Making an emuNAND and using it with a region changed NAND

How to make an emuNAND for region changing

This tutorial is for users who are looking to region change their 3DS from one region to another (using 3ds.guide), but at the same time have quick and easy access to their original region (by utilizing an emuNAND)

First, an explanation

NAND is a type of flash storage. Whenever someone says the word "NAND", they are really referring to the 3DS's storage, the hard drive of the 3DS essentially. The NAND stores everything important for your 3DS, things like the operating system, the preinstalled applications, user settings, etc. etc.
Region changing involves changing region-specific files in your NAND, so that on boot, the operating system that is loaded is not a e.g. a JPN one, but e.g. a EU one or a US one. However, if you want to quickly and easily switch between regions, you can't just change these region specific files on the spot. You have to go through the region-changing guide again.
emuNAND means having a separate copy of the NAND on your SD card, in a special 1GB-1.3GB (depending on your 3DS) partition at the start of the partition table, and then having this special copy of the NAND being the region-changed one, rather than your 3DS's NAND (named sysNAND). Therefore, upon boot, you can choose which NAND to boot into; Either the one on your SD card, or the one on your 3DS, and you can have your emuNAND be the region-changed one, and the sysNAND to be the untampered one.

How to make the emuNAND partition

In order to get this special partition on your SD card, you have to format the SD card with GodMode9. Formatting, as you already know, deletes everything from your SD card. So, make sure you have backed up all of your files from your SD card before proceeding.
Assuming you have backed up everything from your SD card, we can now proceed with making an emuNAND.
  1. Boot into GodMode9 by holding (Start) on boot
  2. Press the HOME button
  3. Select "More.." --> "SD format menu"
  4. Select "EmuNAND size (full)" from the "Choose EmuNAND size:" menu
  5. Select 32KB clusters
  6. Leave the SD card label as it is, and press (A)
  7. Enter the button combination to format the SD card
  8. Select "GW EmuNAND type"
  9. Let it finish the formatting
The reason why it takes a while to format the SD card is because in the process of formatting it also makes a copy of your sysNAND into your emuNAND, so that the emuNAND partition is not completely empty.

Once you are done formatting the SD card, press the power button, and then power off your 3DS. Don't forget to copy back your backup from your PC to your SD card!

Doing the region change on your emuNAND

You will be following the normal region changing guide over at 3ds.guide, however, with some modifications:
  • At section II step 8, you will choose "transfer to emuNAND", not sysNAND
  • At section II step 19, you will not press the (Start) key. You will instead power off the 3DS, and then boot it up by holding (L). Luma by default boots into sysNAND, but by holding L on boot you can instead tell it to boot into emuNAND. There is an option that you can set in the config that makes it autoboot into emuNAND without holding down (L), and you can set this if you want. Note that once you set this option, holding (L) on boot will do the exact opposite effect; Booting normally will boot into emuNAND, and holding (L) will boot into sysNAND
  • At section V step 5, note that you are using an emuNAND instead of sysNAND
And you are done! Now you have a region changed emuNAND, and an untampered sysNAND!

A note on linked and unlinked NANDs

Right now, your emuNAND and your sysNAND are linked. What this means, is that both NANDs are accessing the same "Nintendo 3DS" folder on your SD card.
What you need to understand is that the 3DS encrypts the "Nintendo 3DS" folder contents, and makes them console unique with a key named "movable.sed"1 (which is stored on your NAND). This is so that if for example you were to buy a game on one 3DS, you couldn't simply move the SD card to another 3DS and share games for free between the 2 3DSes. This is anti-piracy 101. The "Nintendo 3DS" folder however contains more than just games. Saves, Themes, Home menu configuration, images, etc. Are all in that folder.
When you made an emuNAND earlier, you also copied your sysNAND into this emuNAND, and in the process, you also copied the "movable.sed". This made it so that the two NANDs, were sharing the same "Nintendo 3DS" folder, making them linked.
This creates a problem, where changes on one NAND carry over to the other. Ideally you'd want the two NANDs to be seperate entities from one another, they shouldn't be sharing the same "Nintendo 3DS" folder.
You can format one of the two NANDs (ideally using TinyFormat), so that one of the two NAND's "movable.sed" changes, because "movable.sed" changes upon a format. Therefore making them not able to share the same "Nintendo 3DS" folder 2. The reason why TinyFormat is recommended over a normal format through system settings, is because it addresses an issue that occurs when your NANDs have the same NNID in them, because formatting one of them with a normal format would break the other NAND's ability to access NNID settings through the system settings.

