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Wii firmware 4.0: SD and SDHC Card menu confirmed! Already Installed HBC is safe!

A

Aeana

Member
Minsc said:
Um, reading of a SD card doesn't hurt it, nor does writing to one. It's just erasing data from SD, of which, most commercial cards can handle 100,000 erases per sector. So if you buy a 32 GB card, and use only 1/4th of it at most, you get 4x the life out of it, which would be at least 400,000 days worth of erasing one game a day, or about 1,100 years.

Do you plan on living for 1,100 years? If so, then perhaps you should back up your flash memory :lol

Edit: Furthermore, the Wii's system memory is flash memory anyway, so if you are really worried about your memory stick, rest assured your Wii itself will go bad long, long before your SD card, as it is accessed much more frequently.
Click to expand...
He's talking about the Wii flash, not SD cards.
 
C

Christine

Member
This came just in time. I had made backups of all my channels to SD already, so I just deleted the few remaining on the internal storage.
 
A Black Falcon

A Black Falcon

Member
Minsc said:
Um, reading of a SD card doesn't hurt it, nor does writing to one. It's just erasing data from SD, of which, most commercial cards can handle 100,000 erases per sector. So if you buy a 32 GB card, and use only 1/4th of it at most, you get 4x the life out of it, which would be at least 400,000 days worth of erasing one game a day, or about 1,100 years.

Do you plan on living for 1,100 years? If so, then perhaps you should back up your flash memory :lol

Edit: Furthermore, the Wii's system memory is flash memory anyway, so if you are really worried about your memory stick, rest assured your Wii itself will go bad long, long before your SD card, as it is accessed much more frequently.
Click to expand...

Well yeah, the main worry definitely is the Wii's system memory. Having to rewrite to the card every single time that you load a new game? At least with a flash memory based memory card, if the thing fails sometime you could just copy the files to another card! But with internal flash memory, there's not much you can do... not having to rewrite it when you run the same game is nice, but it is an issue.
 
D

donny2112

Member
I have 3.3U, HBC, and DVDx running on my Wii. Am I correct in thinking that I can upgrade the DVDx to the 3.4 version on my 3.3U Wii? From reading the article Dragona linked to, it appears that the 3.4 version of DVDx works with 4.0U. The question is, do I need to upgrade to 3.4U in order to install 3.4 DVDx?
 
M

Moz La Punk

Member
Hmmm... I just downloaded the update and I put all my games on the SD card. But now I have a problem and I don't know if it's the update or not, because it has been some time since I have played Virtual Console games.

Here's the thing: when I start up a VC game, it looks terrible. Colours bleed through each other and half of the screen gets black. It only happens when something moves on the screen. Considering they are games, stuff move a lot :p I don't know if this has something to do with it but my Full HD television switches to... I think it's 572p or something like that when I start up a VC game.

I don't have the problem with WiiWare games or normal games, just with VC games. So strange... it makes the games totally unplayable. Anyone knows whats up?
 
Z

zigg

Member
Minsc said:
Um, reading of a SD card doesn't hurt it, nor does writing to one. It's just erasing data from SD, of which, most commercial cards can handle 100,000 erases per sector. So if you buy a 32 GB card, and use only 1/4th of it at most, you get 4x the life out of it, which would be at least 400,000 days worth of erasing one game a day, or about 1,100 years.

Do you plan on living for 1,100 years? If so, then perhaps you should back up your flash memory :lol

Edit: Furthermore, the Wii's system memory is flash memory anyway, so if you are really worried about your memory stick, rest assured your Wii itself will go bad long, long before your SD card, as it is accessed much more frequently.
Click to expand...

Yeah, others have replied already, but I was specifically concerned about the Wii's internal Flash here. Not rewriting the game every time would probably, with my usage patterns, mean I'm going to be rewriting probably 10 or 20 times less often.

Of course, not rewriting what's already there is just good engineering... but this is Nintendo.

SD cards, man, those get swapped out for bigger ones far faster than they can wear out :lol
 
R

rollingstart

Banned
I know the title says GeckoOS is safe, but can someone else please confirm that GeckoOS is working. I still want access to my several import games and I don't care about any other programs.

I'll be updating when I get home
 
M

marwan

Banned
it took Nintendo.....what......like 2-3 years to finally allow us to play games of SD cards? pffff...about tome!
 
