Wii Warm Up: Putting it on a card

by Alisha Karabinus { Mar 20th 2008 at 9:00AM }

We may complain a lot about the Wii's meager storage capacity, but are we using SD cards? A lot of Wii owners we know -- and not the casual owners, either -- have yet to put anything onto a card. Of course, with Wii Ware coming, that may yet change, but how does the situation stand for now? Are you storing anything? Have you even put a card into your Wii? Or are you just deleting things when -- or if -- you find that you need space?

Tags: sd, storage

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

samfish @ Mar 20th 2008 9:05AM

I store my Brawl levels and and replays and stuff on my SD card, but that's it.

Brad @ Mar 20th 2008 9:07AM

My main uses for a card have been 100 MP3s (the limit, I think) for playing Excite Truck, my photo library, and more recently... homebrew.

Nigeria: Cody ChesnuTT Defense Force @ Mar 20th 2008 9:15AM

I still have over 1000 blocks on my Wii so I don't need a SD card, for now.

Seeing as I would have no other use for the card, I don't really see the point of buying one specifically for the Wii. But then again, I've yet to see the sizes of these WiiWare games - a service which still lacks a Pal release date.

jsa3mm @ Mar 20th 2008 9:21AM

I've had an SD card in my Wii since I've had it. I use it to transport saves from my Wii to my friends. I also save all of my Brawl info on my SD card.

koehler83 @ Mar 20th 2008 9:23AM

I back up pretty much everything I can onto my SD Card. VC titles and game saves. Same goes for my PS3 stuff.

Quite a nice thing to have.. Much better than the memory cards of old.

Gerias @ Mar 20th 2008 9:25AM

We have an SD card but only now are we really having to use it. We're CHOCK FULL of VC games. We literally filled all the blocks about two days before Brawl came out. When I discovered that Brawl needed 128 blocks! It was fun moving and deleting everything around for half an hour before we could even play, let me tell you.

I'm thinking I'll start keeping game saves on the SD card (since there's no slow down, of course ^_^) and have Wii Ware and VC games on the main drive. Of course...there's a good chance Ware will be pretty big files and I'll be back at square one...

adolson @ Mar 20th 2008 9:27AM

MP3s for Excite Truck... That's the only good use so far, outside of the photo channel for your digital camera's SD card.. Besides this, it's pointless. I don't even know why they bothered putting a slot on there, it's convoluted/difficult to backup or restore saved games, and useless for VC games.

Cyantre @ Mar 20th 2008 9:25AM

I back up all of my Virtual Console games on my SD card, I actually have the exact SD card as pictured in this post. Currently I have 111 games and 5 channels backed up on the SD card.

kevin @ Mar 20th 2008 9:42AM

I picked up a 2 GiB card the day I got my Wii (not the overpriced Wii branded stuff - just a good PNY card) and back up all my VC games to it. I'm nowhere close to filling up my Wii's internal memory yet, but I like having everything backed up. I need to do the same with my gamesaves - thanks for reminding me everyone :).

Matthew McNutt @ Mar 20th 2008 9:41AM

I have an SD card, but at the moment it's just for photos. Eventually I'll probably need it ... but I've actually been pretty picky about the games I download so I won't run out of room. What I wish is that we could play games directly from the SD card instead of having to switch them back and forth. Then I would absolutely love it.

raindog @ Mar 20th 2008 9:40AM

I don't have excite Truck and haven't filled the whole internal memory (though a month or two of WiiWare availability will probably do it.)

But I've used the Photo Channel quite a bit, believe it or not, with mp3s (never going to "upgrade" if I can help it.... I'm a computer audio nerd and I don't even know how to make an AAC file without installing a different OS and using iTunes) and photos on a 1gb SD card.

worm @ Mar 20th 2008 9:45AM

A 2GB SD card will be indispensible as the years of awesome Brawl match replays stack up.

Go1denchi1d @ Mar 20th 2008 9:48AM

I have a 1gb sd and all I really use is picture channel. From time to time, I do move a save file to the sd to play at a friend's house. Eventually, I will start using it to upload stages to IGN's stage builder website. For now, I am too busy (and lazy) to do all that.

