[wii] wbfs management
Xmas and a lot of gifts “duty” are coming…
My son wish for Xmas is a Wii.
As I prefer him not to switch Optical media, i browse the web for infos about the scene.
Yes, even if the DVD media backups copies can work with some loaders, I prefer to prevent alteration, then reburn (slow burning is required for Wii, I use 1x speed)…
And avoiding optical medias will save : switching time, loading time, life of the optical drive lens…
Conclusion : it’s possible to store backups directly to WBFS partition instead of ISO format. USB Loader GX was easy to install, even after last system update (4.2e) through Home Brew Channel.
The great part about that is the ability to convert back to ISO if you want to burn it.
Under GNU/Linux, getting wbfs tool to work was real kiddy :
- get tarball here : http://github.com/kwiirk/wbfs
- untar it with : tar xzfv kwiirk-wbfs-b607c30.tar.gz
- doing ‘make’ on the untared folder
- then wbfs binary is available
pre-requisites :
- an empty (not formatted) partition : they recommend Gparted on the readme but, of course, you may (as I did) use others tools (fdisk…).
- wbfs 1st commands (replace /dev/sdb1 with your right path) :
- wbfs -p /dev/sdb1 init : initializes your partition (be careful : 1st time only, because it will empty your partition ! )
- wbfs -p /dev/sdb1 add /path/to/your/iso : adds the game to this partition
- wbfs -p /dev/sdb1 ls : lists games on your partition
- wbfs -p /dev/sdb1 df : shows free disk space
P.S. : the ‘-p /dev/sdb1’ is optional for commands after the init
This installation works like a charm of the Wii with 2.5in USB hard drive or USB stick (even cheap ones).
