A disc that never leaves the case can never be scratched. Save your Wii games to an external hard drive with this handy tutorial for speedier and scratch-free playback.
Lifehacker reader Mike put together a tutorial on enabling hard-drive-based playback on your Wii. It isn’t as simple as just plugging in an external USB drive, but if you’re comfortable messing around with your Wii, it also isn’t an impossibly geeky task. You need to have the Homebrew Channel installed. We’ve covered how to install the Homebrew Channel here before, but console modding is an ever-changing business, so make sure to give Mike’s tutorial a full read before proceeding. Besides the Homebrew Channel, all you’ll need is an external USB 2.0 hard drive and freely available files listed in the tutorial. When it’s said and done, you’ll likely be the only one on the block—or in your city for that matter—with a hard-drive-driven Wii. Check out the video below to see the interface in action—Spawn-based skin mod not included:
If the video impressed you—and it certainly impressed me—you’ll want to dive into Mike’s tutorial. It covers how to install the USB loader, the game manager, and even how to set up the cover and disc art as seen in the menu in the demonstration video. Thanks Mike!
rexdayo
May 26, 2009 at 10:03 PM
how do you downgrade the IOS? i accidently updated my wii to 4.0 help please?
Report PermalinkMatt
September 8, 2009 at 4:06 PM
Everytime i look at how to load games from a hardrive, all i see is people actually loading games from their harddrive, never how they did it :( i want a tutorial cause i cant figure it out
Report Permalinkanonymous
September 10, 2009 at 1:07 PM
Matt. You set it up by first not being a fuck1ng n00b and clicking on the links that take you to the g0dammed tutorial. Stop crying because your mom dropped you on the head one too many times as an infant and you lack the braincells to do anything but watch the video and make ignorant as$ comments.
Report PermalinkCharlie
December 10, 2009 at 5:20 PM
Damn, The link seems to be broken now :(
Report PermalinkEric
December 13, 2009 at 6:41 AM
If anybody has an electronic copy of the instructions I would be interested.
Report PermalinkThanks,
E
Josh
December 14, 2009 at 9:55 AM
I recently performed the wii external hdd hack. And since then the wii resets it self to as if it was new haveving to sync remotes input information any ideas on what could cause this?
Report PermalinkRosh
December 18, 2009 at 5:31 PM
i too have found that the links no long work for Mike’s tutorial.
I would also appreciate a copy of the instructions if anyone can help with this!!
my email is: rmcmahon1985@hotmail.com
Report Permalinkjohnny
February 11, 2010 at 4:17 AM
Just to update this, there are plenty of tuts out there on how to chip your wii and add a usb external hardrive, you can use uloader, usb loader gx, usb loader gx config which lets you see both the front and back of your covers, im not going to put a nice easy link here because if its done for you then you won’t learn!!, so GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND :)OR , just join and donate to http://www.wiihacks.com everything you need to know is there.. happy modding…
Report PermalinkSam
March 27, 2010 at 1:09 AM
Mike’s tutorial link doesn’t work anymore. Does anyone have a hard copy of his work? It was a great reference :) Please post a link if you have it.
Report Permalinkmick
December 17, 2010 at 2:25 PM
what program do I use to put my games onto the hard drive, my pc says that it is not reconigised and needs formatting, as if thats gonna happen, its already got games on it. So im after a program that will read the hard drive
Report PermalinkTony
January 8, 2011 at 1:51 PM
can anyone help me please, what i would like to know is can I copy Wii games from one external hard drive to another, if so could you please tell me how I do this, Thanks
Report PermalinkWii Guy
May 24, 2011 at 10:49 AM
Just to update this, there are plenty of tuts out there on how to chip your wii and add a usb external hardrive, you can use uloader, usb loader gx, usb loader gx config which lets you see both the front and back of your covers, im not going to put a nice easy link here because if its done for you then you won’t learn!!, so GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND :)OR , just join and donate to http://www.hacksden.com everything you need to know is there.. happy modding
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