Are Wii saves portable? Manual says yes, system says no [update 2]

69 Comments by Kyle Orland Nov 12th 2006 4:10PM
Filed under: Nintendo Wii

[Update 2: This problem has been fixed with the Wii's first downloadable system update. Wii saves are now transferable to SD cards.]

With all our Zelda playing this weekend taking place on one Wii system, we were eager to transfer the game save to our personal SD cards so as to avoid repeating completed dungeons on our own, personal systems. Unfortunately, the system software doesn't seem to support copying save files to an SD card, despite information to the contrary in the manual.

Page 39 of the Wii channels and settings manual clearly tells you how to "copy and delete data found on the Wii System Memory and SD cards," but our tests have shown that the SD card simply doesn't register on the memory management screen. We've tried this with a number of SD cards, both empty and full of data, and while picture viewing and MP3 playback worked fine, the system refused to recognize the card as a game save storage device.

This apparent oversight could well be fixed with a pending system update, and the Wii system does indeed try to update the system software when it signs on to a WiFi connection. But with the Nintendo Wii servers down until later this week and Nintendo representatives gone for the weekend, this is hard to confirm at the moment. We'll contact Nintendo for clarification and update as warranted, but as it stands now, it seems that our Wii game saves are stuck on the system that birthed them.

[Update 1: In response to commenters' questions, GameCube saves can not be transferred to either SD card or internal memory, though they can be copied back and forth between the two GameCube memory card slots.]

Tags: blogathon06

(Page 1) Reader Comments

hearingdouble: Nov 12th 2006; 4:15PM

On a similar note, is it possible to copy data from Gamecube memory cards on to the Wii's hard disk (or even an SD card for that matter) for playing GC games?

sahil: Nov 12th 2006; 4:16PM

lol after seeing you guys the first thing i am gonna do wit my wii is draw on it with dry eraser markere lol

Hachi_Roku: Nov 12th 2006; 4:17PM

Can Wii Take 4GB SD cards? No one seems to know this answer.

ali emamdjomeh: Nov 12th 2006; 4:17PM

=(
i hope this gets fixed, i was really hoping on exchanging saves with my buds.

did you guys try making the save on the sd card? i saw when you first boot up zelda it asks to save on sd or wii hardware, that may do it, but idk, seeing as how i donot have a wii, i cant know.

nirv: Nov 12th 2006; 4:18PM

Yeah let's hear it. Gamecube saves on the Wii flash?

White Cloud: Nov 12th 2006; 4:18PM

Damn I'm jealous... if only the demand for whiteboards this holiday season wasn't so high, I'd be able to get one myself. Grr, and I don't find their competitor's products to be innovative enough for my tastes.

raid168: Nov 12th 2006; 4:19PM

lol,nintendo doomed! ps3 win!

JonnyFitness: Nov 12th 2006; 4:20PM

sharing saves is caring saves

Fernando: Nov 12th 2006; 4:24PM

Can I use a USB Storage drive, like a USB Flash Memory or a USB HardDrive? If not, could Nintendo release later the necesary firmware to do that?

vidGuy: Nov 12th 2006; 4:29PM

For anybody interested in expanding Wii memory, Best Buy has a deal going on until Saturday Nov 18 for a SanDisk 512MB SD card for $9.99 ($19.99 with a $10.00 mail in rebate). Great deal.

Not sure why this isn't working for you guys, Nintendo has said that all Wii game saves will be able to be put on SD cards. GameCube game saves will only be able to be put on GC memory cards, not the internal flash or SD cards. Support for external USB harddrives may be added later but isn't available out of the box.

PS - I played PS3 for a half hour at Best Buy today and was extremely underwhelmed. Meh.

vidGuy: Nov 12th 2006; 4:33PM

Before anybody complains about GC game saves only being able to be put on GC memory cards, the PS2 only allowed PS games to be saved to PS1 memory cards, so this is nothing new.

RiskyChris: Nov 12th 2006; 4:33PM

Haha, please write on the Wii for every article! It's classic!

Pyronite: Nov 12th 2006; 4:38PM

OMG ALL U DO IS BASH NINTENDO JOYSTIQ H8ERS!!!

