RestoreMii vs Wii Shop Channel

If I restore a NAND backup, I will lose the tickets from Wii Shop stored in the NAND between when I took the backup and when I restore it.

My question is will I have to re-buy those games I bought between the backup and restore because the shop doesn’t detect the tickets, or will the shop allow me to re-download the games for free in spite of not having the tickets on the NAND (and if so, could alarms go off at Nintendo HQ because the console is in a state it shouldn't be in)?

Asking because I'd rather not find out myself later on. ;)

That's a good question, but if I remember right, your purchases are stored on a Nintendo server somewhere. So as long as you access it with the same Wii, the Shop Channel should let you re-download them at no cost, even if the tickets aren't on your system. (I think!?)

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Someone
If I restore a NAND backup, I will lose the tickets from Wii Shop stored in the NAND between when I took the backup and when I restore it.

Yes!
The tickets are stored on the NAND and if you restore a NAND-backup, all tikcets that you got afterwards will be lost.

As far as we know, the tickets are the only way for the shop channel to tell, whether you bought a game. Therefore you will loose the download rights.

Is there any homebrew which can save shop tickets to SD and restore them later, or is that wondering into the realms off-limits for this board?

I'd like to be able to copy just my tickets after buying something from the shop so later on if I need to rollback to a clean Wii (I took a backup copy of the NAND after only installing BootMii in boot2 without HBC or DVDX then afterwards I installed HBC) I don't lose everything I've bought.

@ TiMeBoMb :

it's true that nintendo does have a way of knowing which console downloaded which content, but that doesn't mean that you're save with this!

as daniel stated above, the only way for the shop channel of knowing that you already purchased a title is if you have the ticket for the title ON your NAND!! this means that if you made a NAND backup some time ago and purchased some games afterwards and THEN restore the backup, of course you won't have the tickets for the newer purchased titles anymore.


what you could do is call nintendo and tell them you can't re-download some already purchased titles...afaik they can tell which games you purchased through your serial number (of the wii of course).i remember somebody losing his re-download rights by accidentally powering off the wii while updating, in this case nintendo really gave him all lost wii points back; but I don't know if it is save to do it the same way with your wii...

The simple solution is to make a NAND backup after every title bought and downloaded.

That solution makes sense; however, I'm just wondering in that case what the option in the Wii system menu to format your Wii really does, because supposedly doing that will still keep your download rights. Does it possibly keep the tickets, or is it just that the Shop Channel remembers the associated Nintendo account and gets the downloaded title information from the Nintendo servers.

I'm thinking its the latter, but I'm not so sure.

I'd rather not make a nand backup after each purchase because that'd mean I can't roll back to a clean Wii and keep things I've bought after the second backup.

After a bit of searching I've found out that...

- When you use the shop, the shop looks at the tickets on your console to see if you can re-download games, not your purchase history.
- Formatting the console doesn't delete your tickets, which is how you can go back into the shop and re-download channels after 'formatting' the console. It looks like formatting just deletes channels, save data, Miis, and the message board.
- If you delete your shop account then you do lose your tickets.
- If you send your console in for repair and get a new one, Nintendo transfer your tickets over by looking at your purchase history in the shop and generating new tickets for the new console.

As for the files I'd need to copy off, I'd need the /tickets/00010001/(titlename).tik files, but it looks like I would need to also store a copy of /title/00010001/(titlename)/content/title.tmd and /sys/uid.sys which holds the user/group permissions for each channel.

As for homebrew, I've found out that FSBrowser and FileSystem Dumper can transfer tickets to SD but not the other way around and FTPii allows uploading to e.g. SD but doesn't allow uploading to nandfs.

So to get the files I've copied off back on, I would either need FTPii to be able to work with user and group IDs, which I don't think is the case as I can log on as anyone and the chmod command is ignored and there's no chown command. Or I'd have to use some installation program (which would probably mean fakesign :( ).

If I'm wrong anywhere or anyone has any ideas I'd appreciate it...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/31/2009 10:39PM by Someone.

@ Someone:


if you like to have a clean wii why not use any title deleter? this program lets you remove nearly anything (+tickets).

that means you can make a nand backup when you purchase a title (which means having the ticket on the nand) but also being able to remove and add the ticket whenever you want...as long as you have a nand backup with ALL tickets, you can modify the nand to remove tickets + content...but seriously why would you wanna do that?? O.o


but maybe i didn't get what you want...I can understand that you want to have a "clean" wii, but also want to try things out, but were is the problem of uninstalling stupid apps,if you think it's damaging your system??

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Sephiroth
@ Someone:
but maybe i didn't get what you want...I can understand that you want to have a "clean" wii, but also want to try things out, but were is the problem of uninstalling stupid apps,if you think it's damaging your system??

I like the idea of being able to rollback, either if the console gets bricked or if there's a some update from Nintendo which starts getting nasty with systems with homebrew. Although you're probably right, Any Title Deleter is probably enough.

this is kind of a side question.....but if you used the wii built in formatter, that would erase all trace of homebrew etc. and set me back at the system menu it was released with? or is there another way i would have to do this?

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HiperViper07
this is kind of a side question.....but if you used the wii built in formatter, that would erase all trace of homebrew etc. and set me back at the system menu it was released with? or is there another way i would have to do this?

Formating does neither revert your system menu nor does it erase all traces of homebrew!

Formating (does the english system menu even call it that?) only erases things in the user space.
Channels will be deleted, the message board will be erased and settings will be reset to default, but all tickets should saty intact

That is not true.

I made a NAND backup and then bought MegaMan9.
When I restored the backup I was able to redownload the game for free.

@wiiguy:

wow thats interesting...maybe somebody of team twiizers could explain this to us.


afaik restoremii first checks the difference between your nand and your nand backup on sd before writing anything and after doing so, it restores the blocks that differ from the ones on sd card...but this obviously HAS to mean the tickets get lost if you purchased games after doing a nand backup.


or could it be that restoremii does not delete any tickets at all??


would be really great if somebody could tell me how restoremii actually works...

RestoreMii completely replaces the contents of your NAND (apart from boot1/boot2).

If you bought something from the Wii Shop, they store this information on the server, and the server may or may not allow you to redownload titles you have already paid for for free.

That is to say -- it does not surprise me that this works, but I would not rely on it always working.