Going from SD to Wii via this is indeed a lot faster, I moved Strong Bad Episode I from the internal memory to the SD card to make room for the placeholder and it took several minutes but when I played the game from the SD card it loaded in less than 30 seconds.

I've been waiting for this for a long time and it's great to see that Nintendo pulled it off without any major problems. Now I have to go back and download all the stuff I didn't put on my SD card.

Seriously, having all of my DL'ed content available from the Wii Menu is like CHRISTMAS.  I've completely forgotten about some of the VC games I bought in 06-07

Yeah, this update is MONEY IN THE BANK

This update is great.

N/A

EPIC FREAKEN WIN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I have no problem putting them all on SD card, and not having to worry about system memory ever getting full.

Put the Internet Channel and the Nintendo Channel back on my Wii since I don't need all that space for precious games. Now I'll never have to have awkward ridge cleaning when guests are over and we try to play Rock Band or Guitar Hero and I forgot to clear enough ghost space to make the games SD card mode work.

So I have to wonder... if this was what they were making.. why was it announced way back when as...

"The Wii Shop channel will be able to save games directly to the SD Card"

I don't understand the need to be cryptic there and not give the whole story.

I haven't gotten to download it yet... Getting an error code saying their servers are too busy.

I'm going to download this update tonight after work, but I'm concerned about something: If I can't play saved games directly from the SD Card (still), then how do I PLAY VC/WW games that I buy and download to the SD Card? Do I still have to move them over to the Wii's sytem memory in order to play them?

I guess I don't understand how this new update makes the process any smoother, because it looks like I will still have to shuffle things around.

Now you can dump everything onto your SD Card.  When you go to run it, the Wii makes a temporary copy in the Wii system memory and runs it from from there.  If you run something else, it deletes the original and refreshes it with the new data.

If you run World of Goo, it creates a 320-block temporary file on your Wii.
If you then run Onslaught, it automagically deletes the 320-block temporary file, and creates a new 308-block one.

If there isn't enough room on your Wii to create the temporary file, the Auto-Manage menu appears and helps you with that.

Basically move everything off to your SD Card and you're done.  This assures that you'll have enough room for any temporary file the SD Menu will attempt to create.

Lindy, that was a great walkthrough that was very thorough and easy to understand.
I had already figured out how the SD copy over kinda worked, but the way you explained it just made it make more sense.

I think it keeps loading the save data from the Wii as usual, it just stores the program on the SD card.  Since you can move your large program files to the SD card, you'll have plenty of room to keep your save data on the Wii.

Also, a note for any Homebrew Channel users, make sure you update it before doing a system update.  I was too excited about loading stuff from the SD card that I didn't bother trying to update HBC beforehand, and for the time being, I can't update it.  I'll be stuck at 0.9 until they figure out another way to upgrade it.

So, wait, this is a firmware update and not a separate channel? That leaves me with two questions:

1. Does it use any number of blocks?
2. Can it be removed like any other channel?

I don't have an SD card (or download games), so I'd hate to be forced to download this and have it just take up space.

Oh, I see. So you can PLAY the game from your SD card, but it will still save itself to the Wii's internal memory. That makes sense.

I think half the space is reserved for updates and core programs. Everyone throws around the 512 when in reality you only have 256 to use for VC/WW/Channels/Save data. So it shouldn't impact your usable space.

Also, cards beyond 32gb are called SDXC and so I'm willing to bet they won't work on Wii.
SDXC 64gb cards are supposed to be coming before the end of the year. The cards can technically go as high as 2 Terabytes.

One subtle but GREAT thing is that now, on the Wii system memory manager thing, in addition to the "Copy" and "Erase" buttons, there's a "Move" button, which makes the unwieldy two-step process into a much quicker one-step process. That'll make moving a bunch of stuff from the system memory to the SD card a smoother process overall.

I wonder if this means Nintendo will loosen up the WiiWare size restrictions due to this. Basically, this turns the SD card slot into a paging file for the Wii.

If anyone is curious I put in a empty 8GB SD card in the Wii and it equals to 61,104 blocks.

