I've created a small Windows app to hide or un-hide a drive so that Wii U doesn't nag you to format it every time you start. At this stage, the disk is only useful for USB loading of backups in vWii until support is added to more apps for the 'hidden' drive.
1. Create your NTFS / FAT32 / WBFS partition on your removable media for your backups to run under vWii in the various USB loaders.
2. Add games as usual
3. Use the U-Stealth drive hider app to toggle the 'hidden state' of the drive - Hidden / Normal. The source can be found on the U-Stealth google code page: https://code.google.com/p/u-stealth
Latest compiled app for Windows: UStealth_R8.exe
Some people have reported issues with R8 - if you do, try R7 here *Thanks Markehmus*
4. Either edit the source and compile the WiiFlow / CFG USB Loader / etc. to support a boot signature of 55AB yourself, or download one of these releases I've provided until support for the hidden drive is included in the various app's main trunks. These support both standard and 'hidden' drives:
- WiiFlow 4.2 (or higher) has support built in to the official release, thanks to Fix94! https://code.google.com/p/wiiflow/downloads/list
- USB Loader GX r1216 (and higher) https://www.mediafire.com/folder/6a48l4qn0aa1h/
- CFG USBloader (based on 70 r63) http://tinyurl.com/cfgusb-ustealth
(just copy the .dol into the correct apps/appname folder and rename it to boot.dol)
That's it! You can backup games from DVD to the 'hidden' drive in the above apps as before too.
*NOTE* when the drive is hidden, it won't be visible to anything other than an app that specifically supports it, and currently I only know of the three USB loaders above (as well as the u-stealth app itself)... hopefully more will be added. Fix94 is adding support to CFG while Cyan has kindly offered to include support in USBLoaderGX. Watch this space for more support in future.
Note that this doesn't solve the issue that the drive can't be used by both Wii U and vWii - that issue isn't likely to be easily resolved. The hidden drive will be totally ignored by Wii U (and Windows and everything else except supported apps) until it is un-hidden using the tool. Windows will tell you the drive is not formatted and ask you if you want to format it when connected after hiding it - obviously the answer is no unless you want to lose everything on it
Simply run U-Stealth and unhide it to work with it in Windows again.
Please test and let me know your experiences. Don't use it on a drive with critical data until you've tested it. I've tested extensively, but you never know.
The app won't hide the operating system drive for obvious reasons. It also checks for the presence of a standard boot signature before doing it's work. If non-standard entry is found at the boot-signature address, it will be labelled as an unknown drive and will ignore it.
I'll maintain this opening post with future updates. Thanks a million to Cyan, Fix94, hippojay for your assistance.
List of natively compatible homebrew
List of specific version recompiled homebrew
Or this one:
LibFat v1.1.1 with Ustealth patch
https://filetrip.net/dl?AIkKo9H8Dv
note: UNTESTED, I only edited line 183 of partition.c and recompiled with devkitPPC r29-1 (Cyan)
1. Create your NTFS / FAT32 / WBFS partition on your removable media for your backups to run under vWii in the various USB loaders.
2. Add games as usual
3. Use the U-Stealth drive hider app to toggle the 'hidden state' of the drive - Hidden / Normal. The source can be found on the U-Stealth google code page: https://code.google.com/p/u-stealth
Latest compiled app for Windows: UStealth_R8.exe
Some people have reported issues with R8 - if you do, try R7 here *Thanks Markehmus*
4. Either edit the source and compile the WiiFlow / CFG USB Loader / etc. to support a boot signature of 55AB yourself, or download one of these releases I've provided until support for the hidden drive is included in the various app's main trunks. These support both standard and 'hidden' drives:
- WiiFlow 4.2 (or higher) has support built in to the official release, thanks to Fix94! https://code.google.com/p/wiiflow/downloads/list
- USB Loader GX r1216 (and higher) https://www.mediafire.com/folder/6a48l4qn0aa1h/
- CFG USBloader (based on 70 r63) http://tinyurl.com/cfgusb-ustealth
(just copy the .dol into the correct apps/appname folder and rename it to boot.dol)
That's it! You can backup games from DVD to the 'hidden' drive in the above apps as before too.
*NOTE* when the drive is hidden, it won't be visible to anything other than an app that specifically supports it, and currently I only know of the three USB loaders above (as well as the u-stealth app itself)... hopefully more will be added. Fix94 is adding support to CFG while Cyan has kindly offered to include support in USBLoaderGX. Watch this space for more support in future.
Note that this doesn't solve the issue that the drive can't be used by both Wii U and vWii - that issue isn't likely to be easily resolved. The hidden drive will be totally ignored by Wii U (and Windows and everything else except supported apps) until it is un-hidden using the tool. Windows will tell you the drive is not formatted and ask you if you want to format it when connected after hiding it - obviously the answer is no unless you want to lose everything on it
Simply run U-Stealth and unhide it to work with it in Windows again.Please test and let me know your experiences. Don't use it on a drive with critical data until you've tested it. I've tested extensively, but you never know.
The app won't hide the operating system drive for obvious reasons. It also checks for the presence of a standard boot signature before doing it's work. If non-standard entry is found at the boot-signature address, it will be labelled as an unknown drive and will ignore it.
