How do I restore WiiU's NAND? (2024)

Akito-2804 said:

I backed up the NAND with NAND Dumper (slc.bin, mlc.bin).
If you do Block, how do you restore?

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due to not having bootrom access bricks are a little harder to recover from and will require hardmodding the console which involves taking it apart and basically soldering a nand reader/writer to the mother board then from there its just a simple write of the backup

Nimrod-002 said:

isnt it theoretically it possible to update CBHC to restore nand from usb or sd since it has access to nand before it loads

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Yeah, but only if you can boot CBHC (or any other form of homebrew) in the first place (which is quite late in the boot chain)

Ryccardo said:

Yeah, but only if you can boot CBHC (or any other form of homebrew) in the first place (which is quite late in the boot chain)

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Basically, if you have access to CBHC then there will most likely be easier solutions than restoring a NAND backup

Nimrod-002 said:

isnt it theoretically it possible to update CBHC to restore nand from usb or sd since it has access to nand before it loads

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Likely if you are still able to boot into homebrew then you are able to restore the Wii U by other means.
But that's not the case for the vast majority of bricks, or actually any of them according to this list: http://www.wiiubru.com/rip/
They seem to either be CBHC-related bricks (CBHC title was removed but console is still trying to boot it, would require a hardmod since the system is completely unusable in that case, although only OTP is needed, the bricked NAND can be fixed using it), faulty/broken NAND (hard bricks which can't be easily fixed even with a hardmod), and in very rare cases someone actually purposely messed with system files and bricked their console (rendering the system completely unusable so a hardmod and most likely a NAND backup would be needed)

tl;dr Not a single known brick to date could have been fixed by a NAND restore through CBHC because CBHC wouldn't have been accessible. In order for CBHC to even work the system must be able to boot. The only thing CBHC does is bypass the system menu so if you had screwed up the system menu somehow then CBHC might still work and allow you to fix it. Although a NAND restore wouldn't be needed for that anyway, only WUPInstaller.

There are soft bricks and Hard Bricks.

Hard Bricks can only be recovered by a hard mod.

Soft Bricks can be recovered by booting homebrew if you still have access to a homebrew access point.

It's something like how Android devices work. If you soft brick your android phone by flashing a custom Rom, you can boot the phone into download mode and flash the phone back to stock and start again.

If you hard brick your android phone, the phone won't boot into download mode anymore, and is only recoverable by a JTAG Hard Mod to get direct access to the Nand on the android phone.

TheTechGenius said:

If you hard brick your android phone, the phone won't boot into download mode anymore, and is only recoverable by a JTAG Hard Mod to get direct access to the Nand on the android phone.

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...and most of them have a download mode in the bootrom, which allows them to be reflashed with a factory image even if the nand was fully erased... just that it's usually hard to find the recovery files -- exactly like non-dev WiiUs!

Carlos_Knijnik said:

same thing here.
BUT i do have a nand backup before CBHC installed
help!

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Hard mod, only way.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/guide-kaflukes-hardmod-cbhc-unbrick-guide.476725/

Nimrod-002 said:

isnt it theoretically it possible to update CBHC to restore nand from usb or sd since it has access to nand before it loads

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yea it could but I'm waiting for something like priiloader or bootmii for wii u in the next few years

Megakuma said:

There's this thing called "googling"

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I'm sorry, I have to reply to this b/s. I went on Google looking for info on this and this effing forum post is one of the first results.

So shut the hell up.

SolidSonicTH said:

I'm sorry, I have to reply to this b/s. I went on Google looking for info on this and this effing forum post is one of the first results.

So shut the hell up.

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if it's a cbhc brick, you can fix it with teensy, the otp.bin, a nand backup (can be made before or after cbhc was installed, but it requires otp.bin if it was done afterwards), and cbhcremover app. if you don't know what the problem is, I hope you have a nand backup from before the problem, because it's going to be near impossible to figure out how to fix it.

I'm just doing my due diligence to be knowledgeable about these processes, as I'm a first-time Wii U hacker. It sounds like backing up your NAND is good but you can't do much if you actually need to use it lest you want to get into the weeds.

I intend to make a NAND backup with my system in proper working order prior to going further.