OPL Partition Problem with FAT32 and WBFS?

[SenorFurious]

I have a 1TB Seagate brand external drive, on which I've made both a FAT32 partition for PS2 games (drive letter P:) and a WBFS partition for Wii games (drive letter W:). When I first made the P: partition, the PS2 games I played on it loaded in OpenPS2Loader just fine, even though the list of games would flicker every 10 or 20 seconds and reset the cursor's position. Later on I added the W: partition and it worked fine for Wii games. Now when I try it on my PS2 again, I see no games in OpenPS2Loader's list. I'm almost positive it's something to do with the partitions, because when I looked at the directories using FileBrowser, the folder "mass/" (for mass storage I assume) was empty, but after I entered that folder and went back to the previous directory, another one named "mass1/" appeared and had the PS2 stuff inside.

Is there a way I could fix this without having to delete the WBFS partition? I kind of wanted to use this drive for both PS2 and Wii games, and it was a pain getting the games on there in the first place, especially the Wii ones.

[yoshi314]

i think that requires a fix in OPL.

it's also a bit annoying in uLE, when you need to open mass0: to even see mass1: in the menu, on a multipartition usb stick.

maybe marking the WBFS as hidden partition would change something?

[SP193]

What if you created the partition for your PS2 stuff first, before you create the 2nd partition for your Wii stuff? It should be an adequate workaround until the fix yoshi314 mentioned is implemented.

Marking the Wii partition as "hidden" might not help, depending on the implementation of the filesystem driver part of the USBHDFSD driver.

[LopoTRI]

What if you created the partition for your PS2 stuff first, before you create the 2nd partition for your Wii stuff?

That was my idea, cause i had made for Wii FAT32 for Apps first, and then WBFS for games.....
But he has already done it so......

When I first made the P: partition, the PS2 games I played on it loaded in OpenPS2Loader just fine, even though the list of games would flicker every 10 or 20 seconds and reset the cursor's position. Later on I added the W: partition and it worked fine for Wii games.

@SenorFurious

I think you can completely format your HDD in FAT32 and use it for PS2 & Wii, cause WiiFlow supports FAT32,NTFS with *.iso.
So you must rerip your games to .iso....

[SenorFurious]

So I should get rid of the WBFS partition, expand the FAT32 one and use a Wii loader that doesn't require WBFS? That makes sense, actually. I'm just concerned about how to fit ISOs on there that are bigger than 4GB, since I don't know how to split them to fit on a FAT32 drive.

[hominem.te.esse]

Wait ...

Is it some new problem concerning multiple partitions ? I mean OPL is supposed to work with multiple partition (as long as there are primary partitions, it will scan the 4 first partitions). So I don't get why you give these advice, it should already work ...

(Or this is another problem I'm not aware of)

[lee4]

So I should get rid of the WBFS partition, expand the FAT32 one and use a Wii loader that doesn't require WBFS? That makes sense, actually. I'm just concerned about how to fit ISOs on there that are bigger than 4GB, since I don't know how to split them to fit on a FAT32 drive.

all latest version of wii loaders and managers now support FAT32 drives

PS2 and Wii games can be on the same FAT32 partition without any conflict.

Wii games in WBFS folder in WBFS format files.
PS2 games CD and DVD folder as ISO and ul format for Games are greater than 4GB

[yoshi314]

Wait ...

Is it some new problem concerning multiple partitions ? I mean OPL is supposed to work with multiple partition (as long as there are primary partitions, it will scan the 4 first partitions). So I don't get why you give these advice, it should already work ...

(Or this is another problem I'm not aware of)

i never used OPL in that kind of setup, so i cannot tell. does it merge the game list from all partitions btw?

i only know that uLE will not show you all mass*: devices when plugging in a multipartition/multidisk usb device. after browsing mass0: the rest will appear.

[SP193]

Guys, maybe something large should be done to rectify this problem totally in all active PS2 homebrew software.

The reason why uLaunchELF requires the user to access the USB Mass Storage Device first before the other "mass: devices" are added is because uLaunchELF doesn't dynamically update it's UI. I believe that all device drivers should implement a common interface (E.g. use SIF Command #12 for connects/media inserted and SIF Command #13 for disconnects/media removed) that can notify uLaunchELF of device status updates.

As for OPL, as long as it attempts to scan all partitions for one with valid games on them, it should work. (If it doesn't, it's buggy)

BTW: I've found some bugs in USBHDFSD. I don't know how critical Sony would rate it, but it might cause deadlocks: The last developers who worked on USBHDFSD did not suspend thread-switching/interrupts before calls to AllocSysMemory() and FreeSysMemory() are made. I know from the Sony technical documentation, it seems like AllocSysMemory() and FreeSysMemory() are critical sections and were designed to be called from any location (Hence, semaphores are not supported).

[hominem.te.esse]

Unless proven the opposite, OPL can access any of the 4 first primary partitions (not extended) of your USB device.

It was tested before, and should still work.