DWells55: Nov 12th 2006; 4:46PM

Kyle, do me a huge favor and adjust the image of your monitor so that it's not filling the entire screen. You're filling the Wii's 16:9 image to a 16:10 monitor, so you're distorting the visuals just like if you played a widescreen game on a fullscreen monitor.

Please, think of the pixels.

Me: Nov 12th 2006; 4:48PM

On the website of Nintendo Wii (http://ms.nintendo-europe.com/wii/?site=w_channel.html&l=enGB) it says that “You can freely change the order of all the Channels except the Disc Channel, which is always shown in the upper left-hand corner.”

Can you show something from this?

Dan: Nov 12th 2006; 4:50PM

Can u start a gamecube game on the wii and save the new game file data to the wii's flash memory?

Hachi_Roku: Nov 12th 2006; 4:59PM

WTF, why answer that dumb GC save question. I think me going out and spending $70 bux on a 4GB SD card, and finding out that the Wii doesnt support it is more pressing.

Alvin: Nov 12th 2006; 5:01PM

wait, i don't get it, WTF is a SD Card?!?!?!!?

and do you need memory cards to save your game progress for the gamecube games?

vidGuy: Nov 12th 2006; 5:04PM

Hachi_Roku, google is your friend: here's a discussion from IGN's boards on SD compatibility
http://boards.ign.com/nintendo_wii_lobby/b8270/130935107/r130943690/

Alvin, I hope you are joking.

...Jan Medi...: Nov 12th 2006; 5:04PM

Are you using Nintendo brand SD cards?
Anyway, I think it's formatting. Like how some cameras have to format memory cards to use it. Have you tried a new SD card, preferebly a Nintendo one? Well, hopefully the update will fix everything.

Shadow: Nov 12th 2006; 5:05PM

Have you guys tried saving directly to the SD card? Perhaps Nintendo is going the stupid route and only allowing you to transfer save files from the system to a personal SD card if that personal SD card is an official Nintendo Wii SD card.

Darkstorm: Nov 12th 2006; 5:06PM

Is there a way to format the SD card before using it through the memory card manager? Maybe that's the reason why you cannot transfer game saves.

Nintendo_Fanboy: Nov 12th 2006; 5:07PM

OK, did anyone think to use Nintendo brand SD cards? DUH! Seriously, did you guys do it? That was the first thing I thought of.

Cherry Ghost: Nov 12th 2006; 5:07PM

@ Hachi_Roku

Come on, you can think this one out. Why wouldn't it accept 4GB SD cards? Contrary to popular belief, the Wii will not explode due to the massive amount of memory you're using to save things; it shouldn't matter one bit if it's SD.

lordroba: Nov 12th 2006; 5:09PM

I was just thinking how lucky console developers are nowadays with firmware updates. Back in the day if you forgot to add something to a console you would either need to a)issue a recall, b)release an add-on, or c) do without. Btw, I love the use of the whiteboard, it's priitii liit. :P

vidGuy: Nov 12th 2006; 5:12PM

There seems to be a lot of confusion over what the Wii accepts. Unless Nintendo changed things since last week, the SD card slot is a standard SD card slot. "NINTENDO" branded SD cards are not any different than a SanDisk or any other brand SD card. The only thing that may be different is a small bit of formatting, if the Wii requests it (I doubt it). You would be a fool to pay more for a NINTENDO SD Card.

A 4GB SD card will work, provided that it is SD, not SDHC. SDHC is a different spec and will thus not work for the Wii.

Dylan: Nov 12th 2006; 5:13PM

Have you tried reformatting a SD card with the Wii?

Wii: Nov 12th 2006; 5:13PM

:( Hope they are...

Juno: Nov 12th 2006; 5:15PM

"copy and delete data found on the Wii System Memory and SD cards," Probably meaning that as soon as you download some VC games, you'll be able to delete them for space. If you haven't accessed the SD card to put anything on it, why should you be able to access it to delete things?

vidGuy: Nov 12th 2006; 5:19PM

hahaha, Juno wins. You have to have something Wii (game save, VC game) on the SD card to copy or delete it with this utility.

-Neo: Nov 12th 2006; 5:21PM

Two Words:

System Update

El Burro: Nov 12th 2006; 5:23PM

As a random question to you, kyle, I notice that your wii is plugged into a dell monitor. Is that direct (as I wasn't aware of the ability to do this) or is it run through a tv card?

vidGuy: Nov 12th 2006; 5:28PM

El Burro, I believe they have the Dell monitors that accept composite or component cables, so the Wii is directly plugged into the monitor.

