Looking for help to repair the microsd card within an old R4 cart.

[angelicshadowdemon]

I have two old R4 carts. One could be fixed by simply changing my DS Lite's clock back a decade, the other is giving me a lot more trouble.

The cart is a Happybox (Seen below, not my picture but identical) and while the original cartrige it was in has some trouble being read by my DS, putting the SD card into the other R4 cart does work. However, it produces a black bottom screen and a white top screen with a red ERROR in a microsd card shaped box.

Here's where my internet searched failed me - the sd card itself appears to be corrupted as trying to view the files on my pc simply gives a read error and asks that the card be reformatted. Because it's been about a decade since I used the cart, I don't remember what games were on there and desperatly want them to be preserved (there were some great ones on there I remember and want to play again, I just don't remember the names).


I'm hoping there's a way I can recover the files. If not, I'd have to try and rebuild what I once lost... (I'll probably be asking for help on that if we establish saving my old games is a lost cause. In which case this will devolve into helping me figure out some old games lol))

 

[FAST6191]

Do try reading it with a linux machine (liveCD/USB being options if you don't want to format a machine for it, you could use a VM as well but that might be more annoying having to pass through the USB to it in this instance).

If that is more annoying then might be worth trying
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

It could recover things easily enough.

Beyond that. There might be ways to dump the file system (or what remains of it) if it is only names you care about and not especially the saves.

 

[angelicshadowdemon]

Never touched linux in my life so I'll give your other suggestion a go, if you can suggest ways to recover names that would help in rebuilding the entire cart if I have to go down that route...

Post automatically merged: Oct 3, 2023

Managed to recover some files from it I believe, no sign of games that I can make sense of. I'll include screenshots of what I've found and saved to my pc.

First section

I'd be more encouraged by this if I understood any of it lol, but it does look promising, I think?
ButtonLiB and skin aren't included because they just appear to be cosmetics used by the cart. As you can see I tried looking at the DAT files that seemed promising, but it was all gibberish (probably could be read by the programs?)

I'd try formatting the card and plopping all these on it and seeing what my DS makes of it but I'd rather get some confirmation that's the best course of action (I don't want to damage the files further, or god forbid my DS...)

 

[FAST6191]

DS should be fine. Do not write a thing to the SD card (sorry, should have made that very clear) as it could overwrite some hidden data from it -- most deleted files are left rather than having to blank them out, and if you change the file system we don't even have that route.

Most of that looks like you extracted whatever kernel that flash cart used however long ago, and a cheat database from 2011.

I was hoping either the DS files would be noted (though sometimes recovery programs look for the files they know) or their corresponding save files (and there is a .sav in that screenshot).
I don't think anything there would act as a database for your specific files. Though I am curious what the r4i.sav is. 38kb is very small for a DS save (most will be 256 and up) but more than enough for a text list of things it ran last, not to mention the date on it is rather later than other things. Seems you can do attachments on your account so by all means zip it and share.
Alternatively all I would likely be doing when I look at it is opening it in a hex editor and seeing what is on the text window.
If you need a nice free one then https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/ is the usual choice for most.

If testdisk and photorec have got it to that point the other program in the free world before you start going sector by sector is
https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva/download

 

[Kwyjor]

Easeus tends to come up when Testdisk fails.

 

[angelicshadowdemon]

The small save file could be related to the fact I only would have played a few games on the cartrige.
I tried Easus first for file recovery and it didn't even see the sd card.

Here's a .zip of all the files I recovered from the card.

All the hex editor is doing is giving me gibberish, like what I saw when I opened it in notepad. If you think a specific file will open with readable text let me know!

Recuva didn't work, it couldn't identify the file type.

 

[angelicshadowdemon]

Bump?

 

[master801]

How big is the micro SD card?

 

[angelicshadowdemon]

4gb. It's the same SD card that came with the cart and used to work.

 

[SylverReZ]

4gb. It's the same SD card that came with the cart and used to work.

Can I see a picture of what the SD card looks like?

 

[angelicshadowdemon]

@SylverReZ Back and front, if there's anything you need to read that you can't because of picture quality lmk.

