The Inclusive 4GB SD Card Workaround Solution for Wii!

I purchased the Transcend 133X 4GB card yesterday from buy.com for $14ish. Hopefully it'll be here later this week or next. Just in time for GHWT.

I'll post if I have success or not.

Thanks again for all of the work and the updates to the OP, that should make it easy to get going.
 
They didn't even credit me on Kotaku...and I'm a Gold Star member.

T_T

EDIT: Ok, they got around to crediting me...but by now NO ONE CARES. :roll: :cry:
 
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Well, I've already got an issue with it all. Figures. I bought the card, followed the directions on the OP, put it in my Wii...nothing. The Wii says the media in the drive isn't supported.

So now I have to figure out what's wrong. Why can't things just work?

[ranting]
 
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[quote name='dakranii']Well, I've already got an issue with it all. Figures. I bought the card, followed the directions on the OP, put it in my Wii...nothing. The Wii says the media in the drive isn't supported.

So now I have to figure out what's wrong. Why can't things just work?

First my stupid laptop's card reader wouldn't even recognize the card. So I had to fiddle around with the firmware and edit my registry for it work...what the hell. Then, when it did finally read the card, it read it so slowly and constantly that it would freeze up my computer and not allow me to do anything, including format it.

So I switched to another computer, where it finally recognized it off the bat. However, when I tried to install SDFormatter, the InstallShield on stupid Windows was f'ed up!! What?? So I had to spend an hour researching to figure out what the heck was up with that. I finally figured it out, formatted the card, transferred over my old card's info, created the dummy files, put it in the Wii...and nothing.

Too much damn work for it to not work.

So yeah, I need to start over and see what I did wrong.

Just venting...[/quote]

You might need to do the LOOOOONG format, where you click on the 'Options' button of SDFormatter, select 'FULL (Erase ON)' under FORMAT TYPE and 'ON' under FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT.

Also, after the format, stick your card into the Wii 1st BEFORE you do all that data transferring. This way, you can nail down what the possible problem is in each step.

Good luck and add me as a friend on Kotaku!:bouncy:
 
[quote name='Knoxximus']You might need to do the LOOOOONG format, where you click on the 'Options' button of SDFormatter, select 'FULL (Erase ON)' under FORMAT TYPE and 'ON' under FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT.

Also, after the format, stick your card into the Wii 1st BEFORE you do all that data transferring. This way, you can nail down what the possible problem is in each step.

Good luck and add me as a friend on Kotaku!:bouncy:[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I think I got a little ahead of myself in going straight through.

I'm going to reformat it now and then try it in the Wii. I'll probably finish the process tomorrow and repost.
 
[quote name='Knoxximus']Is it an SDHC card?[/quote]
:lol: Oddly enough, no. It's the 4gb Transcend SD card from the OP, but installing that fix worked.

I also figured out why my mini SD card from my phone worked, it's not SDHC either.
 
Not that it needs any confirmation, but homebrew programmers have just enabled SDHC compatibility with the Wii SD slot.

So yay for Nintendo!
 
The minute hackers find a way to play games from your SD card--official games, not just random roms & emulators--I'll be haaaackin in a miiiinute.

I think it'll happen. I do
 
I got mine up and working. I had to do a full format with SDFormatter and it worked fine from there. I confirmed it by downloading some Guitar Hero DLC last night to the SD card and then playing a song from the SD card. Worked great.

With GHWT songs being about 190ish blocks each, that will translate to 168 songs on an SD card? My math and numbers may be off. How many blocks would be available on this 4GB card?
 
[quote name='dakranii']I got mine up and working. I had to do a full format with SDFormatter and it worked fine from there. I confirmed it by downloading some Guitar Hero DLC last night to the SD card and then playing a song from the SD card. Worked great.

With GHWT songs being about 190ish blocks each, that will translate to 168 songs on an SD card? My math and numbers may be off. How many blocks would be available on this 4GB card?[/quote]


Hmmm....2.00GB is approximated 16,000 blocks.

So, 1GB is about 8,000 blocks.