I'd like to see what Kyle thinks when he saves Zelda to the SD card using the game, then comes back into this utility. Shouldn't be a problem from there.

Shadow: Nov 12th 2006; 5:29PM

#32

This question has been raised before, and apparently that particular Dell model has plug-ins for both component and composite.

Hachi_Roku: Nov 12th 2006; 5:36PM

I was just rasing the 4GB question because not all card readers, or devices can read up to 4GB. Come cap off at 2GB. Just wanted to know if this was the case with the Wii. Still no definitive "Confirmed"

DWells55: Nov 12th 2006; 5:37PM

But it still isn't handling the signal properly, as we're seeing a 16:9 image stretched to fill a 16:10 monitor, therefore distorting the aspect ratio of the image.

Easty: Nov 12th 2006; 5:46PM

That sucks... I don't see why they couldn't save GC saves on SD or internal memory. I hope they can fix that in an update.

Hachi_Roku: Nov 12th 2006; 5:50PM

VidGuy ur link was useless. They are asking the same thing I am. Does Wii support 4GB(non-SDHC) cards. Thanks anyway.

vidGuy: Nov 12th 2006; 5:59PM

Hachi_Roku, my link was not supposed to be an answer to your question, just a discussion point, specifically because there has not been any confirmation either way. There has been a lot of talk out there, and the conclusion is that ANY SD card will work provided that it is pure SD, not SDHC. This is an assumption; Nintendo may come out and specify different, but it is the only logical answer as of now.

I have confidence you can use the internet to find all the information your heart desires. I personally don't know why you'd waste the cash on a card that's capable of holding ~128 N64 games, but if that's what you want, cool. I'm happy with my $10 512MB card, or you could wait until Black Friday and pick up a 2GB card for $19.99 at OfficeMax (I'm not sure if that one's been confirmed, though).

vidGuy: Nov 12th 2006; 6:06PM

And if you don't live in the States you could look online for some deals. Point is there are a lot of cheaper solutions that are guaranteed to work.

Zamzoph: Nov 12th 2006; 6:08PM

Looks like the Joystiq staff loves their new whiteboard.

Snorri: Nov 12th 2006; 6:08PM

Stop drawing on your bloody Wii!

Hachi_Roku: Nov 12th 2006; 6:09PM

The 4GB is really for future proofing. I never know Nintendo might want to start making downloadable demos or something. I have been searching the internet for quite some time and hav come up with nothing concrete.

Thanks for the help thought. I guess I will wait for someone else to stick a 4GB card in there.

vidGuy: Nov 12th 2006; 6:18PM

Fair enough, Hachi_Roku, sorry for the hostility above.

Cmon, Kyle, where you at? Why don't you try to put some Wii data on that SD card inside of a game so that we can be sure it works? Then you can get rid of this (hopefully) misleading blog post.

Travi$: Nov 12th 2006; 6:22PM

Does anybody know if you can put wii saves on gamecube memory cards then transfer them to other wiis via the camecubes memory card?

metayoshi: Nov 12th 2006; 6:25PM

"...but our tests have shown that the SD card simply doesn't register on the memory management screen."

Have you guys tried going to the "Wii" section of the Data Management screen? Maybe the SD card option goes in there.

If you did... then ignore this post.

NanoGator: Nov 12th 2006; 6:28PM

I have one of those Dell monitors at work. It has an S-Video input. (It may have RCA, too, but it's been a while since I've poked around behind it.) One of my coworkers had a DVD player hooked up to it. It was very nice. :)

As for the 16:10 ratio, there's a setting that'll set the image to the correct scale. At least in DVI mode it does this. I suppose it's possible the S-Vid doesn't support that, but I'd actually be surprised by that.

Nick: Nov 12th 2006; 6:30PM

I just want to let everyone know, that from what I've read/heard...you cant save VC games to the SD memory card. They can only be saved in the 512 internal memory. Of course this is not a big deal when most games aren't above like 5 megs, although I don't know how much 64 games are, couldn't be a ton though.

If I'm wrong, that would be great but I do remember reading that.