Wii U not reading SD Card

#1

Hello, first of all I apologize if there is any writing error, English is not my native language.

I recently purchased a used Wii U, but the former owner didn’t inform me that he had a problem reading the SD card. The console recognizes that there is a card in the slot but it gave me a reading error, something like “impossible to read the card”.
After several researches and discussions in some forums, I was told that it could be a defective SD reader, with some oxidized or bent pins. I bought a spare part from China and a professional from my city made the replacement. It turns out that the console presented the same problem.

I sent it to a famous store in São Paulo, and there they told me that this error could be related to a NAND fault (a defective chip or a damaged weld).

What do you think? Does it make sense that the problem is related to NAND?

#2

UPDATE:

They rewrited the NAND and the error persisted. Did anyone have any other idea what could be done? Any capacitors or something that should be checked before they sent the console back to me?

#3

I’m curious how they ‘rewrote’ the NAND. Typically you can only restore a valid NAND if you had a backup of the NAND, from that specific console in the past.

Have you tried a known-good SD card? (and formatted it correctly
A full description of the error (and error code) may be beneficial to post here as well.

1 Like
#4

Hello!

Yes, I also found this kind of diagnosis strange, I think they thought it might be a gap between the communication of the hardware. I saw on the internet that it is possible to back up the NAND with some welding and cable work, I was particularly suspicious of this diagnosis from the beginning.

Well, the console doesn’t show me any errors. The only way to access the card through the Wii U is through the Mii Channel (you try to save a Mii image as .jpg) or through the vWii, and there I have this message that it is impossible to read the files on the SD card, but it recognizes when the card is inserted or removed.

Regarding the cards, I also imagined that could be a problem with them, but I tested three different cards and they all gave the same problem. To remove this doubt about the cards, I tested the same on another console (a wii) and all worked perfectly.

I discovered this problem when I went to install the Homebrew Channel and it was by no means able to access the files on the SD card.