So 3.72 GB would be around.....approximately 30,000 blocks.:cool:
 
Hey guise, I had a question. Would it be possible to watch movies and other video from these 4gb cards using the Wii Photo Channel? I'm sure you've heard of Wii Video 9; it's a program that converts video for use with the Wii. The thing is, the converted video's filesize is usually so astronomical as the Wii is apparently only able to read MJPEG videos, which have bad compression. For instance, if you have a 300mb .avi file, the converted video will probably come out to being around a gig.
But what I'm trying to ask here is, would watching, say, a 2.5 gig .avi file be possible with this little trick? It seems like it would, as there would be no need to fill up any empty space. I myself only have a 1gb card, so I will be getting the 4gb one linked to from the first post if anyone can confirm that this works. Thanks, and good find, by the way. :)
 
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[quote name='mistermayy']Hey guise, I had a question. Would it be possible to watch movies and other video from these 4gb cards using the Wii Photo Channel? I'm sure you've heard of Wii Video 9; it's a program that converts video for use with the Wii. The thing is, the converted video's filesize is usually so astronomical as the Wii is apparently only able to read MJPEG videos, which have bad compression. For instance, if you have a 300mb .avi file, the converted video will probably come out to being around a gig.
But what I'm trying to ask here is, would watching, say, a 2.5 gig .avi file be possible with this little trick? It seems like it would, as there would be no need to fill up any empty space. I myself only have a 1gb card, so I will be getting the 4gb one linked to from the first post if anyone can confirm that this works. Thanks, and good find, by the way. :)[/quote]

I don't see why not. Uncompressed, it would definitely take up more than enough space on the card. And even if it didn't, you're not concerned about writing to the card....just reading from the card. So, I would think it would work out fine. Give it a try! :bouncy:

Oh, and if you don't mind me asking, how did you come to find out about this thread?
 
[quote name='Knoxximus']I don't see why not. Uncompressed, it would definitely take up more than enough space on the card. And even if it didn't, you're not concerned about writing to the card....just reading from the card. So, I would think it would work out fine. Give it a try! :bouncy:

Oh, and if you don't mind me asking, how did you come to find out about this thread?[/quote]

Ok, thanks, I just ordered the Transcend 4gb card, so I'll report on how it works. I found this thread through google; my dad just got a Wii and I noticed in the instructions only up to 2gb SD cards could be used, but knowing many things can be worked around if you know where to look, I googled something about using larger SD cards with the Wii, and found this gem. Thanks again for the info!
 
Thanks for posting this, but I have a question. My Wii just updated the other day, and I'm curious if it somehow disabled this.

I'm going to get Rock Band 2 when it's released, and having twice as much room for DLC would be very helpful. I found this thread a while back when someone linked it on either ScoreHero or GameFAQs, and wanted to ask before I risk some insane amount of money like... $10.
 
[quote name='EriktheRed53']Thanks for posting this, but I have a question. My Wii just updated the other day, and I'm curious if it somehow disabled this.

I'm going to get Rock Band 2 when it's released, and having twice as much room for DLC would be very helpful. I found this thread a while back when someone linked it on either ScoreHero or GameFAQs, and wanted to ask before I risk some insane amount of money like... $10.[/quote]

I updated also, and not only does it still work, but transfer times have improved by quite a large margin from this update! So, GO FOR IT! :bouncy:

Oh, and the card is $8.75 now. :cool:
 
Well, I got the card working correctly after formatting it, but it seems that the Photo Channel can't handle such large files. I suppose it's the fault of the Wii only being able to display MJPEG video files, but Wii Video 9 definitely is not the way to go for watching video on the Wii. For instance, a 200mb video file will come out to be around a gig (!) on the highest quality setting, and even that is too large for the Photo Channel. So, it seems that the largest file you can use with the Photo Channel (before conversion) is around 150mb. And with most movies being at least 700mb, that just won't cut it.
I'd say the best way to view video at the moment is to use one of those internet browser media center things like Orb or TVersity...that's what I started using after I found out that watching video won't work using the Photo Channel. It's not perfect and there may be some frame skipping, but it's much more productive than Wii Video 9.
 
Well, my card finally arrived, but it doesn't work at all, right out of the box. Trying to explore it on my computer just tells me it needs to be formatted first, but I can't seem to do that with either the SDFormatter program or Windows' internal process. Every time, it waits thirty seconds or so just to tell me that the card cannot be formatted. It's not the lock switch, as I've tried each position just in case. Is my card just somehow broken?
 
[quote name='EriktheRed53']Well, my card finally arrived, but it doesn't work at all, right out of the box. Trying to explore it on my computer just tells me it needs to be formatted first, but I can't seem to do that with either the SDFormatter program or Windows' internal process. Every time, it waits thirty seconds or so just to tell me that the card cannot be formatted. It's not the lock switch, as I've tried each position just in case. Is my card just somehow broken?[/quote]

Geez...u voted my thread down because YOUR card doesn't work?:roll:

Which card did you get?
 
No, actually, I didn't vote at all.
I got the one you linked in the first post. It looks just like the one in the many pictures in this thread, too.
 