Apart from that, you should be fine! And now you have a region changed emuNAND!


1: Technically it is not a key, it contains some other information as well. But in the context of this guide, we are only interested in the key part of this file.
2: I should mention that in practice, you don't have multiple "Nintendo 3DS" folders on your SD card, but rather you have multiple folders inside of the "Nintendo 3DS" folder (Having multiple "Nintendo 3DS" folders would be impossible to due overlapping file names).
 
D

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nice! someone else who sees a reason to still use emunand!
a lottle long tho
but this is the first emunand tutorial I've seen
I had to figure out emunand on my own when I was a noob but I was also very stupid
 

MrJason005

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nice! someone else who sees a reason to still use emunand!
a little long tho
but this is the first emunand tutorial I've seen
I had to figure out emunand on my own when I was a noob but I was also very stupid
I really want to explain it to people, and also the background of the situation. I'm not really keen on "here are the steps, now, here's your magic black box which you don't know how it works" guides
 
D

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I really want to explain it to people, and also the background of the situation. I'm not really keen on "here are the steps, now, here's your magic black box which you don't know how it works" guides
I hate those kindof guides
there's so much room for malicious stuff in them and they are everywhere
I prefer blue mystery boxes
 

SirNapkin1334

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What's the difference between RedNand type EmuNands and GW EmuNand type EmuNands? I already have a region changed EmuNand, but I set it as RedNand type. Is this a problem? I went for RedNand since I don't have a GW cart and heard that GW bricks you on new FW.
 

HugaTheFox

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What's the difference between RedNand type EmuNands and GW EmuNand type EmuNands? I already have a region changed EmuNand, but I set it as RedNand type. Is this a problem? I went for RedNand since I don't have a GW cart and heard that GW bricks you on new FW.
Nothing really.
 

MrJason005

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What's the difference between RedNand type EmuNands and GW EmuNand type EmuNands? I already have a region changed EmuNand, but I set it as RedNand type. Is this a problem? I went for RedNand since I don't have a GW cart and heard that GW bricks you on new FW.
A GW type emuNAND has nothing to do with GW bricks. It's just the correct offset to put the partition at, so that it's accepted by GW's CFW.
I chose GW emuNAND because redNAND was giving me issues mounting the CTRNAND image. Perhaps this was just an issue on my end, but to be safe, I used GW emuNAND.
 
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SirNapkin1334

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A GW type emuNAND has nothing to do with GW bricks. It's just the correct offset to put the partition at, so that it's accepted by GW's CFW.
I chose GW emuNAND because redNAND was giving me issues mounting the CTRNAND image. Perhaps this was just an issue on my end, but to be safe, I used GW emuNAND.
About TedNand and EmuNand, is an EmuNand 1.3 GB and RedNand is 1 GB? Is that the difference? For the first choice, not the second.
 

MrJason005

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About TedNand and EmuNand, is an EmuNand 1.3 GB and RedNand is 1 GB? Is that the difference? For the first choice, not the second.
The only difference between redNAND and emuNAND is that their partitions have a different offset from the start of the partition table.
The 1GB-1.3GB difference stems from the fact that an N3DS NAND backup is 1.3GB, while an O3DS NAND backup is 1.0GB.
 
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senkunmusashi

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Thank you for the clear, concise instructions and the friendly explanations. I now have my new JP console all set up from stock to b9s/lumaCFW, with an emuNAND set up and region changed to US. Best of both worlds. Thanks again!
 
