Partitioning

How you partition your hard drive is very important, for compatibility with other homebrew, using the drive for other uses, whether you need to use an SD card or not, and also whether you can use all of the features of certain homebrew like wiiflow, sneek/uneek, mighty channels, triiforce, etc.

Contents 1 File Systems Compared 2 Help Choosing 2.1 Why not WBFS? 2.2 Converting WBFS to FAT32 2.3 Why dedicate a partition to the nand backup? 3 Partitioning Software 3.1 Recommended 3.2 From Wikipedia

File Systems Compared

Partition Type	Game Limit	Nand Emulation	File Size Limit	Partition Size Limit	Reliability	Homebrew Compatibility	Native OS Support
FAT32			4GB	2TB	High	All
NTFS			16TB	256TB	High	Most
EXT2/3/4			16TB	1EB	High	Rare
WBFS	500		Unknown	512GB	Varies	Backup Loaders

Help Choosing

It is commonly recommended that the first partition on your HDD is a small Fat32 partition of about 1-2GB, to hold your homebrew files because all homebrew including the Homebrew Channel support Fat32. What this means is that you do not need to have an SD card at all!!

Secondly a question is asked as to whether the user intends to use Nand Emualtion in any way. If so, they are advised to add a second partition of a smaller scale to be dedicated to the nand backup, normally ranging from 15-25GB.

And lastly, the rest of the drive is recommended to be a NTFS partition to hold you disc backups and other miscellaneous items. There is a large file size and partition size limit which means it will work for drives greater than 2TB if the homebrew supports it, and also that you can simply copy .iso files directly to it in any operating system, without the help of a backup manager. Optionally the user can still use the backup manager to convert the .iso files into .wbfs files to save space but technically speaking it is not necessary. Also, since the file size limit is large, you can also put all your movies and other files on this partition too.

Why not WBFS?

Generally WBFS partitions are frowned upon in the backup loading community due to several known facts. The 512GB partition size limit and 500 game limit are two of the minor ones. More critical problems with this file system are that they are not directly accessible in any operating system because they technically are not a real file system, and that there is no error control. What this means is that simply adding a game or removing a game, or if the partition becomes fragmented in any way, entire partition loss is entirely possible. This means you have to worry about backing up all of your games again. I will note that there are many users who have never had an issue with theiir WBFS setups, but that does NOT mean they are reliable.

Converting WBFS to FAT32

wbfs2fat by PsyBlade converts WBFS partitions to FAT32 partitions directly, at a rate of about 500GB in 40 seconds. This means you do not need extra space to copy your backups to, then formatting your partition to WBFS and converting them to .wbfs and copying back. It will simply convert the file system IN PLACE, on the fly.

Why dedicate a partition to the nand backup?

Currently it is not possible to save files onto the same partition which is enabled for nand emulation, making it difficult for homebrew applications to get the game list and still save their configurations at the same time.

Partitioning Software

Recommended

Easeus Partition Master (Windows)
GParted (Linux)

From Wikipedia

This is a list of utilities for performing disk partitioning.

Name	Developer	Licensing	Maintained?
Acronis Disk Director	Acronis	Proprietary software	Yes
Active@ Partition Manager	LSoft Technologies	Proprietary software	Yes
AOMEI Partition Assistan	AOMEI Technology	Proprietary software	Yes
BootIt Bare Metal	TeraByte	Proprietary software	Yes
Bootpart	Microsoft	Proprietary software	Yes
cfdisk	unknown	Free software	Yes
Cute Partition Manager	OSL Corp.	Proprietary software	Yes
Data Lifeguard Tools	Western Digital	Proprietary software	No
Disk Druid	Fedora	Free software	Yes
Disk Manager Free	Wondershare Software	Proprietary software	Yes
Disk Utility	Apple	Proprietary software	Yes
Disk Utility (Palimpsest)	Red Hat	Free software	Yes
DiskDrake	Mandriva	Free software	Yes
diskpart	Microsoft	Proprietary software	Yes
EASEUS Partition Master	CHENGDU Yiwo Tech Development	Proprietary software	Yes
fdisk (FreeDOS)	Brian Reifsnyder	Free software	Yes
fdisk (Microsoft)	Microsoft	Proprietary software	Yes
fdisk (OS/2)	IBM	Proprietary software	Yes
fdisk (Unix-like)	unknown	Free software	Yes
FIPS	Arno Schäfer	Free software	No [1]
GNU Parted	unknown	Free software	Yes
GParted	The GParted Project	Free software	Yes
KDE Partition Manager	Volker Lanz	Free software	Yes
Large Drive Tools (LDT)	SA Development	Proprietary software	Yes
Logical Disk Manager	Microsoft	Proprietary software	Yes
MaxBlast	Maxtor	Proprietary software	No
MiniTool Partition Wizard	MiniTool® Solution Ltd.	Proprietary software	Yes
ntfsresize	Szabolcs Szakacsits	Free software	No [2]
O&O PartitionManager Pro	O&O Software	Proprietary software	Yes
Paragon Partition Manager	Paragon Software Group	Proprietary software	Yes
Partition Genius	Spotmau	Proprietary software	Yes
Partition-It!	Quarterdeck	Proprietary software	No
Partition Logic	J. Andrew “Andy” McLaughlin	Free software	Yes
the Partition Resizer	John “Zeleps” Lagonikas	Proprietary software	No
Partition Wizard	MiniTool Solution	Proprietary software	Yes
PartitionMagic	Symantec	Proprietary software	No
PartitionStar	Christian Wallbaum	Proprietary software	Yes
QtParted	Vanni Brutto	Free software	No [3]
Ranish Partition Manager	Mikhail Ranish	Proprietary software	No
Rohos Mini Drive	Tesline-Service	Proprietary software	Yes
SeaTools	Seagate	Proprietary software	Yes
Solaris format utility	Sun Microsystems	Proprietary software	No
Super Fdisk	CHENGDU Yiwo Tech Development	Proprietary software	Yes
SwissKnife Premium	CompuApps	Proprietary software	Yes
Name	Developer	Licensing	Maintained?

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