[quote name='EriktheRed53']No, actually, I didn't vote at all.
I got the one you linked in the first post. It looks just like the one in the many pictures in this thread, too.[/quote]

Well, no way to tell anyway, but the coincidence was curious. I apologize then for my rash remark.:cry:

Anyhoo, does it read normally? Does it work ok otherwise? Maybe it's just a bad card. Does your memory card reader recognize it okay?
 
[quote name='Knoxximus']Well, no way to tell anyway, but the coincidence was curious. I apologize then for my rash remark.:cry:

Anyhoo, does it read normally? Does it work ok otherwise? Maybe it's just a bad card. Does your memory card reader recognize it okay?[/quote]

Don't worry about it. :)

No, it doesn't work at all in either my Wii or laptop. Windows tells me the card needs to be formatted as soon as I try opening it, but all attempts to do so fail after about a minute. Other SD cards work fine, though. It's really puzzling.
 
Same here. I just got mine and the card is doing the same thing. For some reason, the card I'm trying to format shows up as a 13.9 gb card though. I'm currently trying to get a windows format to go through, though the thing's been going for an hour or two already.
 
Hi, I was wondering if someone could help me out with a problem. I purchased the Transcend card(thats displayed on page 1) from amazon. I got it today, I followed the directions, but the programs wouldn't open for me. SO i decided to place the card into my wii, wii reconized the card, but it doesn't tell me how many blocks are available to store stuff into. So what am I missing.
 
[quote name='distrunner06']Hi, I was wondering if someone could help me out with a problem. I purchased the Transcend card(thats displayed on page 1) from amazon. I got it today, I followed the directions, but the programs wouldn't open for me. SO i decided to place the card into my wii, wii reconized the card, but it doesn't tell me how many blocks are available to store stuff into. So what am I missing.[/quote]

What programs are you talking about? Also, you may need to get a new card reader.
 
[quote name='Miranda']Just got my card today and going to try this out soon. There's a new version of SDFormatter:

2.0.0.3:

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?download=4003[/quote]

I tried it with this version. Quick format didn't work for me, so I had to do a full format, but after that it worked just fine! My Wii can read it and I have no problems copying stuff to the card. I haven't tried copying stuff from my card to the Wii yet though. Speed seems pretty quick. I don't know if that's because of the 3.4 firmware or if it's the 133x speed of the card or a combination of both. But it's working for me.:)
 
[quote name='Miranda']I tried it with this version. Quick format didn't work for me, so I had to do a full format, but after that it worked just fine! My Wii can read it and I have no problems copying stuff to the card. I haven't tried copying stuff from my card to the Wii yet though. Speed seems pretty quick. I don't know if that's because of the 3.4 firmware or if it's the 133x speed of the card or a combination of both. But it's working for me.:)[/quote]

Awesome! Thanks Miranda! I will update the OP with this info sometime this weekend (gotta work my 12-15 shifts today and tomorrow:cry:).
 
[quote name='itachiitachi'][quote name='hero101']I want a hack to watch movies on the wii.[/QUOTE]How I have looked for way to do this but they only thing I found had poor quality, bad frame rate and skewed the image.[/QUOTE]
PlayOn will be adding Wii support sometime soon.
[quote name='Miranda']Just got my card today and going to try this out soon. There's a new version of SDFormatter:

2.0.0.3:

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?download=4003

Also, Newegg's price on the card is now $9.06.[/QUOTE]I have been holding off on buying one of these until Nintendo decides to allow to stream games from them. But I finally bit on a card the other day and it showed up today. The card froze my comp when I first put it in. So I re-booted and inserted it and it read just fine. I downloaded v.2.0 and it said that the drive was not recognizable by the program. I tried adding and deleting files from the card and formatted the card using Windows. All went well. So I re-read the whole thread (I read it a while back) to see if anyone had similar problems. Finally I got to this post. I re-installed the newer 2.0.0.3 version and it recognized the card and the format took about 2.5 seconds. Now I will go through the rest of the process and hopefully I can re-download all of my content onto my card tonight. :))))


EDIT: My Wii didn't recognize the quick format card. So I did the full format and the Wii showed blank channel windows with no number of blocks in the corner. So I padded the card and I had 16083 free blocks or so. Now I have all of my current games and past downloaded games on my card with tons of room to spare. Hopefully it won't be long until we can access games straight from the card!
 
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Finally got around to buying the card, and it works perfectly. Now if Harmonix would just get the Rock Band store online, I could put this thing to good use.
 
I had some difficulties getting things to work, so I thought I would share my results in case it can help someone else.

