I recently bought a WII from a garage sale for cheap and wanted to hack it and backup the games I bought to speed up the load time. Below are the steps I followed and useful links i used to set everything up!! Wii should be in 4.3U system version
Hack the wii
https://please.hackmii.com/
Get the hack materials, extract them and load them into an fat32 formatted sd card
https://wii.guide/letterbomb.html
For backing up games!
Step 1: Install d2x – this is newer firmware patched to let you play games off a hdd/ssd it also allows for usb 2.0 hardware support
https://wii.guide/cios
http://gwht.wikidot.com/d2x
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF14ygLF4zM
Step 2: Install WiiFlow for backing up and loading games
Note: I started to use USB Loader GX but it would freeze every time I tried installing games
https://sites.google.com/site/completesg/backup-launchers/usb/wiiflow
Step 3: Install WAD Manager to setup install and manage WAD files that setup a channel on the homescreen for quick loading of wiiflow and other apps
https://github.com/RiiConnect24/Wii-Mod-Lite
Step 2b: Install Wiiflow forwarder – install with wii mod lite!
https://sites.google.com/site/wiiflowiki4/forwarder-channels
Step3: Setup External SSD
Format external ssd to NTFS format using windows utility in win 10, use 32768 (32kb) allocation unit 32kb you can also use WAD Manager to format to FAT32
Alternatively use the following utility: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm
Optional : USB loader gx – for loading games – although ripping games didn’t work maybe you will get lucky, regardless it has a nice interface for loadinggames
https://sourceforge.net/projects/usbloadergx/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjI2cOGNb8A
Creating ISO – try using wii flow and if that doesn’t work try usb loader gx
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-iso-to-backup-a-wii-game-without-a-s/
Optionals – Homebrew browser:
https://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_Browser
* DVDX
* Emulators for retro games
* https://wiibrew.org/wiki/SaveGame_Manager_GX
Nintendont – to load gamecube games?
Troubleshooting
usb loader gx kept freezing when installing games so I used wiiflow instead to rip games
Wiiflow would not backup my gamecube games if the external drive was not formatted to NTFS, as FAT32 it wouldn’t work.