L

Like the hat?

Banned
zigg said:
Yeah, others have replied already, but I was specifically concerned about the Wii's internal Flash here. Not rewriting the game every time would probably, with my usage patterns, mean I'm going to be rewriting probably 10 or 20 times less often.

Of course, not rewriting what's already there is just good engineering... but this is Nintendo.

SD cards, man, those get swapped out for bigger ones far faster than they can wear out :lol
Click to expand...
at 100,000 read/write cycles, even if you loaded a new game 10 times a day, you'd still have about 27 years worth of lifetime out of your wii NAND flash.

granted this is on an "average 100,000 cycles" for flash memory in general, and doesn't include the other reading/writing to the internal NAND (saving, etc) but still.
 
H

HoTHiTTeR

Member
sloppyjoe_gamer said:
Servers are getting hammered with people d-ling the update, or...

The Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection servers appear to be down for maintenance. Please try your connection again later.
Click to expand...

hah, yah. I just wondered if anyone else was getting cockblocked from the wiishop update too.
 
L

later

Member
Inserting/Ejecting the SD card makes the wii emit a sound..

I however don't like that the intro screens are no longer shown for wiiware games.
 
D

Disguises

Member
Dam, on the day of the update my wii wont work (will turn on, hearing noises etc, just no display or sound). I also need to test a wii browser flash game for hand-in tomorow. Oh dear.
 
C

celebi23

Member
later said:
Inserting/Ejecting the SD card makes the wii emit a sound..

I however don't like that the intro screens are no longer shown for wiiware games.
Click to expand...

Damn, that second part really does suck :/
 
L

lsslave

Jew Gamer
Alright, so here is my question

Is the Wii Flash memory going to be able to sustain the usage that it is looking at from this?

That is all I want to know, because if its like millions of uses and I don't need to worry about it for a few years then whatever, I will start playing SD card games (who am I kidding, the second I had the update I loaded up Double Dragon XD)
 
Davey Cakes

Davey Cakes

Member
Metaphoreus said:
You can also download VC/WiiWare games directly to the SD card, but if you only have a game on SD card, then the Titles You've Downloaded screen will show that title as Downloadable, rather than Downloaded.
Click to expand...
This is an interesting note.

Since downloading to the SD card doesn't bind the game to that particular Wii system, does this mean that downloads are now universal?

I'm still waiting for confirmation on this. If you put a game on SD, can you play it on any Wii console that also has the SD update?
 
L

lsslave

Jew Gamer
Rash said:
This is an interesting note.

Since downloading to the SD card doesn't bind the game to that particular Wii system, does this mean that downloads are now universal?

I'm still waiting for confirmation on this. If you put a game on SD, can you play it on any Wii console that also has the SD update?
Click to expand...

The reason the game loads off your console is to retain this copy protection (I am fairly certain at least)

The game is still registered to your system, so the game must be copied to the console flash memory in order to be played, in reality it is just a quick transfer solution but I am happy with it (assuming I wont kill my Wii in a year of use) and now I am playing VC games even more than before when I don't have to go through and decide what to copy, they are just there now XD
 
M

markatisu

Member
Rash said:
This is an interesting note.

Since downloading to the SD card doesn't bind the game to that particular Wii system, does this mean that downloads are now universal?

I'm still waiting for confirmation on this. If you put a game on SD, can you play it on any Wii console that also has the SD update?
Click to expand...

I think its still tied though even if it does not reside on the Wii itself, it would be similar to going into GHWT and RB2 and trying to use someone elses DLC...it wont work if its not the Wii that bought it

Is the Wii Flash memory going to be able to sustain the usage that it is looking at from this?

That is all I want to know, because if its like millions of uses and I don't need to worry about it for a few years then whatever, I will start playing SD card games (who am I kidding, the second I had the update I loaded up Double Dragon XD)
Click to expand...

What difference does it make? If it does somehow damage it Nintendo will fix it for free just as they did the DVD error with SSBB and the video card error with Zelda TP and RE4 Wii
 
C

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
Plz i need to know it - how many free blocks do you have on a 32gb sd card ? :-D
 
Minsc

Minsc

Gold Member
zigg said:
Yeah, others have replied already, but I was specifically concerned about the Wii's internal Flash here. Not rewriting the game every time would probably, with my usage patterns, mean I'm going to be rewriting probably 10 or 20 times less often.

