Ripping Games

This page explains how to rip the GameCube and Wii game discs to be played on Dolphin. Ripping the game discs 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 with Computer
A small number of PC optical drives are able to rip game ISOs with Rawdump. See the forum thread for a list of known drives and instructions.

Since few PC's optical drives are compatible with ripping discs one will likely need to use homebrew software on a Wii or vWii to rip discs.

CleanRip
CleanRip can rip a game disc to an SD card or an external USB storage device using an homebrewed Wii or vWii.

For GameCube Disc
The storage device with ≥1.36GiB of free space may be required as a few GameCube discs will contain large ISO, though, the 1GiB SD card should do the job pretty well for the majority of GameCube games. Follow the on-screen instructions.

For Wii Disc
The storage device with ≥1GiB of free space should be enough throughout the ripping process for Wii discs.

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. 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 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 4.38GiB as the dual layer ISOs are 7.93GiB in size.

Joining Split Files
Games ripped to multiple pieces must be joined together to work with Dolphin.
 * Make sure all of the pieces are named using the "GAMEID.part#.iso" syntax.
 * Place all the pieces in the same 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)

Managing GCN Saves
Requirements:
 * A homebrewed Wii with GCN Memory slots
 * A GameCube Memory Card
 * A SD card

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.

Managing Wii Saves
Requirements:
 * A homebrewed Wii or vWii
 * A SD card

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 (saves and channels and not Wii NAND altogether) 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 sd:\private\wii\[game id] format, then add back into NAND through SaveGame Manager GX and SD card.