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 SD or USB. Note that CleanRip is not auto-configured to write a file with more than 1 GiB in file size and will instead split into several pieces. At the Wii Disc Ripper Setup screen, set Chunk Size to Max, and New device per chunk to No is recommended with SD or USB large enough to hold an entirety of the ripped disc file. CleanRip will split the ripped disc file with more than 4 GiB in file size regardless to fit the FAT, FAT16, or FAT32 formatted SD or USB devices. 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). NTFS has a theoretical max file size of 16 EiB (Exabyte), or 16,777,216 GiB. GameCube discs will be fine either way because the max size is only 1.36 GiB.

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, it's not the end of the world. CleanRip features New device per chunk specifically for this. 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 PC, download HJ-Split for your system, extract it, and then launch it. Rename the multiple files you have ripped with CleanRip to exactly same file name and extension (GAMEID.iso) but add another file extension .001 (GAMEID.iso.001), .002 (GAMEID.iso.002), and so on respectively, then let HJ-Split do the magic.

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)