I am trying out clean rip, and I would like to use a USB drive to copy games so that I can avoid merging files. My problem is when I try to copy files onto the USB drive, the wii either doesn't see the drive (When it is formatted for NTFS), or I get an error when I format it for Fat32. What could I be doing wrong ? Is there a particular way I need to format my USB that I have been missing? Thanks.
(05-30-2017, 06:34 AM)jachin99 Wrote: [ -> ]I am trying out clean rip, and I would like to use a USB drive to copy games so that I can avoid merging files. My problem is when I try to copy files onto the USB drive, the wii either doesn't see the drive (When it is formatted for NTFS), or I get an error when I format it for Fat32. What could I be doing wrong ? Is there a particular way I need to format my USB that I have been missing? Thanks.
I don't use Clean Rip -- I use USB Loader GX, and I got it configured almost three years ago, so I don't recall all the details. But I have a vague memory that USB 3.0 hard drives were problematic. I had to locate one of my old USB 2.0 hard drives to get the Wii to recognize and use it properly. I would also be wary of very large hard drives... I imagine the Wii might have trouble addressing large drives. (I use a 160 GB hard drive.)
Also, you definitely want to format it FAT32, and with the MBR partition scheme.
Setting that aside... The Clean Rip instructions I found on Google say it works with SD cards too. If you can't get things working properly with a hard drive, try SD instead. Might be easier.
It's possible to use GX to rip discs, but it gives you a trimmed rip by default, and even if you set it so that it doesn't, I'm not 100% sure it still gives you a "clean" rip. This is why I would always recommend Cleanrip for ripping games.
(05-30-2017, 11:18 AM)Kurausukun Wrote: [ -> ]It's possible to use GX to rip discs, but it gives you a trimmed rip by default, and even if you set it so that it doesn't, I'm not 100% sure it still gives you a "clean" rip. This is why I would always recommend Cleanrip for ripping games.
What's the difference? I've ripped all of my games using USB Loader GX. They all work great.
I never said they didn't work.
(05-30-2017, 11:34 AM)Kurausukun Wrote: [ -> ]I never said they didn't work.
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Your "trimmed" comment implies there's something different between what you get with USB Loader GX and what you get with CleanRip. So my question is: what's the difference? Why is CleanRip preferable? [/color]
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The WiiBrew wiki says:[/color]
Quote:[color=#000000][color=#000000]The "Clean" in CleanRip comes from the fact that this tool does not require nor utilize any custom IOS (cIOS). It simply requires that you have the latest Homebrew Channel (HBC) installed. [/color][/color]
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If that's the difference, it doesn't really matter to me -- I've already hacked my Wii and am running custom IOS's.[/color]
CleanRip copies the disk bit-for-bit, whereas GX decrypts its contents, cleans out (what it views as) wasted space, and re-encrypts the disk image to give a smaller file. This is a lossy process.
If GX makes any kind of mistake about what is or isn't wasted space, then you're going to end up with a broken disk image. As there are more things for it to do, it's more likely that there's going to be a bug in one of them that gives a bad rip. Finally, if you ever want to check that your rip was successful, it's a lot easier to find known good hashes for full images than modified ones.
There are a lot of reasons why this shouldn't make a big difference in the real world (except the last point), so go with whatever. However, even if you do go for CleanRip, you can still use Dolphin's built-in compression system to save space once you know an image is good.
As for the OP's initial issue, I'm pretty sure CleanRip can only use FAT-based USB drives, and that file system has a limit for the maximum file size. It supports NTFS-based SD cards, but I'm pretty sure you can't actually load it off one big enough because of how the homebrew channel works (although it might have changed in recent years, as I've not tried for ages). What you can do is launch CleanRip off a small SD card, and then switch it for a bigger one once it's loaded.
I can't narrow it down to one particular issue but I would guess the thumb drive I was using was usb 3.0 I used an old hard drive instead, and it worked. Now I have a new problem that I'll ask about in a separate thread but thanks for your input. I'll stick with clean rip because I've used it once, and I think it worked, and I would rather not chance having to rip games over and over again hoping this conversion works. I'm not bashing GX because I've never tried it but I'd rather go with something I have already seen work
(05-31-2017, 02:06 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: [ -> ]CleanRip copies the disk bit-for-bit, whereas GX decrypts its contents, cleans out (what it views as) wasted space, and re-encrypts the disk image to give a smaller file. This is a lossy process.
I'm sorry, I find that hard to believe. I think we have to define "lossy." When something is compressed using a lossy algorithm, information is discarded from
everywhere in the datastream, to one degree or another. To pick a relevant example, one kind of lossy compression involves discarding the least significant bits from data that is still useful when the most significant bits are retained. That's not a viable approach for executable code, for which every bit is significant. If information were missing, the game wouldn't work.
What your description hints at ('cleans out wasted space') is not a lossy method. What it sounds like is that there's stuff written to the game disc that
isn't used by the game. For example, libraries/code that the game doesn't require, but are included by default. Obviously I'm speculating here, based on a vague description. But if that's what's happening, it isn't
lossy. Everything required for the game to work is still retained, unmodified.
That said, I've used USB Loader GX to rip my entire library of Wii and GameCube games, occasionally watching the progress bar.* I have serious doubts that USB Loader GX is doing anything other than pulling the image off the disc as fast as the Wii optical drive can do it. It may well be decrypting as it goes, but analyzing the data on the fly to determine what's required and what isn't, discarding the chaff, and then re-encrypting prior to writing? Heck, even a modern computer with an overclocked i7 and gobs of RAM would require noticeable pauses to do that for a multi-gigabyte game disc. It's just not possible that the Wii is doing it without pausing.
* I've watched the progress bar when ripping games from scratched discs, concerned they would fail.
Edited to add: Apologies for getting off-topic from the OP's question. I wasn't trying to convince the OP to use USB Loader GX; I was curious about the differences between it and CleanRip.
One more thing: Looking back on this post, the tone is unintentionally harsh/challenging. I'm not going to go back and change it now, because I hate when people change stuff up while I'm trying to respond. But I want to make it clear that the argumentative tone was unintentional. Replies to the technical content are welcome, with no animosity intended.
You only say that because you don't know how Wii discs work, or how GX rips discs by default. GX will only dump the game's "data" partition (partition 1), while completely leaving out at the very least the "update" partition (partition 0), which contains the IOSes and such that the game requires--this is how you can install updates that are necessary from game discs. This functionality is usually not needed by Wiis because most people keep theirs updated, and it's especially not really needed by Dolphin, but it's definitely removing data that cannot be recreated, hence why it is indeed "lossy." I'm not sure if it also skips other partitions, like Brawl's masterpieces for example, but the update partition alone is enough to make it a very lossy process which will fail any checksum tests to make sure you have a good game rip. It's a knife right in the heart of data integrity. Please don't argue that this is not a lossy scheme or try to redefine "lossy," because it is already a well-defined black-and-white term. I'm in a data science major; I do, at least to some degree, know what I'm talking about.