Before Nintendo released version 4.0 of the Wii firmware which included the much anticipated SD Card Menu, Wii owners who were feeling that their fridges were getting a little full
found a way to work around the Wii's 2GB SD card limitations. The process involved an SD card that was 4GB in size but was nonetheless not a high capacity card (SDHC).
I myself bought the card and used said method to mainly hold my Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour DLC. So imagine my surprise last night when I boot up Rock Band 2 for the first time since the update to be met with an error message telling me that "The device inserted in the SD Card Slot cannot be used". Never having gotten this message before it was more than a little odd. After trying to format the card a few times and going through the steps outlined in the CAG forum post nothing was working.
Then I took a closer look at the "wii" folder on my card and found two files that hadn't been there before. Having kept my old 1GB card with all the old data on it I decided to compare and found that my 4GB card had two new files called "loc.bak" and "loc.dat" in the "wii" folder. Having run out of other options I decided to try moving those files off the card and starting up Rock Band 2 again. This time things worked perfectly. Putting my SD card back into my PC showed that the two "loc" files hadn't returned.
Assuming these files to have something to do with the SD Card Menu I decided to put the card back into my Wii and load up the menu. Once it had read from my card I noticed that my VC and WiiWare games were no longer in the same order I'd left them so those two files must have had something to do with the new update. Putting the card once again into my PC showed that the "loc" files were back and Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero were once again unable to read from my SD card.
While I don't know exactly what these two files do, they seem to be preventing my games from reading from my card. Could this really be the only thing preventing current Wii games from reading from and writing to SDHC cards? It would be great to hear what Nintendo has to say about all this.
If you're someone that's either used this method before the system update or are currently using an SDHC card try checking if you've got these two files on your card and see if moving them to your PC ends up changing anything when you're trying to load downloads in games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
Author's note: I've been doing a few tests with different SD cards and games, and my 4GB card has remained unreadable in games that read from the SD card slot for downloadable content. I get the impression I could be an isolated case and I also don't have an SDHC card of my own to test so any input someone may have would be great. This is why even though I've witnessed it myself I'm putting this as a rumor.
Written by: Marko K.
