So after holding on to my Wii for weeks, first importing a new disk drive from China (or somewhere) and then fiddling with the laser, the guy from the semi-local quesadilla joint/videogame hub (that does repairs on the side) recently proclaims that he has no idea what's wrong with the thing. Granted, I'm ****ed that I'm either going to have to wait another month or so while I send the thing to Nintendo or buy a new Wii, but it's exacerbated by the fact that a couple Wii games have, for some bull[dukar] reason, nontransferable save data--chief among them being Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which my brother and I invested more than enough time in (granted, downloading a 100% save state is an option, but there's something to be said for all those records and dates being your own).
So assuming they can't fix it, which is looking increasingly likely, my primary option to save all my data is to get a new Wii, then have my friend run the games on the old one (that I can’t move off) a hard drive.