii Firmware 4.0U

Trouble with step 4 of Install USB-Loader. After I select WADman program, the “USB Loader-USBF VForwarder.wad” option does not appear (I am presented instead with a range of “IOS##” files from which to choose).

Note that I repeated the USB-Loader install section just to assure that 1) SD card contained entire contents of “SD2″ folder to begin with and 2) directions were followed (note also that Homebrew channel was installed perfectly using your well-written tutorial).

Thanks in advance for your help here.

Eric S.

Author comment by Kyle | 5/29/2009 at 10:33 pm

I believe that you need to select the default IOS version (“cIOS36″) in the WADman before you’re able to proceed with installing the USB Loader.

EricS | 5/29/2009 at 10:43 pm

I performed that step 2x successfully (received messages that system downloaded and patched various items successfully; then prompted me to exit). Do you think it might be worthwhile to install the various “IOS###” files separately that I am seeing in step 5?

Thanks, Eric

EricS | 5/29/2009 at 10:51 pm

Kyle – Thanks – Got it installed!

It is the “IOS36″ selection that then showed the “USB Loader-USBF VForwarder.wad” (not “C”IOS36).

On to formatting a hard drive.

Thanks again,

Eric

stevey | 6/5/2009 at 8:52 am

Hey, I followed your guide and everything worked well, but when I start the USB-Loader it wouldn’t find my harddrive (which seemed to work perfectly with WBFS-Manager). If I click “A” for retrying, there comes a blackscreen with “Exception (DSI) occured!” followed by lines of code.
Do you have any suggestions what could have gone wrong? Thank you in advance..

stevey | 6/5/2009 at 9:55 am

Okay, it seemed to be the harddrive. Iomega didn’t work, now I’ve tried a WD – it works perfectly. I just need to figure out how to add the covers..

I’ve got another question for you.. Do you know any way to put the USB-Loader files directly onto the Wii, so it would not be necessary to keep the sd card inside?

Jesse | 6/10/2009 at 1:42 pm

Great guide.

Except that my Wii freezes when trying to do part 1.

In step 1.6 you say “Now select “WAD Manager.dol” and, using default settings (e.g. run as IOS250), install “IOS35.wad”. When it’s finished, hit the “Home” button to exit.” I am able to load WADManager, but there is no option for me to select ISO250 and my default is ISO36.

So I use ISO36 (the default for me) and in the next step, when I select ISO35, my Wii will freeze instantly.

Thanks for the great guide.

Rafael | 6/12/2009 at 3:16 pm

Great guide.

Except that my Wii freezes when trying to do part 1.

So I use ISO36 (the default for me) and in the next step, when I select ISO35, my Wii will freeze instantly.

Thanks for the great guide.

the same happened to me…any ideas?

Jesse | 6/14/2009 at 2:09 pm

Rafael, how old is your wii?
Also, what is your seriel number?

These may have something to do with the issue.

ken | 6/18/2009 at 8:27 am

Thanks for this hack i got mine working perfectly, every game i downloaded works, except for ghostbusters, i just get a greenscreen… would really appreciatte your help on how to update to get this game working. Ive read some things about doing it but also have seen people having problems and since i hacked it your way i figured you would have the best insite on how to update to get the game working.. thanks again for this hack and hope u can help

Kim | 6/19/2009 at 8:41 am

Just a quick update from my side. The tuto is fantastic, thanks !!!
I strugled, like a bunch of you, with my blody PC refusing to recongnize the drive once formated on the wii. The trick was that when reachning step 2 (USB drive) you need to make sure that you create a “primary partition”. In my case when creating a “extended partition”, my drive letter was no more recognized. Putting it in primary just work fine now.

Hope this help

Kim

Chris | 6/19/2009 at 7:44 pm

Great guide thanks!! I am having a problem myself though; things are working for the most part except certain games. I’ve loaded 4 of my games, Wii play and Paper Mario both load up and run just fine but Metroid Prime 3 and De Blob will not work. Metroid seems like it’s trying to work, it tells me to insert the disc then I see the message about using the wrist strap for maybe half a sec and then the insert the disk message pops back up and stays put. De blob pops up with a black screen that says loading and acts like it’s loading but the HDD stops reading and it stays there never getting any further. I tried uninstalling de blob and reloading it and it started to work for a sec even telling me to plug in my nun-chuck but I remembered that I left the game disk in the drive and upon taking it out, it went back to what it was doing before. Any thoughts would be great and thank you again Kyle for putting together some good step by steps for the rest of us!!