I already had a 4 gig card running on my Wii so I don't need to buy a new one for a long while. :P

My designated SD card for Wii is 2GB I'm already up to page 8 on the SD card menu and still have over 6000 blocks.

This is a firmware update.  It doesn't use up any blocks; this is just like when they added the clock to the Wii Menu.

In effect, the Wii uses its system memory like RAM in this case.  It copies the game to its RAM (system memory), and runs the game from there.  If you switch to a different game, it wipes the RAM and copies the new game file over.

Ya know what surprises me the most about this update? The fact that there is an actual progress bar when loading a game off SD. Holy crap! I can actually tell that something is happening!

I am flattened by the news that this goes up to 32 GB. I never expected that! I was actually doubting that Nintendo would add SDHC support!

... of course, this also implies that the Wii2 will not have a robust out-of-the-box storage capacity.

I'm putting my hopes on a Solid State Drive for the Wii2.

Wii's SD reader always could support the SDHC standard, Nintendo just had to enable it in a firmware. The only reason why Nintendo set the 32GB limit on SD cards is because the SDHC standard maxes out at 32GB, a 64GB SD card is now in the SDXC standard territory.

Even with over 80 games my 2 GB SD card has more space left than a new Wii, and that's with a bunch of homebrew too.

By the time Wii2 comes out 32gb SDHC cards will cost like $5 a piece. I'm sure we won't be too worried about it.

I love this new feature, but I have a minor gripe:  I wish you should put "links" to individual games that are stored on your SD card on your main menu.  I generally have one or two VC games that I'm playing at any one time and I'd like to have those available right on the start-up screen.

Good idea. It sounds like it wouldn't be too hard to put in.

Is anyone really going to fill in 32 gigs of Virtual Console and Wiiware . I think thats a fair limit. If you want more just buy another memory card.

If you are a heavy Guitar Hero and Rock Band player then you will use a lot more.

Another minor gripe:  When you go to the Shop Channel and go to the section that lists games you've already downloaded it won't show titles that are on the SD card (but not on the Wii system's internal memory) as "downloaded"--instead it shows them as downloadable.  It makes it a little annoying when you're trying to figure out what games you've paid for but don't have saved.

I noticed that too. My guess is that stuff will be fixed soon. Overall though it looks like it was well tested before it was released

(cough) Well I guess my 1st hypothesis was correct and that it turned out to be basically an SD card channel, though I was wrong about the ability for a firm ware update for the Wiider, which I am glad to be wrong here as I was just drooling over the 32GB SD cards at future shop and then cursing how very few mobile systems actually utilize SD cards (mini SD can suck it as far as I am concerned).
The save data limit I dont think is a big problem as most WIIware games dont take up a heck of alot of memory, not to mention that programmers might be able to get around some of these obstacles with the help of shadow ram so that the save data on the WII is only an access point for the larger custom data sets (I am thinking for games like civilizations or say an expansion pack for FF:my life as a king to have an actual explorable , modifiable world outside your own kingdom).

I don't understand how SD Menu works for the Wii AT ALL. I tried to MOVE channels to the SD CARD and I delete the game from the Wii main menu channel and it FAILS to LAUNCH from the SD CARD. I really WISH someone could HELP!! I APPRECIATE ANY INFO. THANKS.
-Steve

The most common reason I've seen for this is that people moved the games onto SD from one Wii (or Wii U) console and then tried to access/play the games on a different Wii console.  When you download a game, it actually gets locked to that specific hardware so the SD card won't work on other consoles - although you will be able to see the games stored on the card.


It's also possible that your SD card isn't supported. Things should work with any normal SD card, or an SDHC card that is 32 GB or smaller in size.


I've also seen games fail to launch just because there is corruption on the SD card.  Unfortunately the only way to get your games back in this case is to re-download from the Wii Shop Channel, format the SD card, and try again.  (But maybe try using the Copy option and launching from SD that way instead of using Move. That way if it doesn't work, you won't have to re-download the game.)


If none of those comments help, maybe post more specific details about what happens when you try to launch the game. Is there an error message shown?