I bought the Transcend card from Amazon, and first tried it in the card reader of an HP DV6910us laptop. The card reader didn't read it. I next tried a Nikon Coolpix S550 camera, and it was able to format the card with the camera's built in format function. It then worked in the camera, but the Wii didn't accept the formatting. SDFormatter didn't list the camera's drive as a formatable SD device either. Finally, I put the card in a TomTom OneXL GPS unit and thankfully SDFormatter was able to format the card, and it now works in my Wii. I'm really glad I didn't have to go spend money on another SD card reader.

Thanks for this awesome guide!

And I agree, XorpheusX, I can't wait to put this to use in RB2 as well--thats the entire reason I got the card.
 
wait, i have a question. If i just format the card and load RB2 DLC directly onto the card to make it under 1.99 GB, would that work instead of loading crap data onto it? BTW, does anyone know where i could get a cheap SD card reader, because i don't have one.
 
[quote name='blackbird3216']wait, i have a question. If i just format the card and load RB2 DLC directly onto the card to make it under 1.99 GB, would that work instead of loading crap data onto it? BTW, does anyone know where i could get a cheap SD card reader, because i don't have one.[/quote]

Yeah, if you have 1.73 GB of Rock Band 2 DLC already, that'll work fine. If not, you unload some dummy data when you get there.
 
I need help, I bought a regular 4gb SD Card and I try the Format Type: QUICK, Format Size Adjustment = OFF AND THE (Select 'FULL (Erase ON)' under FORMAT TYPE and 'ON' under FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT.) and nothing works, my Wii doesnt want to read it anyway, am I doing something wrong? Please I need help ASAP lol!
 
[quote name='Nithorias']I check and the lock isnt on, and I have try a lot of time both ways to format the SD Card and the Wii still doesnt read it. This is the 4GB SD Card I'm using, please reply if you find some problem with it or something I'm doing wrong, or could it be the USB Reader/Writer I'm using???
This is the link of my SD Card!

http://cgi.ebay.com/4GB-4-GB-HighSpeed-SD-Secure-Digital-camera-Memory-Card_W0QQitemZ270333873346QQcmdZViewItemQQptZDigital_Camera_Memory_Cards?hash=item270333873346&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A0|293%3A2|294%3A50[/quote]

First off, it's definitely not the card in the OP's message.
Second, it looks like some knock-off card (made in China and probably fake)
And third it needs to be a regular SD card, it cannot be SDHC.
 
[quote name='dragonjud']First off, it's definitely not the card in the OP's message.
Second, it looks like some knock-off card (made in China and probably fake)
And third it needs to be a regular SD card, it cannot be SDHC.[/quote]


So I got scammed! :cry:

What about this card, since I cant buy the one from newegg...

http://cgi.ebay.com/TRANSCEND-Standard-4GB-Secure-Digital-SD-Memory-4-GB_W0QQitemZ200265642562QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item200265642562&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A2|65%3A15|39%3A1|240%3A1318


What about this one, will it work? I know it doesnt have the x133speed but its transcend and it says that is a 4GB SD Card, I dont care much about the speed thing. Please reply back and thank you :cool:
 
[quote name='Nithorias']So I got scammed! :cry:

What about this card, since I cant buy the one from newegg...

http://cgi.ebay.com/TRANSCEND-Standard-4GB-Secure-Digital-SD-Memory-4-GB_W0QQitemZ200265642562QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item200265642562&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A2|65%3A15|39%3A1|240%3A1318


What about this one, will it work? I know it doesnt have the x133speed but its transcend and it says that is a 4GB SD Card, I dont care much about the speed thing. Please reply back and thank you :cool:[/quote]

You're gonna care about the speed in the long run. And why can't you buy it from NewEgg if you can buy crap from Ebay? Here's a link for Amazon even.

http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Fla...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1233265865&sr=8-1

I can't vouch for any other card than the one that worked for me and others. Take your time and do it right.

EDIT: *sighs* and if you absolutely MUST use eBay....TADAAAH!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Transcend-Flash...l_Camera_Memory_Cards?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116
 
[quote name='Knoxximus']You're gonna care about the speed in the long run. And why can't you buy it from NewEgg if you can buy crap from Ebay? Here's a link for Amazon even.

http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Fla...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1233265865&sr=8-1

I can't vouch for any other card than the one that worked for me and others. Take your time and do it right.

EDIT: *sighs* and if you absolutely MUST use eBay....TADAAAH!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Transcend-Flash...l_Camera_Memory_Cards?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116[/quote]

Wow thanks a lot man :applause:, sorry for all this trouble lol, and the reason I couldnt buy it from newegg its cuz of the shipping since I dont live in the US, but anyway I will try either amazon or ebay to buy it.. once again thanks!!! I'll let ya know if it works when I recieve it and do the hack.
 
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