USB homebrew help!

I'm kinda new at this,
I have my homebrew and everything set up, with the apps on my sd card.
but i also have my usb harddrive connected and working with usb loader gx.

How can I put my apps on the hard drive?
I couldn't get my usb drive to function correctly with my computer since it was formatted differently once i set it up with the wii, and to do so, i had to reformat it and everything got deleted. so I'm assuming I can't put the files on the usb via computer.
How would I go about putting the apps on the hard (moving them over from the sd card?) as well as accessing it and setting it all up (so homebrew is still on my channels list) once they are on there?

where do the wad files that i put on the sd card save to when i install them ??
how would i move those, as well as games downloaded from the wii shop channel to the hard drive?
step by step would be great, since today is even my first encounter hacking anything :]


I looked around and couldnt' find much. though, i did find somewhere that the apps folder should be in the root of the hard drive. That does help, but how would i move it there, and then, how would I go about accessing it??

[DarkPacMan77]

You have to plug in both the SD card and the USB drive to the computer and swap, but it's actually not an SD card it's a Memory Stick Pro Duo

If you put game backups of PSP games you need to put them in a folder named "ISO" (without quotes) located on the root of the memory stick. Other games will go in the homebrew folder that you're using.

-DarkPacMan77-

Older versions of USB Loader Gx required that your hard drive be formatted using WBFS, which is why your drive wasn't readable on your PC. The latest version supports FAT32 and even NTFS. I'm not sure if the homebrew channel or WadManager support NTFS, though, so you're probably best off using FAT32. Once you've reformatted your USB drive to FAT32 on your PC, you can just copy the files and folders from your SD card onto the drive using your PC. The homebrew channel can load apps from the drive and WadManager will install/uninstall wads from it.

To run backup games from USB Loader Gx from a FAT32 USB drive, you'll need to make sure you have cios222/223 installed. Here's a file link:
http://filetrip.net/f8367-hermes-cIOS-222223202-installer-4.html

As for your other question, wad files are installed to the Wii's flash memory when you install them. If you want to run channels directly from the hard drive, what you're looking for is NAND emulation. That's something I've only read about, so I can't give you too many details about it. The short of it is that you can dump the Wii's internal memory into a large file, save that file on your SD card or USB drive, and treat that file as though it were the actual internal memory. This article seems to have a lot of details about it:

http://r3dux.org/2009/10/how-to-use-nand-emulation-on-the-wii/
(ignore the parts about formatting your USB drive to two partitions... that part is out of date)

@ DPM

this is the WII section, not psp........ failz

I personaly like the fun of a wbfs drive, and i have to admit outof usb loader GX and configurable config wins hands down each time.

Configurable USB Loader is on my list of apps to try out. I've only tried GX and Neogamma so far. I <3 USB loading, but now that there are easy to use programs to convert ISOs to wbfs files and backup loaders can install games onto FAT partitions, I'm never going back to wbfs.

thanks for your help, that answers almost all my questions.

as for my external hard drive, i already have some discs loaded on it, and i don't have most of them. Is there any type of program i can use for my pc so that i could at least transfer the games to my pc before i reformat it?? that would really help,
thanks again

what do u mean transfer the games to pc, if you mean actualy get the wbfs games off, WBFS Manager 3.0 and simply extra them. they will be in 4.3GB however, WiiScrubber <3.

I use WiiBackupManager

http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/backup-launchers/iso/wbfs-managers/wii-backup-manager

That program will let you copy the games that are already on your external hard drive to your computer in WBFS format. It should create a folder on your C: drive called "wbfs" and will put the game files in there. Depending on which game you're copying, it could be significantly smaller than the 4.3GB that a full ISO image takes.

Once you've formatted your hard drive, you can use the same program to put the games back.