I'm writing an article about the Wii for work, and I had a few questions.

1. Can you use a usb flash drive on the Wii

2. what types of files can you transfer back and forth to your wii

3. what use is this function?

I could check this out myself, but I sold my wii. :(

Help would be appriciated on this.

you can't use usb flash drives, only sd cards for storage (and gamecube memory cards for gamecube saves). you can look at pictures from and sd card on the wii and copy them to the wii's internal memory, but you can't move pictures from the wii's memory to sd cards, and you can't edit and save them on the sd card or delete them from the sd card. you can transfer wii game saves, vc games, and wiiware games from wii to sd, and vise-versa.

is that good?

So, basically, you can't use the usb for any drives at all?

No.  It's not designed that way.  The Wii's USB ports are used largely for peripherals but it cannot address external storage devices via USB.  This is an anti-piracy measure decided upon by Nintendo.

LOL WII SUX

Your not going to last long....

Why does it suck because you can only use SD cards to store VC games on it? You don't need that much gigs for VC storage. A 2GD SD card probably can hold 100+ VC/Wii Ware games on it.

Older iPods -the type that mount as a hard drive on your computer- actually display some very interesting behavior when plugged into a Wii. Namely, they act as though they've been plugged into a computer, not a charger. They even seem to think they've been mounted.

Of course, without an interface, you can't actually DO anything with an iPod connected in this way. But it does seem as though USB drive support may have been planned at some point during the Wii's development but pulled at the last minute (much like CC support in Gamecube mode). No one knows why, but the last vestiges of the code apparently still exist.