I'll maintain this opening post with future updates. Thanks a million to Cyan, Fix94, hippojay for your assistance.
----
*EDIT* 13 August
Some users are having trouble running the app (it crashes). I've tested on Windows 8 and 7 64 bit (not 32 bit). If anyone has trouble running it, please let me know.
-Please note that Antivirus software may prevent it from doing it's job of re-writing the boot sector... if you have trouble, please disable antivirus and test again.
-I haven't tested on a UEFI system. My system runs regular BIOS. If anyone with UEFI enabled can test, I'd appreciate!
----
*EDIT* 15 August
Added USB Loader GX to the list of supported apps
Added some error handling on getting the drive handle / reading MBR. Hopefully it won't crash on some systems.
Added more error handling - some systems had 'phantom' devices that weren't actually attached and it couldn't get the size so was causing unhandled exception. It *should* skip any phantom devices now.
It's also been tested with GPT partition and seems to be working fine with those too.
----
*EDIT* 16 August
Added code to prevent crash on systems with card readers. It now skips over the empty card reader drives which were causing it to crash previously when it tried to read the details of the media in the drive. Thanks again Air2004!
----
*EDIT* 16 September
Replaced the corrupt EXE on the web with working one after a month's absence. SORRY!
Use the URL above to get the latest copy.
----
*EDIT* Official WiiFlow release 4.2 or higher now supports the partition modified by U-Stealth, thanks Fix94!
Official USBLoaderGX Revision 1216 or higher now supports the partition modified by U-Stealth too.
---
*EDIT* 22 Feb 2014
Added support for newer drives with 4k sectors - thanks to RobJanssen.
Fixed a bug in systems with nameless interfaces (SD card drives etc) - thanks to Onion_Knight.
---
*EDIT* 23 Feb 2014
Updated code and R7 .exe to reflect RobJanssen's fix for the crash on startup on certain systems. Thank you!
---
*EDIT* 17 April 2014
Updated the build to include the new icon, thanks OriginalHamster. No other updates in this release
---
*EDIT* 13 August
Some users are having trouble running the app (it crashes). I've tested on Windows 8 and 7 64 bit (not 32 bit). If anyone has trouble running it, please let me know.
-Please note that Antivirus software may prevent it from doing it's job of re-writing the boot sector... if you have trouble, please disable antivirus and test again.
-I haven't tested on a UEFI system. My system runs regular BIOS. If anyone with UEFI enabled can test, I'd appreciate!
----
*EDIT* 15 August
Added USB Loader GX to the list of supported apps
Added some error handling on getting the drive handle / reading MBR. Hopefully it won't crash on some systems.
Added more error handling - some systems had 'phantom' devices that weren't actually attached and it couldn't get the size so was causing unhandled exception. It *should* skip any phantom devices now.
It's also been tested with GPT partition and seems to be working fine with those too.
----
*EDIT* 16 August
Added code to prevent crash on systems with card readers. It now skips over the empty card reader drives which were causing it to crash previously when it tried to read the details of the media in the drive. Thanks again Air2004!
----
*EDIT* 16 September
Replaced the corrupt EXE on the web with working one after a month's absence. SORRY!
Use the URL above to get the latest copy.
----
*EDIT* Official WiiFlow release 4.2 or higher now supports the partition modified by U-Stealth, thanks Fix94!
Official USBLoaderGX Revision 1216 or higher now supports the partition modified by U-Stealth too.
---
*EDIT* 22 Feb 2014
Added support for newer drives with 4k sectors - thanks to RobJanssen.
Fixed a bug in systems with nameless interfaces (SD card drives etc) - thanks to Onion_Knight.
---
*EDIT* 23 Feb 2014
Updated code and R7 .exe to reflect RobJanssen's fix for the crash on startup on certain systems. Thank you!
---
*EDIT* 17 April 2014
Updated the build to include the new icon, thanks OriginalHamster. No other updates in this release
---
List of natively compatible homebrew
- USBLoaderGX r1216 or higher
- USBToggle v2.0 by @Onion_Knight. (toggles HDD stealth state directly in on your console)
- Wiiflow v4.2 or higher
- Nintendont 2.238 or higher
- WiiSXR (http://http//www.mediafire.com/download/in8k6lfeurfi7bk/WiiSX(UStealth).dol) or higher
- USBHide (WiiU Homebrew), by @Xpl0itU (Toggles vWii HDD stealth state in WiiU mode)
List of specific version recompiled homebrew
- CFG USBloader: v70 r63, by ...
- Nintendont : v1.119, by @Maxternal. do it yourself.
- Nintendont : Auto-recompile with stealth : http://homebrew.svalas.net/nintendont/
- WiiMC: v1.3.4, by @jlmiller4. do it yourself
- WiiXplorer: v259, by @Cyan. do it yourself.
- d2x cIOS (Wii and vWii, r52 not r53) v10 UStealth by @airline38. Patch included. (Adds support for EmuNAND with UStealth drives)
- genplus gx, fceugx and snes9xgx, recompiled by OriginalHamster
Or this one:
LibFat v1.1.1 with Ustealth patch
https://filetrip.net/dl?AIkKo9H8Dv
note: UNTESTED, I only edited line 183 of partition.c and recompiled with devkitPPC r29-1 (Cyan)
