Oh well, I've learned the hard way to keep them on the system memory from now on.
@LemonSlice If a usb memory device (like a memory stick or hard drive is detected by Wii U OS it puts save files there by default). I even copied the hard drive save files to the system memory as a kind of backup if anything happened to the harddrive when I sent the Wii U & harddrive to Nintendo for a problem with the Wii U console that needed repairs. I got the console back (repaired) and hardrive and moved the save files to the hardrive, so it was in the setup I had before. I was re-downloading my digital copies of games to the hardrive (as nintendo had to wipe them off) when the drive started making funny noises and stopped working. The data recovery company said the heads were misaligned and would need parts to be replaced. They charged me £240 for the parts and work done so far, if I had known then what I know now about Nintendo taking action on sd card hacking I would of told the data recoverer to not bother trying to rescue it.
I thought about not bothering with usb harddrives again, but it will be a problem having to delete older games to make way for new ones. A drives with less storage capacity will not cost as much as my current one, and I'll only store downloaded games on it.