Randy @ Mar 20th 2008 9:56AM

I have some pictures and some copied save games. I really wish Nintendo would:

1. Enable the Wii to run Wii-Ware directly from the SD card. (probably won't happen due to Piracy fears.)

2. Allow game saves directly to the card instead of Internal Memory.

3. SDHC support would be really nice (so I can use the 4, 8, & 16GB cards.

These things would be technically trivial to implement.

Justin @ Mar 20th 2008 10:05AM

I back everything up on my SD card. Actually that is the only place you can find anything on my Wii. I just keep it there and when I decide that I want to use it I just copy it back over. I want the Wii's memory to be clean of everything.

Phour ZwanZig @ Mar 20th 2008 11:01PM

Yeah.. Ive had one in mine since day one.. I dont wanna use the internal, so I try not to..

Then again I havent been using it lately..

Quiggy @ Mar 20th 2008 10:19AM

I recently picked up an SD card on the cheap in order to transport my Brawl save data between my Wii and a friends, only to discover that for whatever reason it doesn't copy. So now I'm just using it as a dumping ground for stages and replays. I also tried loading Mario Kart 64 onto it as an experiment, only to discover that it takes a good two or three minutes. Nintendo really needs to fix this storage stuff.

Croove55 @ Mar 20th 2008 10:20AM

My brother and I just traded a gamecube controller (we had 5, for some reason that I won't get into) for a 256 MB SD card. We kinda got fleeced, I guess, but we didn't need 5 gc controllers, so whatever. I use it to store brawl snapshots, so far, but not much else.

ProudWiiOwner @ Mar 20th 2008 10:22AM

I have a 2.0g SD card that my camera uses, and my Wii shares it (for game-saves, backups, ETC.)

crazypenguin @ Mar 20th 2008 10:36AM

i don't have a card, because i don't buy things from the virtual console. but i might have to delete some photos of of my wii...

Roto13 @ Mar 20th 2008 10:49AM

Photos, backup of all of my save data and VC games, and of course Brawl stuff.

Ghen @ Mar 20th 2008 10:53AM

Nothing, I don't even own an SD card.. and I don't download anything either.

That'll change only when GH3 downloads become available.

Sancroff @ Mar 20th 2008 11:44AM

There is no need to back up VC games to SD. You can delete and redownload VC games free of charge. Ditto for WiiWare games when they come out.

andynoz50 @ Mar 20th 2008 11:48AM

I back-up my save games to the SD card just in case something happens. It sucks that some game saves cannot be copied for some unspecified reason.

Nebinator @ Mar 20th 2008 12:22PM

Only my brawl stuff

Sonic_13 @ Mar 20th 2008 12:41PM

I'd really like to know how many people are actually low (or out) of memory on their Wii. I'd be willing to bet that a lot (not all, but a significant majority) of the people who complain about not having enough storage space don't actually need more storage space.

hohum @ Mar 20th 2008 5:17PM

I would say that I'm officially 'out,' as I have ~10 blocks and a pile of VC titles that I've had to delete to get in order to make space for other things... And it's just all going to be downhill from here, every time I get anything new, it's going to be a big shuffle of figuring out what nobody is playing at the moment, deleting, seeing how much space was freed up, deleting more, &c... While I'm sure there are plenty of people out there playing without issues right now, for those of us who -are- low on space, it's misery.

gizmo83 @ Mar 20th 2008 7:57PM

my celular phone came with a 512MB mini sd card, it came with a SD card adapter,quick mp3 playback as i watch a slideshow of my celphone pictures, my videos i convert them to mpeg using redkawa and i watch them on the wii, i have a sd usb adapter which i plug into my pc , get mp3s to transfer to the sd and thats that, take it easy mi gente!

Lucy @ Mar 20th 2008 1:13PM

I look forward to the day when I will actually get to use the overpriced SD card that came with my Wii...

