
Last week we shared a great hack to let you back up and play your Wii games from an external hard drive. That hack has been made easier by eliminating the need for a Wii downgrade.

[Update: Mike's tutorial is no defunct. Check our guide, How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive, instead.]


Why would you want to play your games off a hard disk? Wii games cost anywhere from $20-50, while an external hard drive that can hold all your Wii games—assuming you don't already have one on hand—costs $100 or less. Backing up your games to an external hard drive attached to your Wii costs less than the replacing two premium games, and has the added benefit of loading your games radically faster.

Last week we shared a Wii backup tutorial, put together by Lifehacker reader Mike. With a newer Wii or an upgraded your dashboard, the process involved quite a bit of tinkering and downgrading your dashboard. Mike sent us an updated guide that's easy to follow and has very detailed step-by-step instructions for enabling the hack on Wii consoles sporting the new 4.0 dashboard. All you need for the hack is a Wii you don't mind mucking around in, a blank SD card, an external USB 2.0 hard drive that will be totally dedicated for the project, and a handful of software tools freely available online. Check out Mike's excellent and updated tutorial at the link below for more details. Thanks Mike!


How to Store/Load Wii Games via USB Hard Drive on System Menu 4.0