How To: Convert .WBFS Image Files to .ISO Images
r3dux | April 17, 2010Update: You can convert compressed ISO images (.ciso files) using this method, too…
If you need to translate a Wii DVD image from the newer .WBFS format (which has lovely sparce-file support) to an old-school .ISO image, well you can jolly well do so with Wii Backup Manager! Now, WBM is a really useful program so congrats to the author (xzxero) – but it uses non-standard GUI elements in that it uses what looks like the category list as a second main-menu, and this makes it a little non-intuitive to use. But in fairness to the author, the download page has a tutorial (which I didn’t find until after completing this post!). Still, it’s easy enough once you’ve figured that out. The entire conversion process goes like this:
1.) Grab yourself a copy of Wii Backup Manager. Version v0.3.5 beta 1 is the most recent version available at the time of writing, and although it’s Win32 only, it works fine in VirtualBox…
2.) Extract and launch it
3.) From the Files tab, click on what looks like the Add category title, select Files and go pick a .WBFS image from the navigation dialogue box
4.) Still in the Files tab, tick the checkbox to the left of your .wbfs image, and then click on what looks like the Transfer category title and select ISO..
5.) Pick where you want the converted .ISO file to be created and click the [OK] button
That’s it – job done! Transfer your ISO to your WBFS formatted USB drive and launch it as you normally would via USBLoaderGX or whatever your poison is… 
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Thanks for this it really helped.
Important!
The converting-part didn’t work ONCE if I didn’t use the Desktop as where the result should end up.
So a tip to you who just get red text under the progress bar: try choosing desktop as where your .iso file should go.
I came to thank, read this and was like, YEY!, I just picked desktop – as I usually do with like, everything.
You really helped me and a lot of people around the world! Thanks from Brazil :c)
I Make new file in Local disk D, and i called it WII. Than i make .Iso in that file and i did it, Of course, thats my first time to do convert, but than i saw your message. To burn now this game to DvD, or to convert it AGAIN on Desktop?
I think what SweO is saying is that Wii Backup Manager doesn’t work (i.e. it won’t convert ISOs) if you don’t specify the Desktop as the output location for the converted ISO/CISO/WBFS file. I haven’t ran into this problem myself so I can’t confirm it.
And to burn to DVD, you definitely want whatever Wii game you want on disc in ISO format (and not .ciso or .wbfs format). If you’ve already converted a Wii game to .iso format and it worked fine outputting stuff to your D: drive, then you don’t need to convert anything again.
You might consider too, that you have enough space in disk, or else it’ll show the red text. =) I was trying to convert WBFS to ISO, but then i did what you said, and it still didn’t worked, so i thought i might not have enough space in disk, then i deleted some programs, and it worked
Thanks a lot, flash drives are faster and great for the games you play the most but for the larger collections it’s nice to have a permanent copy on disc.
HDD is better.
NB: There is a later version now 0.3.5 beta out now that works fine on 64-bit OP (Win7).
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kudos!
Thanks for this. Came up easily on a google search, and was incredibly useful. My wii became 1000% more interesting and useful once I softmodded it.
Thanks for posting this. What a great help.
Many thanks
thanks it works
Hiya
I’ve just installed a Wasabi DX in a friends Wii for them (they don’t want it soft modded). It’s running Firmware 4.1E and the Wasabi is on Firmware 3.0.
It works fine with backups from disc or ISO files but it won’t play any backups converted from wbfs to ISO (using the method listed above) then burned to disc. They’re all giving me Error #002
Strangely, this method works fine with an old Flatmod chip I have, but not with the Wasabi DX. Any ideas?
I wondered perhaps if upgrading the Wii firmware might help, but I don’t want to lose multiregion support on the Wasabi.
It’s not an insurmountable problem but it’s a pain in the arse because most of my backups are in wbfs format.
Any advice would be gratefully received
)
Cheers,
Dave
Hi Dave,
Many loaders have an option called #002 Fix which will do exactly what it says on the tin =D
Look for that option in Wasabi and flip it to On. I’ve never used Wasabi DX, but the option’s available in things like USB Loader GX, WiiFlow and NeoGamma, so I’d imagine it’d be there somewhere – if not, choose a different loader which has the option!
Cheers!
r3dux
works great for softmoded 4.3u thanks and keep it up
Thanks, it worked just fine.
