Here's the deal. My Wii U today froze when launching Mario U. I had to unplug the system to reset. When I turned it back on it froze at the menu screen. Now every time I try to boot up it freezes while loading the main menu. I've done all of the troubleshooting steps (turning off wifi, unplugging external storage, unplugging power from the wall, etc.) Nothing is working to fix it. So I read online and saw that one person was experiencing the same thing and Nintendo had them enter a combination that gets them into the settings app before it crashes and reformat their internal storage. He said this fixed the problem but he lost all data.
My question is if i can transfer all games and saves to my external hard drive, then reformat the internal memory. After doing this can I plug the external drive back in and still access my games and saves, or will it prompt me to re-format the external drive again. I was getting ready to do this but it came up with a warning saying that saves and other data on an external drive would no longer be usable. I don't understand why this would be the case if I was still using the same system and the same Nintendo ID.
If this wont work ill have to send in my system for a second time for repair. The first time my gamepad would randomly freeze while the game still went on. They fixed this by shipping me a new Wii U. It worked fine for the last 3 months but has now been bricked.
Anyone tried this transfer and format process?