Chris | 6/19/2009 at 9:27 pm

Hey already found the answer, but in case anyone has the same problem as I did, all you need to do is have a disk in the drive. Any game will do, but this did solve the problem for me and the few games I have.

ken | 6/24/2009 at 6:18 pm

great guide i followed everything and its working perfectly, although i try the game ghostbusters and just get a green screen, and since i followed your methods i was wondering if you had any insite on a good way to fix this, i searched for green screen on sites and heard of people screwing up or downoading the wrong thing, and since i followed ur guide i thought you would be the one to listen to, thanks for your help

Robin | 7/3/2009 at 5:26 pm

HI,
I am failing at the 1st hurdle.
When going to the SD channel I get the message Blocks Open: 15018?

Any clues

Thanks in advance

NINOBROWN | 7/4/2009 at 6:28 pm

ok i followed step one almost to a T. i did as instructed only thing i did different was turn off the & i noticed the screen said some thing about code dump….. is this ok? & when i went to download the lastest home brew it said it could not install…..

NINOBROWN | 7/4/2009 at 7:21 pm

OK everything seems to be ok i did as instructed got games on drive when i load the usb loader it says initializing file system & just freezes. question on the whole delete & add new drive. i have an 80 GB Maxtor not real sure how to format on Vista.. is there a right way?

Chris | 7/9/2009 at 9:54 pm

I also would like to know, like Ken, what the solution is for the Ghostbuster’s green screen issue. I really don’t want to mess up what I already have. The guide has been great, especially for someone with kids that scratch disks all the time.

Thanks a million.

Todd | 7/29/2009 at 9:49 am

everything works like a champ, but the covers don’t show up on the wii. when the HD is hooked up to my PC the covers are there but when i hook it up to my wii the covers are not.

ken | 8/10/2009 at 9:32 pm

Hey chris i got ghostbusters working, instead of usbloader i use coverfloader v1.1 it works great.. there will be instructions on how to load it to the root of your memory card if your dont remember… but you just have to open ghostbusters game in coverfloader then the top right hand side theres a little circle which is options, then go to where it says gamefix and hit the plus button to Anti_002.. thats it your good to go

jason | 11/24/2009 at 12:37 am

Hi ive got the same problem as Chris some games wont work like the new super Mario bros. It comes up with an error saying-An error has occurred press the eject button remove the disc and turn off the power console please refer to the wii operations manual for details.i tried putting a disc in but it didn’t help so is there something else i could try thanks jason.

vs | 12/6/2009 at 12:50 pm

Hi,

I just got a Wii Bundle and checking the serial, it begins with LU71xxxxxx. Any luck on these versions of Wii?

Shady | 12/22/2009 at 12:49 am

THANKS!

ilanh | 12/30/2009 at 8:33 pm

when installing CIOSv7 the installation fails and get ERROR=-1035, any idea?

I have the Homebrew and USBloader but my Wii can’t recognize the HDD (Fujitsu 2.5″, 80GB). Tried also USB flash stick – still can’t recognize

Julie | 2/8/2010 at 12:40 pm

Hey I think this is a really great guide, thanks for taking the time to put it up for us all to use. I already have the homebrew channel on my wii and my system menu is 3.4, how would I go about getting this to work for me? what steps if any would I skip? or would it be better to un-instal my homebrew channel and just follow the guide? Thanks for your help.

david | 2/17/2010 at 3:47 pm

when i execute the “CIOS36″ installation, I don’t see the “Internet installation” that you are talking about in step 3. My available options are either “WAD installation” or “Network installation”. When I select WAD installation, I get this message:

[+] Mounting SD card… OK!
[+] Reading “ISO36-64-v1042.wad”, please wait… ERROR! (ret = -1)
Press any button to restart…

Any idea why I am getting this error?

kara | 4/1/2010 at 9:35 am

got eerything on but it keeps saying the usb loader files am corrupt

kara | 4/1/2010 at 10:01 am

click on usb loader comes up with loads of number and says exeption dsi occured

new USB loader user | 8/15/2010 at 10:45 am

i have a usb loader and it works properly from converting disk or iso files to the wbfs files to play on hard disk, but when i downloaded wbfs files and try to drag and drop it into the wbfs formatted drive it doesn’t work. the message keep asking me to format the drive but i don’t dare do that because i have already formatted the drive in wformat and have a lot of games in there already. how can i add files already in wbfs format?