I had a bunch of games in wbfs files that I can play now!
once i change my wbfs file to an iso, it becomes too big to fit into my hardrive, what do i do?? if someone can help me figure this out, i would very much appreciate it
i’ve tried so many other methods and i’m hoping this is the last one 
Hi Minnie,
Your hard drive is probably formated as FAT32, which has a 4GB file limit (so no single file can exceed 4GB in size), to allow you to store files > 4GB you’ll need to convert the drive to NTFS format. Or at least convert the partition where you’re storing your ISOs, assuming you want to use the drive both for homebrew (which I believe needs to be FAT32) and games (which as you’ve found out, need to be in a format which can store large files such as WBFS or NTFS).
Newer versions of USB Loader GX etc can natively read/write NTFS partitions, so you can run games from the drive if you wanted to.
Hope this helps.
hey, thanks for the response r3dux!
my hard drive is actually WBFS format, which is why i’m not able to play wbfs formatted games, unless i use this program….is there anything that i could do to fix this?
for some reason its hard for me to get usb config to let me choose between partitions…. i wanted to play both .wbfs and .iso files, but i always end up only being able to view the iso files when i open my hard drive with any loader. so i figured i’d just use this program to convert wbfs to iso. but everytime i try to upload the game file after converting it, my hard drive refuses to accept the file because its too big..
To play any iso/ciso/wbfs files (i.e. games) you can’t just copy them to the drive, they have to be transferred to the drive, which puts them in the right format for playing.
To do this:
Once the disc image(s) have transferred they’ll show up in USB Loader GX / WiiFlow etc. and you’re good to go!
I’m using a WBFS manager for Mac and I can’t load wbfs files into the manager. It appears I do not even have an option to convert wbfs to iso; I’ve gone through all the menu’s and clicked on the possible buttons. When I click on “Load ISO” and I’m scrolling through my files I cant click on the wbfs file. HELP! There seem’s to be no tutorials for Mac users…
If you mean you can’t view the file to select it in the the Load ISO file dialogue:
In the file selection dialogue window there might be an option for which types of files are displayed *.iso, *.ciso – maybe you can change that to All files to allow you to select a .wbfs file? The option might be called “Show” or “All readable documents” or something like that.
If you mean’t something else:
Sorry – I’ve no idea, I’m a Linux monkey and know absolutely nothing at all about macs. Maybe you could (in order of least to most effort):
- Try and find some different WBFS conversion software that’ll do the job,
- Try running the Windows version of WBFS Manager through a copy of Wine (links: winehq/MacOSX, video showing simple install of Wine on Mac via WineBottler app),
- Copy the wbfs file to a USB drive of some sort along with the Windows version of WBFS manager, then find a machine running Windows (friend, school, work, library etc) and do the conversion on that machine, or finally
- Throw an old copy of XP onto a virtual machine ( via virtualbox or such) and try the conversion through the Windows version of WBFS manager that way.
One of these will do the job – it just depends on how much effort you’re willing to put in =D
Worked brilliantly – many thanks
hello again, i tried everything that you mentioned but its not working. i seem to get more and more confused as i’m trying to figure things out. im under the impression that i have a wbfs partitioned drive, because when upload my games, i use the wbfs manager for mac…but when i opened up the wii backup manager on my PC to convert the games, under the disk 1 option on the very bottom where the drive information is given, it says: drive n: WBFS folder (FAT32).. i guess since all my wbfs files are saved under my fat32 partition, tis reading it from there. but i want to be able to save it to the wbfs partition… i know i’ve been posting a lot here, but i find it so helpful! hope i’m not being a bother!
-minnie
i converted all my files to iso, then i transferred it to disk1 only to have all the files turn back to wbfs format…. sigh
Okay, let’s try this again…
- You can’t fit a file which is larger than 4GB onto a FAT32 partition, as has been discussed, therefore either the game images you are working with are less than 4GB in size, or you have at least two partitions.
- 2 partitions is a good number of partitions. It means that you can use FAT32 for things like Wii WADs, and applications and all other things that the Wii wants to read natively, and then the second partition (which is going to be in either WBFS or NTFS format) to store the game images, which can be (and often are) larger than 4GB.
- The only way I see the games being transcoded from ISO to WBFS format by Wii Backup Manager during the “transfer to drive” process is if the software is trying to tell you that the games MUST be in the WBFS file format to be successfully ran from a WBFS formatted partition, so it’s performing the transcode for you. I have no idea whether this is true or not – you’d have to research it. Personally, I keep my original ISOs backed up in .ciso format because it has sparse-file support, and I don’t care what format they are on the actual Wii USB drive because they work, which is the only aspect I care about.
