Wii USB Hard Drive Hack Explained – What does What!

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** Second Draft ** I’ll make this more clear as it evolves.

So like a lot of people I heard that the Wii can support a USB hard drive and load backups of your Wii games. But I wanted to know what these tutorials were doing to my console!

There are a lot of blogs and forums with the steps on how to do this, I have even added some steps of loading wii backups from USB HDD for 4.2E, but fist I thought I would start with a reference or overview on what is attempting to be achieved so that others who want to understand what the tutorials are actually doing might feel more comfortable following them.

The idea is you “read this before” starting a tutorial so you understand what you are doing.

Disclaimer: This is all from my understanding and learning where I’m wrong feedback is essential!.

What are we trying to achieve?

The Wii doesn’t allow you do load backup games from an external USB HDD so we need to load things onto the Wii to do this. Here is what is involved.

A) We need to get access to the Wii so we can start manipulating it.

  • BannerBomb (This gets us access by finding a flaw in the wii, its typically loaded on the SD card and then launches a second app hackmii installer which allow us to install the homebrew channel)
  • Hackmii Installer (This will contain a few applications but the homebrew channel is the most important component
  • There is already a lot of information on the net (and youtube) about the above two, but for the purpose of this discussion they give us access to the wii to install  homebrew channel which provides a Gui platform for tools to be run with ease
  • Bascially after this is done we can copy files to the SD cards and launch them from the homebrew channel. If your wii is online you can even use an app called the homebrew browser copied to an SD to go online and download homebrew apps directly to the SD card.
  • Its also worth noting here that the homebrew can read a FAT partition on the USB HDD so its not required to have a SD card after this point if you wanted to take advantage of this feature, usefull to know about later when wanting to save/load DVD cover art without an SD card.

B) Once we have access (Homebrew Installed) we need to set the foundation for applications to run

  • This is where cIOS, and IOS plus WAD Managers/files etc come in.
  • Essentially all this is installing a set of IOS files onto the Wii that are required by the USB loader programs. (if program requires IOS 249, then we need to install it)
  • I have written a lot more about IOS and CIOS below. Lets just say that these files are essential to giving the USB loader program access to wii including the USB Drive, wii remove, dvd drive etc.

C) Once we have the foundations in place we can then start to take advantage of applications like USB loaders.

  • These applications take three forms, an application that is run from the SD Card.
  • A WAD file that is copied to the wii and appears like a “channel” on the main wii screen, this might require some tweeking to get DVD covers to load from the HDD if your don’t want to use SD cards.
  • The third form is a forwarder (it installs like a WAD and appers on the wii main channel page but really is just a shortcut to the program on SD card or HDD via homebrew)

That is the basic overview, I have put more information below I want to talk about these and how they are related to each other:

  1. [IOS cIOS, MIOS what the heck is IOS]
  2. [Nintendo IOS files]
  3. [Custom IOS files cIOS]
  4. [Applications that run or depend on the cIOS]
  5. [Application Browser/Launcher]
  6. [Wii Hacks]
  7. [Bricking how its related to the above]

[IOS cIOS, MIOS what the heck is IOS]

IOS is the operating system that the wii runs on the chip inside (only 1 running at a time) (read more here) There is a complete list of these files and their function (found here).

Essentially what these are are bits of code that give the games and apps run on the wii access to the hardware and other parts of the wii that are required.

MIOS files are used only by the game cube games, and cIOS stands for custom IOS essentially a non Nintendo IOS but they are both IOS files.  as a rule of thumb anything over 200 is a cIOS i.e custom IOS witten by the community, some of them are famous i.e Hermes has cIOS 222 which is critcal to give access to the USB port for USB loaders.

These get thrown around the internet a lot and ultimately can seem very confusing at the end of the day, just refer to the list of IOS if your not sure what to do. And if your not sure if you need it, work backward form the app you are trying to run, and see if its a pre requisite.

Here is some More Reading on IOS files which explains some history of the IOS files if you are interested.

[Nintendo IOS files]

Nintendo built originally and help apps and games interact with the hardware on the Nintendo. Example: If you didn’t have and IOS that supported your USB Microphone, you could load the game acess the menu’s with the controller, but not use the microphone. When Nintendo release updates or games install updates sometimes its these IOS files that are updated to support new features of fix bugs. There are ways of getting updated Nintendo IOS files from the internet 1 at a time and some home brew applications allow this to be done on the wii itself (google, NUS Downloader as an example)

Nintendo IOS files are typically less than 200 i.e IOS36 etc.

[Custom IOS files cIOS]

Customer IOS files expand the functionality of the Traditional IOS files, and this is where we start to get access to the USB devices or non-nintendo supported use of the Wii. These IOS files are usually based on a nintendo IOS file but with extra or modified code and saved as a different IOS number. Some cIOS files support different hardware sets, and most can “co-exist” as required. This is a topic myself that I am still learning, to my understanding an application that is run can request a particular IOS file, as you can probably guess most hacked apps for the Wii will use one of these cIOS files.  Its worth noting here that at anytime only 1 IOS file is loaded and in use according to my research.

Customer IOS files are typically greater than 200 i.e IOS222 etc.

[Applications that run or depend on the cIOS]

Here we are talking about USB loader programs, homebrew apps and emulators, which need access to hardware not provided by the Nintendo IOS files, in this case our USB Loaders may ‘require’ a particular cIOS to get to the USB drive, but may ‘Support’ alternative cIOS files as well to provide as much support as possible to games that require other devices.

[Application Browser/Launcher]

Here we talk about the homebrew channel itself or channels (WAD files)  which we load onto the console, ‘forwarders’ forward you onto a code on a SD card or USB drive ‘channels’ are self contained and contain enough code themselves to launch without need of a SD card or USB Drive. With these channels installed (eg homebrew) you don’t want to have to load a hack to get access to apps each time so we have WADS (Channels) like the homebrew channel which allows us to view applications installed on SD cards and USB drives, and then launch them.  What? It will make sense when you start playing with the homebrew channel. (You defiantly want to install the homebrew browser and have your wii connected to the internet.)

[Wii Hacks]

Hacks, twighlight hack and the banner bomb exploit the wii to allow us to get the above homebrew channels installed. With a Version 4.0 or 4.1 Wii you need to use the banner bomb which exploits the wii SD system and allows us to install the homebrew channel. After this we don’t really need to use a Hack again. Its worth noting that Nintendo might want to patch these holes and its worth considering or waiting before updating your console when updates come out. There are ‘unofficial’ ways of updating your system if the nintendo update is known to disable functionality (Which it usually does by overwriting IOS files with dummy files). If you can’t get the homebrew channel installed then that can be a showstopper for the rest of the steps required.

[Bricking how its related to the above]

There are a few ways to brick your Wii, there is always the disclaimer that you proceed at your own risk, and there are methods to protect against it. Understanding what you are doing is the best way. How this related to the above is that If you don’t overwrite any IOS files below IOS200 you should never really brick your WII. There are programs like NUS Downloader, and built into Multi Mod Manager (MMM) applications to downgrade your wii firmware via online official servers either all at once or file by file to replace any that are damaged. There are also programs called  NAND Backups which allow you to backup your wii in the event of a corruption. There are guides online and starting with a google of bootmii would be the best place to start if your worries about this.

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Or if your ready! go straight to my step by step tutorial with pictures! on how to softmod your wii to use usb hdd!