USB HDD ISO's and Size

[Jaz808]

I havent done the Usb HDD yet but after reading i have a question about the iso's
A standard Wii Iso is 4.38g, but i read when you transfer them to your hdd they are smaller, then i read you can copy them to a pc and burn them,

My question is can that burnt disc be played on a wii, or is it just a backup of the iso which can be put back on the hdd later ?

[smellyflange]

yes it can be played on a chipped wii,tried 1 last night,lot quicker than ripping it with usb gecko.

[OzBlackKnight]

Or run using Backup Loader if your Wii is "soft-modded". No real point anymore though. Most games are significantly smaller too. eg Marble mania went down to 0.26GB from the original 4.38GB.

[covert]

Anyone got a list of games sizes are the copied to the wii hd partition ?

[Jaz808]

AMF Bowling Pinbusters Pal - 0.13GB
Balls Of Fury Pal - 0.58GB
Big Beach Sports Pal - 0.82GB
Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree Pal - 1.14GB
Block Party Pal - 0.66GB
Celeberity Sports Showdown Pal - 0.36GB
Classic British Racing Pal -0.15GB
CodeLyoko Ntsc -3.49GB
Crash Mind Over Mutant Pal - 4.09GB
Dave Mirra BMX Challenge Pal - 0.40GB
Donkey Kong Jet Race Pal - 0.79GB
Dream Pinball 3D Pal - 0.42GB
Family Ski Pal - 0.66GB
Fishing Master Ntsc - 0.30GB
Funfair Party Pal - 0.69GB
Hasbro Family Game Night Ntsc - 0.21GB
Hot Wheels: Beat That! Pal - 0.54GB
Jeep Thrills Ntsc - 0.68GB
Kawasaki Quad Bikes Pal - 0.12GB
Lego Star Wars Ntsc - 2.97GB
Links Crossbow Training Pal - 0.20GB
Little League World Series Baseball 2008 Ntsc - 0.86GB
Madagascar 2 Ntsc - 3.84GB
Madworld Pal - 3.39GB
Marbles Balance Challenge Pal - 0.45GB
Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games Pal - 2.10GB
Mario Party 8 Pal - 3.30GB
Mario Kart Pal - 2.62GB
Mario Power Tennis Pal - 1.45GB
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Pal - 4.09GB
Monsters Vs Aliens Pal - 3.23GB
Nitro Bike Pal - 0.83GB
Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers Pal - 1.12GB
Pimp My Ride Pal - 1.63GB
Pitfall: The Big Adventure Ntsc - 1.57GB
Pop! Pal - 0.05GB
Pro Hall Pool Pal - 0.44GB
007: Quantum Of Solace Pal - 3.57GB
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip Pal - 2.04GB
Sim City Creator Pal - 0.37GB
Sonic And The Black Knight Pal - 3.58GB
Sonic Unleashed Pal - 3.18GB
Speed Racer Ntsc - 2.14GB
Sports Island Pal - 0.37GB
StarWars The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels Pal - 3.98
StarWars: The Force Unleashed Ntsc - 4.07GB
Super Fruitfll Pal - 0.03GB (smallest)
Super Mario Galaxy Pal - 3.27GB
Super Smash Bros Brawl Pal - 6.57GB (biggest)
The House Of The Dead: Overkill Pal - 3.83GB
The Lengend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess Pal - 1.08GB
The Incredible Hulk Ntsc - 2.22GB
TMNT Ntsc - 1.32GB
Tomb Raider: Underworld Pal - 3.17GB
Trival Pursuit Pal - 0.60GB
TV Show King Party Pal - 0.36GB
Ultimate Shooting Collection Ntsc - 1.02GB
We Love Golf Pal - 1.33GB
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire ? Pal - 0.95GB
Wii Chess Pal - 0.03GB (= smallest)
Wii Music Pal - 0.14GB
Wii Play Pal - 0.10GB
Wii Sports Pal - 0.63GB
World Championship Sports Pal - 1.83GB

[PunX0r]

Is there anyway to copy off the smaller sized ISO's rather then the program expanding it out when copying back to the PC?

[mattwalker]

I dont think so!

When it extractsthe IO from WBFS it is back to 4.38gb

[hikaru]

yeah but once you copy it back it is effectively scrubbed
so should compress quite well with winrar.

No sure but i think the newer version of wbfs manager can deal with rared isos

[Jaz808]

The iso's on a wbfs drive are ciso's (compressed iso) wbfs_inteligent_gui_v6, can transfer ciso's to and from wbfs hdd's to pc hdd, but imgburn doesnt reconize the format, says its unsupportted, so not sure if you can burn the ciso's

[Nathan Explosion]

yeah but once you copy it back it is effectively scrubbed
so should compress quite well with winrar.

No sure but i think the newer version of wbfs manager can deal with rared isos

They still at full size when the are in .rar format from my experience.

[Jaz808]

You can compress rar, i have downloaded a few games that are 2gig to 400meg in rar format and 4.38 once unrared

[covert]

Jaz808 thanks for the list.

For the other posters re iso size..

A wii iso has the main file structure then has the rest of the iso field up with random data. Because it is random is does not compress very well and therefor when you compress a untouched ISO from a wii it stays the same size.

When you load a WBFS with a manager like WBFSManager3.0 only the data files are copied over and the random fill data is skipped.

When you copy files from a WBFS back to your HD the space there was random data in the ISO gets filled with 0xFF (I think) and the iso will compress very well close to the same size (again not tested but I think this is the case) it appeared in WBFSManager3.0

If you are running NTSF you can enable file compression on a folder / file and size a lot of space. See the list from Jaz808 in post 3.



You can also use a tool called WiiScrubber on your PC. It will change the random data to 0xFF so it will compress well. The file in the picture above was done with WiiScrubber. Unfortunately WiiScrubber will not batch so WBFSManager3.0 looks like a good way to do it in bulk.

It is possible Nintendo could release firmware that will detect the 0xFF in empty space and block the game from running so some people still like the untouched ISO's for that reason.