Topic: Is there any point in backing up VC saves before a possible Wii replacement?

I'm sending my Wii in for repairs and it may have to be completely replaced. Are my VC saves basically gonna be worthless if they give me a new system? I know I should be able to back up my Wii saves but I wasn't sure about VC games. I've been having the worst luck in the world with this thing lately. This is the third freakin repair in six months.

Can't Nintendo backup everything for you before they do their repairs? That's what my parents did. They called ahead before submitting their system for repairs and they guy told them that they would save all of their files and games so that if there was a problem, they could get all of their stuff back. Is it possible to ask Nintendo if they can transfer all of your data onto a replacement system? It wouldn't be hard for them, and I don't see the problem as long as Nintendo is the one making the transfer.

I'm sure they can transfer everything, but I'd have a backup anyway just in case something gets lost in the process. If they can't fix your Wii, and have to give you a new one, I'm sure the settings would be identical to the old one, so you could download all your games again. It should work for save files too I imagine. It's probably not necessary if you ask to have everything transferred, but it couldn't hurt just in case.

You can try, but the Wii state saves cannot be backed up. The only VC save data you can keep is where the game has some kind of save feature itself, i.e. the save data for Bomberman '93. You'll find pretty much every other VC game save cannot be copied.

Don't forget to back-up your Miis to remotes (thought as noted in other threads this won't help you when it comes to Wii Sports and Wii Play if you end up with a new Wii or a new system board in your Wii; because somehow the save profiles for those games are tied to the Mii and the system ID. If the same Mii is on a new system it won't recognise it as being created on that system and the save data won't load -- lame).

Dare I say it? There is a backup solution available on the homebrew channel that allows you to back up all save data including data that can't be transferred due to Nintendo's ridiculous restrictions.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to test it as the application doesn't seem to like my 16Gb SD card (then again, my Wii doesn't either, sometimes it won't even start if the SD card is in the slot) but perhaps with a <2Gb card you might have more success.

I personally think the addition of the SD channel has made my Wii a hell of a lot less stable. I've tested 3 SD cards with it now, all which have developed filesystem faults that were correctable but all seem to loose considerable performance after they've been reformatted. The only card that I never had a problem with was a Sandisk Extreme III but that got used for bigger and better things.

Well, I'd say avoid no-name 3rd party SD cards Twisted. I only use Kingston or Sandisk and I've had no problems with them.