Play wii games off external hard drive

By Prakash Mehta. May 26, Related Articles. Latest Articles. About Us Disclaimer Privacy Advertise. The average Wii game is around 2GB or so—though you'll be surprised to see how many games are really tiny. After you've ripped one, you might as well work your way through the stack in front of you. Soon your loader screen will look like this:. It's not lonely anymore but it sure is boring looking. Press 1 on your Wiimote. This menu will pop up:.

Cover downloads? Yes ma'am! The covers will download automatically—they're stored on your SD card, if you're curious. After you've downloaded the covers, your default interface should look like this:. Clicking along the bar at the top of the screen gives you new layouts like the one at the top of this article and this one:.

You can favorite games to make a "Best Of" list or sort them by number of plays so your most frequently played games rise to the top. You can even set a parental lock so that children playing games on your Wii can't load the Mature rated titles—do you really want to explain why your nephew is playing No More Heroes instead of Super Paper Mario?

So far things are looking pretty good. You're rocking Homebrew, you've got a USB hard drive with all your games hooked up to your Wii, and it's all controlled by a beautiful cover-style loader. What could be better? Not having to launch the Homebrew Channel and then launch the loader, just to get to your games. Let's put the loader front and center. We're going to need a few more tools, so grab that SD card. We need a WAD manager, essentially a file manager for the Wii that handles installation bundles.

You can't go wrong downloading Waninkoko's Wad Manager; you'll find a copy here. DOL file to boot. Throw it back into your Wii and boot into the Homebrew Channel. Run the Wad Manager. Whereas on a Wii U, if I want to upgrade to a larger external drive, all I have to do is plug both in, and move the contents of one drive to the other. More topics from this board You should be able to play these games off tv on the gamepad right?? My Wii U wont load a Wii game???

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STN79 7 years ago 1 I mean if you have an external drive connected will games load right up and be playable or do they have to be on the main system memory?

DorotimusWitik 7 years ago 2 Yes, they'll play off of a hard drive. Thunderbird8 7 years ago 4 DorotimusWitik posted Thunderbird8 7 years ago 8 Upgrading the internal drive in a PS3 is a pain in the ass. Play Wii games on wii u on wii menu? Do you play Metroid games on the Wii U? Games that should've been on the Wii U. All rights reserved. This image may not be used by other entities without the express written consent of wikiHow, Inc.

Make sure that you have the correct equipment. USB flash drive - This is the drive on which you'll install the games. Wii remote - If you have a newer black model of Wii, you'll need a generic Wii remote to help with the installation. Format your flash drive as FAT Keep in mind that formatting a flash drive will erase its contents, so back up the contents to your computer or another flash drive if necessary.

Empty the Wii's disc drive. If there is currently a disc in the Wii, remove it before proceeding. Connect your Wii to the Internet.

Your Wii will need a network connection in order to install the bulk of the USB tool's files. Install Homebrew on your Wii. If you haven't yet installed the Homebrew Channel for your Wii, you'll need to do so before proceeding. The Homebrew Channel allows you to install custom modifications, one of which will let you play games off of a USB drive.

Format your SD card. Once you've installed Homebrew with the SD card, you'll need to wipe it clean so that you can use it for the USB installation files. The easiest way to do this is by formatting the SD card. Part 2. Use a Windows computer for this part. Unfortunately, you cannot format correctly your flash drive for Wii use on a Mac. If you don't have access to a Windows computer, try using one at a library or borrowing one from a friend.

Determine your Windows bit version. You'll need to know whether your version of Windows is a bit system or a bit system in order to know which file to download in a minute. Go to the download page for WBFS download page. Click Free Download. It's the green button in the upper-right corner. Watch out for any add pop-ups and be careful not to click any download links to software you didn't intend to download. Click Start Download. It's the green button in the center of the page.

Open the ZIP folder. Double-click the downloaded ZIP folder to open it. Double-click setup. It's in the ZIP folder. Doing so will open the setup window. Install the program. Click Browse to select an install location optional. Click Next. Click Yes. Click Close. Plug your flash drive into your computer. The flash drive should fit into one of the rectangular USB ports on your computer.

You can find it in your Windows Start menu. Select your flash drive. Click the "Drive" drop-down box in the upper-left corner of the window, then click your drive's letter usually F:. If you don't know the flash drive's letter, look for it in the "Devices and drives" section of the This PC app.

Click Format. This will format your flash drive for use with the Wii. Eject the flash drive. Click on the flash drive's icon in the lower-right side of the screen, then click Eject in the pop-up menu and remove the drive from your computer. You may have to click the upward-facing arrow here to see the flash drive's icon. Part 3.

Plug your SD card into your computer. The SD card should fit into your computer's SD card slot angled-side-in, logo-side-up. Open the file download site. Click Download. It's the button in the upper-right corner of the screen. Extract the files. On a Windows computer, double-click the ZIP folder, click Extract at the top of the folder's window, click Extract all in the resulting toolbar, and click Extract when prompted.

This will extract the files to a regular folder and open the folder when the extraction completes. On a Mac, just double-click the ZIP folder to open it. Open the "Files" folder. Copy the all files in the Files folder.

Click your SD card's name. Paste in the files. The files will copy onto the SD card. Eject the card. Once your files finish copying, you can proceed with removing your SD card.