Ripping Games

This page explains how to rip the GameCube and Wii game discs and/or saves to be used on Dolphin. Ripping the game discs and saves through the Wii or Wii U console will require to have homebrew software installed. See Homebrew Channel for instructions on how to use it. The term "vWii" is Wii system running on Wii U console.

Ripping Discs Using a Computer
Some PC optical drives are able to rip game ISOs with Rawdump. See the forum thread for a list of known drives and instructions on how to use them. If trying to rip DL ISOs (games on duel-layer DVDs, such as Metroid Prime Trilogy, Metroid Other M, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, etc.) use Friidump. If you do not have an optical drive that can rip wii and gamecube discs, it is possible to rip the files from the disc via a wii console:

Using CleanRip
CleanRip can rip a game disc to an SD card or an external USB storage device. It requires your wii or vwii system to have the Homebrew Channel. For a guide on how to install the homebrew channel on your wii, see here.

GameCube Discs
No gamecube titles take up more than 1.5GiB (Gibibyte, or 10243 bytes). It's generally a good idea to set Chunk Size to max, so that your iso isn't split into parts. Gamecube discs can store a maximum of 1.5GiB, so the entire ISO can fit on a FAT32 drive. Simply follow the instructions on-screen and you'll be able to put the game straight from the SD card or USB drive into dolphin.

Wii Discs
In order to rip a wii disc, a storage device with more than 4.7GiB of free space is recommended for single layer, 8.54 GiB for dual layer. However, by dividing the disc into chunks, an SD card with even a single gibibyte of free space is sufficient.

At the CleanRip Setup screen, set Chunk Size to "Max", and New device per chunk to "No" is recommended with SD cards or external USB storage devices large enough to hold the entirety of the ripped disc file at once. Otherwise, set Chunk Size to max possible ("1GB", "2GB", "3GB", or "Max") and set New device per chunk to "Yes" and when CleanRip is asking for the next device, remove it from the Wii and move the first or so ISO file to free up space and use it again. When all pieces have been received, check in the next subsection.
 * CleanRip will split the ripped disc file with more than 4GiB in file size regardless to fit the FAT, FAT16, or FAT32 file systems. These file systems have a max file size of 4GiB. To remedy this, it is recommended to rip discs to a USB external NTFS formatted storage device (as Wii cannot read NTFS formatted SD cards). The NTFS file system has a theoretical max file size of 16 EiB (Exabyte), or 16,777,216GiB.
 * Certain Wii discs are dual layer (or DVD9) instead of single layer (or DVD5). CleanRip will need to be configured in order to rip those kinds of discs. At the Wii Disc Ripper Setup screen, set Dual Layer to Yes. The rip will take roughly double the time than usual Wii discs of 4.38GiB as the dual layer ISOs are 7.93GiB in size.

Joining Split Files
In order to use a split iso in dolphin, its parts must be recombined
 * Make sure all of the pieces are named using the "GAMEID.part#.iso". For instance, a part of a Super Smash Bros. Brawl iso might be named RSBE01.part0.iso.
 * Place all the pieces in the same folder or directory
 * Start a command prompt or terminal window and run the commands below, replacing &lt;directory&gt; with the files location.

USB Loader GX
The Wii or vWii installed with the latest version of USB Loader GX and certain cIOS (such as d2x-cios) can rip Wii game discs. The Wii system may also be able to rip GameCube as long as the DIOS MIOS is installed. Wii Us and Wiis sold after late 2011 lack the GameCube controller and memory card ports, and can make no use of DIOS MIOS. The USB Loader GX will ask the user two options when inserting a game disc: Install or Mount DVD drive; choose "Install". It will begin the ripping process to the storage device:
 * For Wii: X:\wbfs\GAMEID_*\GAMEID.wbfs (and GAMEID.wbf1 as continuation file, if source is over 4,194,272 KiB)
 * Dolphin build version and later can accept Wii games in WBFS format.
 * For GameCube: X:\games\* [GAMEID]\game.iso (NOTE: file system must be FAT32)

GameCube Memory Card
A homebrewed Wii with GameCube memory card ports or GameCube with SD Gecko is required.

Download GameCube/Wii Memory Manager (GCMM for short) and launch it through Homebrew Channel on the Wii. It's an Homebrew app that manages the save files between the real GameCube Memory Card and the SD card. It can extract an individual save as .GCI file or dump the entire contents (RAW or batch dump .GCI files) from a real memory card to the root of SD card. For the purpose of this guide you should extract what you need for Dolphin onto the SD card. Then they should be placed into \GC\ for Dolphin to use while emulating a game. It is also possible that the data that was created with Dolphin to be added back into the real GameCube Memory Card through GCMM and SD card.

Wii/vWii Internal Storage
This section is for ripping individual saves to be used on Dolphin. To dump an entire Wii's internal storage for use with Dolphin, skip this section and move ahead to NAND Usage Guide.

Download SaveGame Manager GX and launch it through Homebrew Channel on the Wii or vWii. It's an Homebrew app that manages the save files between the console's internal storage and the SD card. It can extract an individual save from the Wii's internal storage for Dolphin to use. Like GCMM, it is possible that the data that was created with Dolphin to be added back to the Wii by selecting in Dolphin to export the Wii save into a X:\private\wii\[GAMEID] format, then add back into NAND through SaveGame Manager GX and SD card.