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senkunmusashi

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Well, after successfully setting up my new 2ds with a region changed emuNAND, I reflashed my flashcart back so I could play some DS games. Unfortunately, although the cart was recognised in the home menu, launching it gave a black screen, as if there was no sdcard on the cart, or missing kernel files. I thought I messed up somewhere and tested and retried everything, reflashed, reformatted, ysmenu, original kernel, everything to no avail.

Then I remembered, I am autobooting to emuNAND, what if I used sysNAND? And Voila! The cart works.

How can I make it work in emuNAND?

edit: fixed using the steps outlined in 3ds.guide/troubleshooting.html - 'DS/DSi Functionality is broken' section.
 
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MrJason005

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Well, after successfully setting up my new 2ds with a region changed emuNAND, I reflashed my flashcart back so I could play some DS games. Unfortunately, although the cart was recognised in the home menu, launching it gave a black screen, as if there was no sdcard on the cart, or missing kernel files. I thought I messed up somewhere and tested and retried everything, reflashed, reformatted, ysmenu, original kernel, everything to no avail.

Then I remembered, I am autobooting to emuNAND, what if I used sysNAND? And Voila! The cart works.

How can I make it work in emuNAND?
Luma should have reboot patches built in. What flashcart do you have?
 

senkunmusashi

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Luma should have reboot patches built in. What flashcart do you have?

Thank you for your help .

The cart is a R4isdhc Gold 2017.

Edit: Gone through the luma3ds wiki and really can't find anything. Really don't understand why the cart works if I boot in sysnand but not in emunand, any hints to what can be done?

Edit: according to the 3ds.guide, Region changing using CTRTransfer (which this method uses) seems to cause reboot patches to break. Is this the reason why the cart doesn't work in my emuNAND which is region changed?
 
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SirNapkin1334

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Thank you for your help .

The cart is a R4isdhc Gold 2017.

Edit: Gone through the luma3ds wiki and really can't find anything. Really don't understand why the cart works if I boot in sysnand but not in emunand, any hints to what can be done?

Edit: according to the 3ds.guide, Region changing using CTRTransfer (which this method uses) seems to cause reboot patches to break. Is this the reason why the cart doesn't work in my emuNAND which is region changed?
Go to 3ds.guide/troubleshooting.html and follow the 'DS/DSi Functionality is broken' section. I did that, and it started working again.
 
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senkunmusashi

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Go to 3ds.guide/troubleshooting.html and follow the 'DS/DSi Functionality is broken' section. I did that, and it started working again.

Thank you x 1*10^6! That did the trick!

I was searching everywhere for a solution but obviously using suboptimal keywords and all the old info that got dredged up were confusing the life out of me.
 

TheVortex8

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I have a problem. I did change my console to EU not long ago from US, and I followed your steps but with transferring US CTRNAND to EmuNAND.

When I am booting EmuNAND,l I get is a black screen and I must force the shutdown (there's also an ARM11 error when I do it with a prefetch error).

SysNAND is still working tho. What can I do ?
 

senkunmusashi

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I have a problem. I did change my console to EU not long ago from US, and I followed your steps but with transferring US CTRNAND to EmuNAND.

When I am booting EmuNAND,l I get is a black screen and I must force the shutdown (there's also an ARM11 error when I do it with a prefetch error).

SysNAND is still working tho. What can I do ?

Your original region was US, then region changed to EU? And then following this guide you created an emunand and region changed it to US?
 

MrJason005

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I have a problem. I did change my console to EU not long ago from US, and I followed your steps but with transferring US CTRNAND to EmuNAND.

When I am booting EmuNAND,l I get is a black screen and I must force the shutdown (there's also an ARM11 error when I do it with a prefetch error).

SysNAND is still working tho. What can I do ?
Is your sysNAND still an unchanged US NAND?
 

TheVortex8

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No it was already changed to EU, but I found my problem with Nintendo Homebrew Discord. Thanks anyways !

For anyone who has the same problem : Open gm9. Navigate to emunand ctrnand > rw > sys and press x on secureinfo_c and delete it.
 

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