Wii w/USB Hard Drive
Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2010 11:24 am
I know this hack is over a year old, but I just got around to installing a USB hard drive to my Wii. Why? Because yesterday I discovered yet another game that the five-year-old managed to scratch beyond repair. ARGH.
As for the hack itself, I couldn't tell you how it works. I followed this guide on Lifehacker.com and it worked. To download all the files and get everything working took about 90 minutes; half of that time was spent walking back and forth between my office and the living room where the Wii is. If I had it to do all over again, I would have used my laptop and moved into the living room.
To get all of this to work, you'll need the Homebrew channel installed on a Wii, a BIOS lower than 4.3, an SD card and a USB hard drive. Throughout the process you'll copy at least six different things over to the SD card -- like I said, there's a lot of walking back and forth. Note that if used incorrectly, pretty much any of these programs could turn your Wii into a brick and will definitely void your warranty. On top of that, all of them connect to the Internet to download code from hackers in other countries and install it on your Wii. Yeah, I had a pit in my stomach for an hour and a half straight.
When done, assuming all went well, you will be able to (A) back your Wii games up to the external hard drive and (B) play the games off the hard drive without needing the original disc. You could also (C) download Wii games from the Internet, plug the hard drive into your computer, drop and drag the ISO files over and then play them for free on your Wii. But no one here would do that because you are all nice people.
Following the tutorial all the way to the end leads to an icon on the front page of your Wii (a new "Channel") that goes right to your list of HD-installed games. It automatically downloads the game artwork and stuff and lets you virtual scroll through your games if you like, or you can just view them in a list if you're a fuddy duddy. You can also sort the list by which games you play the most, or by which ones you've rated the highest.
One amazing thing you will quickly find out is that Wii games are pretty small. Every Wii ISO, thanks to disc padding, is exactly the same size (4,589,824 KB, or 4.38 Gig), but when you back them up to a hard drive, their real size becomes apparent. Crazy Mini Golf (bargin bin, yo) drops from 4.38 gig to about 400 meg. Many are smaller than that.
I'm hoping this mod not only extends the life of my discs (by not letting my kids touch them anymore), but perhaps the life of my Wii as well, since the optical drive will no longer be in use.
As for the hack itself, I couldn't tell you how it works. I followed this guide on Lifehacker.com and it worked. To download all the files and get everything working took about 90 minutes; half of that time was spent walking back and forth between my office and the living room where the Wii is. If I had it to do all over again, I would have used my laptop and moved into the living room.
To get all of this to work, you'll need the Homebrew channel installed on a Wii, a BIOS lower than 4.3, an SD card and a USB hard drive. Throughout the process you'll copy at least six different things over to the SD card -- like I said, there's a lot of walking back and forth. Note that if used incorrectly, pretty much any of these programs could turn your Wii into a brick and will definitely void your warranty. On top of that, all of them connect to the Internet to download code from hackers in other countries and install it on your Wii. Yeah, I had a pit in my stomach for an hour and a half straight.
When done, assuming all went well, you will be able to (A) back your Wii games up to the external hard drive and (B) play the games off the hard drive without needing the original disc. You could also (C) download Wii games from the Internet, plug the hard drive into your computer, drop and drag the ISO files over and then play them for free on your Wii. But no one here would do that because you are all nice people.
Following the tutorial all the way to the end leads to an icon on the front page of your Wii (a new "Channel") that goes right to your list of HD-installed games. It automatically downloads the game artwork and stuff and lets you virtual scroll through your games if you like, or you can just view them in a list if you're a fuddy duddy. You can also sort the list by which games you play the most, or by which ones you've rated the highest.
One amazing thing you will quickly find out is that Wii games are pretty small. Every Wii ISO, thanks to disc padding, is exactly the same size (4,589,824 KB, or 4.38 Gig), but when you back them up to a hard drive, their real size becomes apparent. Crazy Mini Golf (bargin bin, yo) drops from 4.38 gig to about 400 meg. Many are smaller than that.
I'm hoping this mod not only extends the life of my discs (by not letting my kids touch them anymore), but perhaps the life of my Wii as well, since the optical drive will no longer be in use.