I have a red 4.3 Wii and Lego Indiana Jones and so am capable of hacking it, but as I prefer to try and make 'virgin' backups of stuff whenever possible, I hope to be able to make a full backup of my console's NAND before installing anything extra on it such as channels and what not. I thought I'd be getting somewhere with a combination of Indiana Pwns, LoadMii and WiiND, but... a) LoadMii won't detect my 2Gb SD card even though I.P. had no problem loading boot.elf off of it, so I tried a USB stick instead. b) LoadMii lists DOLs on said stick without a problem, but when I choose to run either WiiND or the KeyGrabber program, it sticks on the same screen and doesn't get anywhere, thus forcing me to initiate a power down. Is there anything else I can try? :\
Those methods you speak of are outdated, or at least obsoleted. You should be using the HackMii method for Homebrew install (I believe it works with 4.3 now, someone correct me if I'm wrong). So far as I know, your best bet for dumping NAND memory is by installing BootMii. You can install this before you install the Homebrew channel or anything else. Make sure you have a 2gb SD card that's mostly empty. On the BootMii screen, there is an option for dumping NAND memory, which can later be restored using BootMii if your Wii bricks for some reason.
There's a tool especially for that called SFSD, which stands for Simple File System Dumper. It dumps all the channels you have installed to your Wii to your SD card. Afterword, you can use that same dump with a NAND emulator like Triiforce, that way you don't have to have all your space taken up on the actual NAND. I definitely recommend using Triiforce. Where as the Wii NAND is limited to 512 MB, Triiforce supports up to 32 Gigabyte SD or USB Flash Drives.
Have you tried RealWnD? Bushing used it to dump the original NAND flash from an "Insert System Disc" Wii, and it worked pretty well. http://wiibrew.org/wiki/RealWnD
You know, I think the problem I've been having is that LoadMii is just a total piece of crap. I've been using "Rebirth 0.4" of the program from this page and I see the same symptoms regardless of what DOLs I have - a) it keeps insisting the internal SD slot is empty when it clearly isn't, and b) when you have, say, two DOLs listed on the USB stick, pressing A on the first one does bugger all while pressing A on the second one makes the list disappear, but the header at the top remains, and no actual loading takes place. I was only trying to use it at all because from what I can gather from various sources, the exploits are only capable of booting ELF files - and not DOL ones - directly, and there doesn't appear to be any magic DOL-to-ELF converter from what I can gather. I'd be happy enough to run either SFSD (I've got 0.42 ready to run if that's the correct version) or RealWnD directly if it's possible. It *is* possible, right?
I've never been able to find a DOL to ELF and vice-versa converter, myself, but from what I understand, DOLs are used primarily for Wiis, where ELFs primarily for Gamecube, though depending on the tool used, can be used for either Wii or GC. Most tools tend to prefer DOLs though. I wish I could remember the name of this tool I had that ran through a series of prompts and downloaded files based on your Wii's configuration. It would ask if your Wii was a virgin, and if so, which games you had which you could use to hack them (in your case, you'd go with 4.3, Virgin, Indiana Pwns). If I can find it, I'll PM you on it.
There's a utility called dol2elf available at <a href="http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Segher's_Wii.git" target="_blank">http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Segher's_Wii.git</a> , but it appears to be source code only. If you can compile it, then you can convert RealWnD to ELF format, and run it directly using Indiana Pwns instead of using LoadMii.
Source-only tools. Great. =P You don't happen to know where I can track down a dummy's guide to compiling this thing then?
What about BootMii? that's how I did that back then... and IIRC you don't have to install HBC for Bootmii...
You understand wrong, it's the other way around. (Or not at all) DOL was primarily used on Gamecube, (hence why it's short for Dolphin) and of the homebrew loaders for GC, I don't even think all of them supported ELF files. I'm pretty sure SD-load didn't work with ELF's and that was the most popular loader late in the system's life. Native binaries produced by the Dolphin SDK were .dol files, and I think the format was adopted for homebrew for convenience. Early testing of the Gamecube loaders was done against SDK demos because those were the only programs available to run. ELF is just there because it's a common standard.
Well I managed to find a tool called "doltool" which appears to do the job, but even though Indiana Pwns claims the new ELF to be a valid one, it still fails to boot for some reason. Maybe the fact that "doltool" originates from the GC era doesn't help? :\ And are you sure it's possible to run BootMii as a seperate boot.elf? I thought it was only included as part of the HackMii installer. I was looking to avoid 'installing' anything as that surely defeats the point of a "virgin backup".
Bootmii has to be installed as an IOS before you can run it. Hackmii actually does this during the disclaimer, before the 'press 1' prompt appears and without your instruction. There is no easy way to get a clean NAND rip, so you should run hackmii but then exit once you reach the menu.
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Yet_Another_Wii_NAND_Dumper It just occured to me that there are other NAND dumping tools besides Bootmii. Load that through an exploit. However be aware that if you've even loaded the Hackmii installer once, you won't get the 'clean' rip you're after, because Bootmii will already be installed as an IOS.
http://gbatemp.net/t280786-is-it-possible-...gin-nand-backup Welp, if the more Wii-centric experts are correct then it's either install BootMii or go without an untouched backup. >.< GerbilSoft pointed out dol2elf but I don't know how to compile it, and besides that I'm not sure if anyone's ever tested an ELF created with one through an exploit and confirmed whether they work better than doltool ELFs. Anyone able to build a quick Win32 binary so I may test myself?
Actually, as it turns out, using a different version of LoadMii - v0.3 to be precise - works a LOT better. DOLs actually load! Now the only problem is that all the NAND dumpers I've tried seem to have varying problems, and none of them can successfully dump the NAND. WiiND would flash "initializing SD card/USB card" briefly on the screen but not dump, RealWnD said "ERROR: Cannot open NAND. Maybe you have new IOS.", SFSD wanted me to select a cIOS but I guess I don't have anything for it to select, YaWnD gave me "ERROR reading flash at 0 (error:-4)", and the Key Grabber DOL (which came with WiiND) says "loading keyhack IOS blah blah blah sending things to Earth...." for some seconds, then quits out and initiates the exploit/LoadMii again. So I guess I'm left with two options...... install BootMii, or try this "ohneswanzenegger" tool some of the folks on GBATemp mentioned.