Sisyphus @ Mar 20th 2008 1:19PM

I have a 512mb SD card that I already owned, but I haven't used it yet. I've got 9 VC games and not even close to filling my memory yet.

Neko @ Mar 20th 2008 2:16PM

I've never had to store anything on my SD cards. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not even going to worry about my WiiWare downloads. Nintendo's not stupid, and they know that we will need a way to store all of them. I garuentee that with over 100 titles in the pipeline, they are planning SOMETHING.

benmully @ Mar 20th 2008 2:17PM

I have a 2GB card, with has about 6 to 7 pages of virtual console games on it!! I need more directly accessible memory now, where is that hard drive?? I live in slow broadband area and painfully have to keep swapping stuff on and off SD, as it less painful than downloading it again!

TheOverlord#2 (will beat you with Toon Link!)(1461-5875-9923) @ Mar 20th 2008 2:33PM

Brawl Vault Data for right now...It is convenient to have 7000 blocks of memory.

Thing is...If Wii(3 DVD Boxes) holds less than one SD card(slightly bigger than a DS game), why couldn't Nintendo just undo some SD cards and give Wii some real memory?

MBJ @ Mar 20th 2008 2:50PM

I deleted my Internet Channel when my Wii informed me that I had no space left to create a save file for Brawl. I would really appreciate it if Nintendo would do something about the storage situation. At the very least they should integrate the SD data with the Wii system memory so that things can be accessed seamlessly rather than the currently unintuitive process of moving things to and from the card. I hate juggling things across different storage media.

I'd also like to see (at least an option for) a revamped channel menu that would organize VC games better. Something as simple as the interface from the online store would even work, where games can be listed out in multiple ways (by name, system, publisher, release year, etc). I don't really use emulators for old games but I've seen screenshots of emulator front-ends that put the VC to shame. They contain scans of the game's original box art, original instruction manual, etc and organize everything amazingly well. Why can't paying customers get something that's at least that good?

AndRe @ Mar 20th 2008 3:07PM

mp3s for excite truck and endless ocean, and a couple of games from the vc, but my internal memory is almost full so I think I'll put some more games very soon.

MidnightScott @ Mar 20th 2008 3:18PM

I've put some Brawl screenshots on it, I also have my Mario Kart 64 save on there. With WiiWare and other games coming I'm probably gonna have to start moving more VC games over. I have 22 VC games and I'm almost out of room.

~Scott

Mickey @ Mar 20th 2008 3:46PM

I don't have a SD card but I also don't;

own any VC games
have Brawl yet
have any music or photos

so there ya go

SoshiKitai @ Mar 20th 2008 5:05PM

All of my Brawl levels...
And photos and videos (but I haven't taken any yet)...

It'll keep all my "for family" VC games after my blocks in Wii run out. (for family: meaning it's games my family LOVED, but I thought it was just OK... things like: Donkey Kong Country, Star Fox 64 {I only love multiplayer}, Super Mario Bros. 3 {I'm not that great as ever-loved Mario}, etc)

Mr Khan @ Mar 20th 2008 6:41PM

I'm with samfish (who my Brawl profile claims still needs to add me), I only use the SD Card for Brawl junk, pics, replays, levels, etc, that way i can go nuts without worrying about my other data

My solution is more or less to just restrict my purchasing, i only buy the downloadable games that are of utmost importance to me

BDR @ Mar 20th 2008 11:43PM

I have a pretty quick internet connection, or at least quick enough that re-downloading vc games is much more convenient than forking out money for an SD card. I don't see it as too much of a problem, i usually have about five VC games that i'm playing at one time, and the rest are deleted and re-downloaded when i want to play them.

Dilly @ Mar 21st 2008 3:33AM

I have a question. Can you load files from SD that arent also on the flash memory on the wii? I remember before, a long time ago when i first got the wii, You couldn't do that. Did they fix that blatant screw-up yet? kuz i mean... 512 megabites to support VC and wiiware is ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as juggling deleting and redownloading AND/OR loading onto and off of an SD card. It is soooooooo annoying.