Hopefully someone out there can find this information useful and maybe I'll get a sticky, who knows.

Downloading the game is alot easier than renting and backing up or backing up your own copies, no specific drive required, keep that in mind.

This article is aimed at someone that has not followed the modding scene for the Nintendo Wii and wants to be caught up in one quick de-briefing. The contents of this file could become outdated very quickly because the modding scene is exploding right now. I will do my best to keep it updated so if you see the date is really old shoot me an email and I will update it or at least say that nothing really revolutionary has happened in the modding scene. Click below to access the tutorial on backing up your Wii ad Gamecube discs. Remember that to play the backups you will need a modchip! The modchip is rapidly changing and I will be outlining this in my next tut.

First step in copying your games for backup purposes is to get the right software and hardware. You will need one of the following DVD drives to copy games(no others will work) <--- Disregard this if you plan to download them manually. I received a pm that some people were having trouble locating the drives. Newegg no longer sell these drives for some reason.

* LG-8164b
* LG-8163b
* LG-8162b
* LG-8161b

Personally I have the 8164b and have had zero problems. I'm sure the others are fine also. YOU CAN burn the image back using ANY kind of DVD burner, as long as the write speed is slow, like 4x it will boot faster. And always burn as a DVD-ROM.

Once you install this drive into your computer you will need to download a few applications.

RapidShare: 1-Click Webhosting

Download details: .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (x86)

* Software to unzip the Raw Dump files. http://rarlabs.com/rar/wrar37b8.exe


Once you download the files above then right-click on the rawdump2.0.rar and select "Extract to rawdump2.0\"
this will make a folder on your desktop called rawdump2.0.






Now insert your Wii or Gamecube game into the LG drive that you have ordered and installed. Then open the rawdump2.0 folder and double click on the rawdump2.0.exe file.






After doing this you will be presented with the following interface. If your wondering what all the buttons are next to me close and minimize buttons it is a program called UltraMon for multiple monitor setups. Just ignore this. I am also running the Zune Windows XP Theme.






The next step is to just click "Start Dump." On my computer this process took just about 2.5 hours. When it is complete you will be greeted with a nice finished message. The file it creates will be in the same directory as the rawdump.exe file. It should be called "Game Name.iso." This ISO is an image of the actual game and is ready to be burned. You can burn this image with many different applications i.e. Nero, DVDDecrypter etc..

This step is very important. You need to check your file and see how many KB large it is. To do this Right-Click on your iso(this is in your rawdump directory) and select properties. It should say,

Nintendo Wii ISO size: 4.37 GB (4,699,979,776 bytes). This is decrypted and can be burned as an iso image. Burn as a DVD-ROM.

Nintendo Gamecube ISO size: 1.35 GB (1,459,978,240 bytes)

All Nintendo Wii and Gamecube images will be this exact byte size. If your Wii image is off by any then you have a bad dump and need to try again.

So next step is to open Nero.

The first step once nero opens it to just cancel out of the create new dvd/cd/etc dialog. Once you have exited from this dialog you go to Recorder->Burn Image.







After making it this far you are almost done. When you click burn image you will be asked to locate the image. The image will be located in your Rawdump2.0 folder. For me, this is on the desktop.






Select the game that you have dumped with rawdump and click open. You will then be presented with the below dialog. Make sure to select a relatively slow burn speed at first to attempt to prevent DRE's(Disc Read Errors). These seem to be common among people that do not use high quality dvd's. For a thread dealing with media check here.






I hope this mini-guide helps you. If you have any questions or I said something wrong please post a comment below. Also stay tuned because this post may change from time to time as times change and does hardware.

Any Idea where to buy those drives?

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Can be found at numerous places, including Newegg.com or eBay, they are relatively cheap, if you were to download games, then these types of drives would not be required.

Ur stuff looks cool, I don't have the wii though:(

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I will be selling pre-modified Wii consoles soon, I am out of stock as of right at this moment, they will be available for $500/ea, you will be able to play games from other regions such as JAP and PAL (europe), as well as backups, or burned games that you download. If anyone is interested please PM me on here, or you may contact me on AOL/AIM.

Best place to check would be newegg.com, pricewatch.com, or ebay.

nice tut man

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Thanks a bunch man