Ok, I have a softmodded Wii running Homebrew, NeoGamma 6 & 7, USBLoaderGX...etc. and the games play fine off of the USB hard drive, but now my DVD drive has started clicking and will read no discs at all.
I can send it in for a FREE repair on my warranty, which I prefer not to do, because I am afraid they will screw up my softmod or worse, send me another refrubbed unit that cannot be softmodded.
I do not mind swapping out the dvd drive on the unit, but wanted some suggestions on doing so. Will the drives available on Ebay work? Just swap them out. Again, mine is NOT hard modded only soft modded.
They will remove your softmod and possibility format the system memory. So long as you backup all your save games to the SD before sending it though you can always copy them back to the wii later.
If they send you a new unit with a newer drive that cannot read burned disks then you can always buy a new drive, or just continue to use the USB loader, which works fine even with those new drives. Any drive you can get will work. Drive version and region do not matter. Just pop the old one out and put the new one in.
But since sending it to nintendo doesn't cost anything and will probably fix the problem, I would do that first.