Sorry for overflowing with topics about the Wii (guess what new console I just got recently?) but I'd really like an answer specifically to this question, and where I can easily find it.

Are regular SD cards compatible with the Wii, or do I need to get SD cards that were specifically made for the Wii, and have the special label "For Use with Nintendo Wii?"

I mean, the Wii comes with about 2200 "Blocks" (Nintendo's still using "Blocks" of memory, when everyone else has already moved onto MBs and GBs? Haven't heard of a "Block" of memory since the old PSX days...) and when some Wiiware or Virtual Console titles take up as much as 300 "Blocks," it's like...I can only have about 7 of those titles on my Wii simultaneously!

Buying a "Gaming SD card" is like buying an official X-Box hard drive. In other words, go to Newegg.com and buy a cheap, regular SD card.

The Wii can utilize any ol' SD card you shove in it. Dunno if it has an upper size limit or not.

As these fellas said, all standard SD cards are compatible with the Wii.  Thing is, there's not much use for it if you're looking to back up your purchased games.  (In other words, you can transfer your games to a card, but you can't transfer them back to the Wii - or play the games straight off of the card.)  Last I'd heard, though, Nintendo's coming up with a way to make it work, and they're hoping for a solution come this Spring.

As it stands now, if you run out of memory storage on your Wii, you would have to delete your purchased game off the system - and if you want them back later, you can re-download it, free of charge.

Problem with the 360, though, is that they use MS's proprietary hard drive cases built specifically for the console.  So unless you're willing to do some shady tinkering and hacking (which yes, does at least require one of their hard drive cases anyway), you're pretty much stuck.

Unless you were talking about the first Xbox.  No idea what sort of HDD it used, though.

Apparently it doesn't normally accept SDHC cards, so 2 GB is the limit for now. Some homebrew guys have shown that it can be made to accept SDHC, so maybe a future firmware update will include it officially.

It seems that first Xbox required a modchip to be able to swap hard drives. As for the 360, you could get an official 20 GB off eBay for cheap, then just swap in the larger hard drive. The whole process doesn't look that tricky, at least if you've ever installed a new hard drive.

I'm surprised to read that upgrading a PS3 hard drive is even simpler. After all of the proprietary stuff Sony has used in the past I was expecting something much more frustrating and expensive.

Right, Nintendo's trying to control people from transferring their VC and Wiiware titles to their friends for free...I guess I can understand that...

Downloads take quite awhile on the Wii, at least 10-15 minutes.

...

So, in other words, I wouldn't even be able to port game saves over to a friend's Wii via SD card? Or would I be able to send them game saves via WiiConnect24?

My concern right now is in being able to transfer game saves between Wiis, much like how we used to when we used memory cards, like with the PS2.

You can transfer saves so long as the saves aren't copy protected.  Naturally, the games you will most want to transfer for saves for (SSBB) have copy protected saves.

You sure about that?  I thought you could transfer them back to the same Wii you copied them from; you just can't take them to another Wii.  It's painfully slow transfering to and from the SD card, though.

I'm fairly certain, though to be honest, I haven't yet tried it myself.  (Check that: I HAVE tried, but the transferring really was so slow that I never got one game successfully onto a card.)

Does it work for you?

http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/system … Manage.jsp

I stand corrected, then.  Thanks for the confirmation!

I have successfully backed up my two Wii Shop channel purchases to my SD Card, but it took a very long time for each of them.  I haven't had the need to try to move them back to the Wii, but as rein's post indicates, that is the promised functionality.

Sounds like a bad connection. Most of my downloads are under a minute, save for the biggest ones like Final Fantasy CC or Helix.

For what it's worth, I'm having an odd issue with my SD Card & Wii: it's stating I can't copy data to the card because it already exists on the card, but it isn't on the card at all. Is this a common thing?

How do I know if saves for a particular game are copy-protected (other than that I find this out when I try to transfer them to SD card, thereby rather negating the whole aspect of getting an SD card for the Wii?)

There are save files for Virtual Console games on GameFAQs, e.g., Donkey Kong Country.  I would assume then that save files are not locked to the Wiis from which they originated.

In my experience, any game that has online rankings won't let you copy the save to an SD card.