- Wii Backup Manager has lots of nice documentation! Behold! Read!
Good luck! =D
thx for help! let the beer be with you…
finally!! i can play all my wbfs games!!!
THANKS!!!!!!!!
Is there a way for me to do this in Linux?
Wine does not seem to like this program.
I run it through Linux via an old copy of XP and VirtualBox. Maybe not an ideal solution, but it does the job
try this ones they are for linux
wiithon
QWBFS Manager
Wii Backup Fusion 1.1
Thanks for the tip – will check them out! =D
Very useful, appreciated.
[...] Here is a excellent tutorial show you how to Convert .WBFS Image Files to .ISO Images: If you need to translate a Wii DVD image from the newer .WBFS format (which has lovely sparce-file support) to an old-school .ISO image, well you can jolly well do so with Wii Backup Manager! Now, WBM is a really useful program so congrats to the author (xzxero) – but it uses non-standard GUI elements in that it uses what looks like the category list as a second main-menu, and this makes it a little non-intuitive to use. But in fairness to the author, the download page has a tutorial (which I didn’t find until after completing this post!). Still, it’s easy enough once you’ve figured that out. [...]
Many thanks for taking your time to build this tutorial, i was able to convert my wbfs files into ISO with it!
when i run this process of conversion and transferring the game title shows up on my usbloadergx with music playing but when i click on disc icon to load game get just black screen
That’s not related to the conversion process, it’s more likely related to either the cIOS setup of your Wii and/or the actual game rip you’re using.
Assuming the game rip isn’t bad to begin with, make sure your Wii has a suitable cIOS configuration for the specific game you want to launch to work (i.e. most are fine with 249, some need 222, some need a special combination 223 etc).
For more information, take a look at: http://www.wiihacks.com/wii-learning-center/18990-wii-cios-explained.html.
Hello i wonder if someone can help me.when im gonna convert the file to an iso from a wbfs i get 2 errors all the time.1.”WiiFatDrive.OpenVolume Error opening volume.The system cannot find the file specified”.2.”FilesToISOThread Unable to open file. Hope you can answer soon cause i really want to play some games on my wii i have only got 2 games working so far and on christmas it was 1 year from when it got modded so i really want to know so i can get more games.
Best regards/Wilnar
These both look like the same problem – try copying the .wbfs file that you want to convert to your desktop or the root of the C: drive ( i.e. C:\ ) and rename it to something really simple like “test.wbfs” and then try to convert it to an ISO.
I’m only guessing here, but it could be that there’s an extended ASCII character in the filename or in the path leading to the filename which WBFS Manager can’t work with (for example, an “o” with an accent in “Pokemon”).
Oh thanks for the help and quick answer r3dux but i actually got it remodded today and now i got usb loader (YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY)Well thanks for the help anyway and that you considered helping
Hi everybody, Can anybody tell me how can I load a .wbfs file to an .wbfs formated drive without having to convert it in .iso?!, as long as I have the .wbfs file why the work arround ?
You should be able to just use WBFSManager to do the transfer as the article states but using a source file in .wbfs format.
The only reasons for the workaround/conversion are:
- Back in the day I didn’t have the tools to transfer a .wbfs file to a wbfs partion so that it would work – but if I transcoded from wbfs to another format (such as .iso or .ciso) then I could transfer the games to a wbfs formatted drive and they’d work fine. I’d imagine most Wii “iso managers” will now do that happily, but there was a time when they wouldn’t.
and
- You might want to transfer the game image into a more “long-term” format, so that when the .wbfs format dies out and the tools to manipulate .wbfs files die out and no longer work on newer operating systems, then you’ll still have the disc images in an accessible format that you can work with. i.e. the .wbfs is rather niche, while .iso and .ciso are more universal and will likely be supported by tools well into the future.
Wii back up manager worked for me before, but now it wont convert wfbs. into Iso format, it tell it to put it in the desktop but still doesnt work…
Try renaming your .wbfs file to something really simple on the desktop like “test.wbfs” or such and try again.
Also, maybe try converting a different .wbfs file (if you have one) – it could be that the particular .wbfs file you’re trying to convert is knackered, or isn’t really a .wbfs file at all. To be sure you could check the file contents with a hex-editor or something.
Or, try using a diff converter: http://www.wbfstoiso.com/
Hope that helps – but keep in mind that if other .wbfs files will convert and it just so happens that the particular .wbfs file you want to convert is bad then there’s nothing to be done for it!
Very nice!
thank you.i was smacking my head against the wall but i read this lol.