Of course, not rewriting what's already there is just good engineering... but this is Nintendo.

SD cards, man, those get swapped out for bigger ones far faster than they can wear out :lol
Click to expand...

I should have known that's what you meant, oh well! I can see the reason for concern, I'm glad it's handled in a way that helps reduce the wear and tear... it really didn't make sense to be worried about the memory card, but the system memory is out of our hands.

I wonder if it lost the ability to erase if you'd still be able to load it up and copy the data off.
 
P

phalestine

aka iby.h
cw_sasuke said:
Plz i need to know it - how many free blocks do you have on a 32gb sd card ? :-D
Click to expand...

Well 1MB is 8 blocks. 32GB = 32000MB, so 32000*8 = 256 000, thats a shit ton.

Edit - Now its going to be less than that, but not much less. Since 32GB cards are really like what, 30-31GB.
 
C

Cosmo Clock 21

Banned
Because this is probably going to get asked eventually,
32GB is the maximum limit for SDHC cards. It can theoretically go up to 2TB, but the SD Card Association was dumb and capped it at 32GB. Until they announce SDXC support.
 
Davey Cakes

Davey Cakes

Member
markatisu said:
I think its still tied though even if it does not reside on the Wii itself, it would be similar to going into GHWT and RB2 and trying to use someone elses DLC...it wont work if its not the Wii that bought it
Click to expand...
Well, that's not a deal-breaker, but it does kind of suck. At least with my X360 I have the option to take the hard drive over to someone else's house.

You take what you can get, though.
 
S

schuelma

Wastes hours checking old Famitsu software data, but that's why we love him.
I have a 2GB card which should be plenty, but I'm tempted to upgrade just because :lol
 
C

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
iby.h said:
Well 1MB is 8 blocks. 32GB = 32000MB, so 32000*8 = 256 000, thats a shit ton.

Edit - Now its going to be less than that, but not much less. Since 32GB cards are really like what, 30-31GB.
Click to expand...


Crazy :lol
i guess the times where we ask how many blocks a wiiware game need are over xD
 
M

Meier

Member
bryehn said:
So they ended up going the quick and dirty route.

Do you need ~50MB free on the user side of the Wii memory or are the games being loaded into the "other" 256MB? If you still need a half empty fridge this is hardly a solution.
Click to expand...
Put everything on SD and then the fridge isn't nearly full. Easy solution.
 
B

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
bryehn said:
I was more referring to the technical side of things.
Click to expand...
meh, technical shmechnical.. it works, allows quick and convenient access, and to "overcome" the technical aspects of it you just have to follow one simple rule (always download to the SD card). Are there shortcomings? Sure, but you have to be really intent on finding fault with this to really even care about them.

Rash said:
This is an interesting note.

Since downloading to the SD card doesn't bind the game to that particular Wii system, does this mean that downloads are now universal?

I'm still waiting for confirmation on this. If you put a game on SD, can you play it on any Wii console that also has the SD update?
Click to expand...
no, the game is still encrypted to your Wii's profile. The reason for copying it back to your Wii is that (AFAIK) the Wii doesn't allow for many operations (including decryption) to run outside of it's internal memory space. So this changes nothing and is at the same time most likely the hold up for this solution.
 
B

bryehn

Member
borghe said:
meh, technical shmechnical.. it works, allows quick and convenient access, and to "overcome" the technical aspects of it you just have to follow one simple rule (always download to the SD card). Are there shortcomings? Sure, but you have to be really intent on finding fault with this to really even care about them.
Click to expand...

More of an interest than actual caring :lol

The only real possible problem I'd have with this system is that I play *A LOT* of Wii games and at some point my save files are going to take up more than the 35-40% of the Wii space than they do now. Hopefully Wii2 is out by then.
 
G

Gagaman

Member
With this brilliant update I may just splash out on the Wii Ware games I've been holding out on, such as Tetris party and World of Goo (presuming the latter isn't still getting a retail release). Very wise move, Nintendo. :D

Looking forward to future arcade releases, there's limitless possibilities for releases there. I especially hope Sega brings us a bunch of games we couldn't get on console before.
 
G

goldenticket

Member
what does this do to wii development going forward. like can patches be released for bug fixes? can this lead to a netflix wii? (im already happy with it on my 360 just wondering) downloadable content?
 
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