Dumping GameCube & Wii Discs

iCube plays disc images, so before you can play a game you own, you need a copy of its disc as a file. This page covers the standard way to make one on a real Wii, how to join and shrink the result, and how to check it came out clean.

iCube does not provide, link to, or endorse any source of pre-dumped games. Dump discs you own, from hardware you own.

What you need

  • A Wii with the Homebrew Channel installed. The Wii Hacks Guide walks through installing it.
  • GameCube discs need a Wii that can read them. The original Wii (model RVL-001, the one with GameCube controller ports) can. The Wii Family Edition, the Wii mini, and the Wii U's vWii cannot read GameCube discs at all, so they can dump Wii discs only.
  • An SD card or USB drive formatted FAT32 with at least 4.7 GB free for a Wii disc. A dual-layer Wii disc needs 8.5 GB. GameCube discs are up to 1.4 GB.
  • CleanRip, a homebrew disc dumper. Its project page is on WiiBrew, and the Wii Hacks Guide has a dumping walkthrough that links the current download.

Dump with CleanRip

  1. Copy CleanRip's apps folder to the root of the SD card or USB drive.
  2. Put the card or drive in the Wii, boot it, and open CleanRip from the Homebrew Channel.
  3. When it asks whether to calculate checksums, choose Yes. You'll want them in the verify step below.
  4. Choose where to write the dump (SD card or USB), then choose FAT (FAT32) as the file system.
  5. If your Wii is online, choose Yes when it offers to download the redump.org database files. CleanRip uses them to check the dump against known-good discs.
  6. Insert the disc and press A.
  7. For a Wii disc, CleanRip then shows its Wii Disc Ripper Setup screen. Set New device per chunk to No. It defaults to Yes, which makes CleanRip stop and ask for another storage device after every chunk, so a one-card dump never finishes on its own. Leave Chunk Size at its 1 GB default, or choose Max for fewer, larger parts (about 4 GB each on FAT32).

A GameCube disc produces one file. A Wii disc is written in parts named <name>.part0.iso, <name>.part1.iso, and so on. At the default 1 GB chunk size that is five parts for a single-layer disc and eight for a dual-layer disc. FAT32 can't hold a file over 4 GiB, so even Max splits a Wii disc. CleanRip may rename the files to the game's name from the redump.org data.

A disc that plays fine can still throw an unrecovered read error during a dump. Clean the disc, restart CleanRip, and try again.

Join the part files

Skip this for GameCube discs. For a Wii disc, join the parts into one .iso before importing. List every part, in numeric order, with part0 first. The commands below are for a single-layer disc at the default chunk size, so they list part0 to part4. A dual-layer disc has eight parts (part0 to part7), and a different chunk size changes the count. Swap in your own file names.

On macOS or Linux:

cat game.part0.iso game.part1.iso game.part2.iso game.part3.iso game.part4.iso > game.iso

On Windows, in Command Prompt:

copy /b game.part0.iso + game.part1.iso + game.part2.iso + game.part3.iso + game.part4.iso game.iso

A full single-layer Wii disc image is about 4.7 GB and a dual-layer one is about 8.5 GB. If your joined file is well short of that, a part is missing or truncated. Size can't tell you the parts went together in the right order. The verify step below is what catches that.

Shrink it to RVZ

A raw .iso works, but a Wii disc is 4.7 GB or more. .rvz is Dolphin's compressed format, loads quickly, and converts back to a byte-exact .iso whenever you want one. See Supported Formats for how it compares to the others.

In Dolphin on your Mac or PC, right-click the game in the list and choose Convert File…. Pick format RVZ, block size 128 KiB, and compression zstd at level 5. Dolphin proposes that block size, method, and level by default. Higher levels can shrink the file a little further, at the cost of a slower conversion.

From a terminal, dolphin-tool does the same job:

dolphin-tool convert -i game.iso -o game.rvz -f rvz -b 131072 -c zstd -l 5

Avoid scrubbing during conversion. RVZ already compresses unused space well, so scrubbing saves little and throws data away.

Check the dump

In Dolphin, right-click the game, choose Properties, and open the Verify tab. Tick CRC32, MD5, and SHA-1 and run it. If Dolphin has the redump.org data, it tells you if your hashes match a known disc. A mismatch can mean a bad read, so dump the disc again before assuming it's a different release.

Get it onto iCube

Copy the .iso or .rvz to your device with Wi-Fi / Web Import, or use Import Game in the library's Import menu on iPhone and iPad.

Other ways to dump

You can also read Wii and GameCube discs in a PC drive if the drive has patched firmware, but the compatible drives are few and dual-layer discs may fail. CleanRip is the more reliable route. The Provenance wiki's ripping guide covers the drive method and other systems.

For WiiWare, Virtual Console, and other channel titles, see WiiWare, Virtual Console & Channels.

← Supported FormatsWiiWare & Channels →