Physical vs Digital? How about both! Thanks to gcdumptool's latest update you can now dump your Nintendo Switch Game Cards directly to NSP with ease, and it also works on FAT32 microSDs!

Before going into the specific details, let's take a step back and explain exactly what it does in case any of you are wondering. gcdumptool is a homebrew application made by @DarkMatterCore which, as the name implies, allows you to dump your physical Switch games to your microSD. The app takes extra care to make a 1:1 copy of your Game Cards and also includes a few functions to verify your dump after it's done, as it can check it against an online database (provided by NSWDB) or show you the file's CRC32 so you'll be able to compare it against a good known one. Up until now the application could only dump games to XCI, aka the Switch's native Game Card format, and users had to convert them manually and externally if they wanted installable NSPs instead. However, starting from version 1.0.8, this is no longer the case!

While this is already good by itself, the real treat is being able to dump cards directly into split NSPs: this will allow easy dumping on FAT32 microSDs as a lot of Switch games are well over 4 GiB in size (thus going over the filesystem's maximum file size)! It doesn't end there, however, as the app will automatically set the directory's archive bit once done to let title installers treat it as a single file, and that means you'll be able to install your game without doing any extra steps. If you want to join your NSP back to a single file anyways you'll be able to do this easily on your PC, as the format is exactly the same as the one used by splitNSP.

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There's much more to both gcdumptool and this update itself! You can read the full changelog down below, and you can also learn more about the app's feature set on its official GBAtemp thread.

• Added proper metadata reading from multigame carts.
• Added gamecard -> NSP dump option:
  • Compatible with file splitting (for FAT32 support). The same layout from splitNSP.py is used: a directory with numbered part files (00, 01, etc.). The archive bit is enabled right away in this directory to allow HOS to treat it as if it were a whole file. This way, it can be used with any application with NSP-handling capabilities.
  • Compatible with CRC32 checksum calculation. Disclaimer: NSP dumps can't be verified against the XML database.
  • Output NSPs contain a metadata XML file based on the information from the CNMT NCA for the application, which is decrypted using code from hactool. The necessary keyset is loaded from "sdmc:/switch/prod.keys", which can be generated using Lockpick.
  • If a multigame cart is used, you'll be able to choose which application to dump from the menu.
• Dump verification process tweaked for multigame carts: it'll now look for a possible checksum match using the Title IDs from all bundled applications.
• Improved error reporting in dumper.c when a write operation fails. Furthermore, if a write error is produced when trying to write data to an offset past the FAT32 file size limit (0xFFFFFFFF bytes), the application will suggest the user to enable the file splitting option.
• Tweaked part sizes for splitted dumps: XCI/raw partition/manual file dump part size now matches the one used by XCI-Cutter, while the NSP part size matches the one used by splitNSP.py.
• Minor fixes to the UI code.

Source
GBAtemp Official thread

 

[DarkMatterCore]

On atmo 7.1 latest kosmos. But I get a fatal crash on opening gcdumptool.

Can you provide any crash logs?

 

[Slim45]

Can you provide any crash logs?[/QUif i take a picture from my mobile will that display any "sensitive"info?

 

[DarkMatterCore]

if i take a picture from my mobile will that display any "sensitive"info?

You're supposed to take a look at the "crash_reports" and "fatal_reports" folders in the /atmosphere/ directory on your SD card. Just PM me the logs, they don't contain any sensitive info.

 

[unvaluablespace]

So far I've only had the time to try Skyrim, but I made 3 attempts and every time, the dump tool says it completed fine, but when I try to install via goldleaf or tinfoil, I get errors and it never installed. I'm using the dump to nsp option, for my fat32 sd card.

 

[Ericthegreat]

im dumping doom right now it says eta 20h i mean damn lol

Lol, this is what I was wondering.

 

[Slim45]

Can you provide any crash logs?

 

[leon315]

one question: many people still have 3.0.X switches, for obvious reason Gamecard slot is disable, how can you dump higher >3.0.0 FW cartridges??

 

[DarkMatterCore]

*image*

Thanks, I'll look into it.

one question: many people still have 3.0.X switches, for obvious reason Gamecard slot is disable, how can you dump higher >3.0.0 FW cartridges??

My current guess is that the dump process fails under that case, but it's hard to know without testing.

Type 0x02 gamecard compatibility also depends on a FW version >= 4.0.0.

 

[leon315]

My current guess is that the dump process fails under that case. Type 0x02 gamecard compatibility also depends on a FW version >= 4.0.0.

what about switch updaterd to 8.X through Choidoujou method?

 

[DarkMatterCore]

what about switch updaterd to 8.X through Choidoujou method?

Should work. But then again, hard to know without testing. I'm on latest FW and never bothered to use ChoiDujour.

 

[DaFixer]

Great news!