Ripping Games

Ripping disc with computer
If you're lucky enough to have a supported optical drive, you may be able to rip game ISOs with Rawdump. See the forum thread for the list of known drives and instructions.

Ripping disc from Wii or Wii U
You'll more likely need to rip the disc using homebrew software on a Wii or Wii U in Wii mode. See Homebrew Channel for instructions on how to use it.

CleanRip
CleanRip can rip a game disc to an SD card or an external USB storage device. Note that CleanRip is not auto-configured to write a file with more than 1 GiB in file size and will instead split it into several pieces. At the Wii Disc Ripper Setup screen, setting 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. CleanRip will split the ripped disc file with more than 4 GiB in file size regardless to fit the FAT, FAT16, or FAT32 file systems. These file systems have a max file size of 4 GiB. To remedy this, it is recommended you rip the discs (especially Wii game 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 16,777,216 GiB. GameCube discs will not be split under FAT, FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS because the max size will be 1.36 GiB. CleanRip only triggers the Wii Disc Ripper Setup screen for Wii discs.

Certain Wii discs are dual layer (or DVD9) instead of single layer (or DVD5). CleanRip will also need to be configured to read and 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 4.38 GiB as the dual layer ISOs are 7.93 GiB in size.

If you were to rip a game disc to a storage device that is not large enough to save the entirety of it at once, CleanRip features New device per chunk specifically for this situation. Set it to Yes and set Chunk Size to max possible (1GB, 2GB, 3GB, or Max). When CleanRip is asking for the next device, remove it from the Wii and move the first or so ISO file onto your PC to free up and use it again. When you have received all pieces, check in the next section.

In event of split files
You will need to put together the pieces of the ripped ISO yourself, or else Dolphin will not run it (or will just boot to a black screen).


 * On Windows, the easiest way to combine disc parts is to run an automatic process through a batch file. Make sure all of the pieces use the "GAMEID.part#.iso" syntax, starting with zero, then place them together in a new folder (one game per). Create a text file within that folder and copy the following text into it:


 * copy /b *.part0.iso+*.part1.iso+*.part2.iso+*.part3.iso+*.part4.iso fulliso.iso


 * Adjust the above code as required if you have more or fewer parts. Save the document as a .bat file, then close it. Now, simply run the batch file, and a command prompt will appear and process the commands within, joining the files.


 * On Linux and OS X, name each part "part#.iso" and place them in a folder together. Run the terminal, and set the current directory to the folder with "cd " command, then run "cat part1.iso part2.iso part3.iso > fulliso.iso", adjusting with more or less parts as required.

USB Loader GX method
This assumes you are using the latest version of USB Loader GX with certain cIOS (such as d2x-cios) installed on your Wii or Wii U in Wii mode. Your Wii may also be able to rip GameCube as long as your Wii supports it with DIOS MIOS 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. You can rip your game disc by just launching USB Loader GX and then insert a game disc, it will ask you two options: Install or Mount DVD drive - You'll want to choose "Install". It will begin ripping process to your storage device as...
 * 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)