 

[JORGETECH]

I have two old R4 carts. One could be fixed by simply changing my DS Lite's clock back a decade, the other is giving me a lot more trouble.

The cart is a Happybox (Seen below, not my picture but identical) and while the original cartrige it was in has some trouble being read by my DS, putting the SD card into the other R4 cart does work. However, it produces a black bottom screen and a white top screen with a red ERROR in a microsd card shaped box.

Here's where my internet searched failed me - the sd card itself appears to be corrupted as trying to view the files on my pc simply gives a read error and asks that the card be reformatted. Because it's been about a decade since I used the cart, I don't remember what games were on there and desperatly want them to be preserved (there were some great ones on there I remember and want to play again, I just don't remember the names).


I'm hoping there's a way I can recover the files. If not, I'd have to try and rebuild what I once lost... (I'll probably be asking for help on that if we establish saving my old games is a lost cause. In which case this will devolve into helping me figure out some old games lol))

I have exactly the same flashcart but I no longer use it. I sometimes get corrupted files when I use this flashcart (as files with really weird names) and then the card refuses to be written, but I still haven't tested if it's the flashcart doing it or if it's the micro SD card I was using. I'll try to test it with a known good micro SD card.

BTW, here's the kernel if you need it (archived by the Wayback Machine): http://web.archive.org/web/20121220023751/http://down4.nds9.cn/r4isdhcv2.0/R4iEnglishV2.0.14B.rar

There's also a firmware upgrade for the flashcart archived but I don't know how useful it is: http://web.archive.org/web/20121220023838/http://down4.nds9.cn/r4isdhcv2.0/3DS V4.3.0-10 Upgrade Firmware.rar

 

[angelicshadowdemon]

Thanks for the links!
I've mostly been seeing if it's possible to salvage anything on the cart before going ahead and rewriting it (Results in a zip file above.). Just getting the names of the games that were on it originally would help but no luck there so far.

Does seem like I'll have to wipe and recreate the cart, which at least means I can put some games I actually would play back on it, but still waiting on anyone with salvage expertise to help me decode what I got (Tried a hex editor, didn't work which was probably a skill issue on my part lol).

 

[Apache Thunder]

I'd recommend giving this a try:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

This can be used to dump the card at the sector by sector level to a bin file. This would allow you to preserve the data regardless of what state the filesystem was in. If you post it others could try and help with data recovery too. Having the raw dump of the card is basically the same as having access to the card itself so it's a good place to start.

Once you dump the bin/img file you are free to wipe the card. You won't lose anything the raw dump didn't catch. This would perhaps be a different story if this was a magnetic based hard-drive where more advanced data recovery techniques can be used...but this is a solid state storage device so there's not much else you can find that a raw dump won't obtain already.

 

[angelicshadowdemon]

I've managed to create a .img file from your suggestion Apache Thunder (Very helpful, thank you!). If I'm reading your message correctly you suggested wiping/formatting the card and writing the disk image to it once I had done that? I haven't done that quite yet (want to make sure I haven't done something wrong before wiping it) and I'm not sure how to share the .img file or its contents here.

File is 46912kb in size.

 

[Kwyjor]

you suggested wiping/formatting the card and writing the disk image to it once I had done that?

You can do whatever you want with the card now, but considering it failed once, and new cards are cheap, why would you want to keep using it?

Writing the disk image back to the card will accomplish nothing.

Not sure what the preferred file sharing service is these days, but there's an abundance of them. (You'll want to compress it first, preferably with 7zip.)

 

[master801]

Would not recommend to keep using the Gigastone micro SD card.

As others have said, it has once failed before and it's only inevitable to fail again.

Avoid Gigastone and buy one from a reputable brand and seller instead.

For example, a single Samsung or SanDisk 64GB micro SD card is available on Amazon for just 10 USD.

If you need something within a budget, I recommend either Amazon Basics, Silicon Power, or TEAMGROUP - Just know they're not the best quality.

 

[angelicshadowdemon]

I see what you're all saying, I'll keep my eyes out for a small, cheap microsd to replace this one. In the meantime, here's the disk image if anyone can help me find out if there's anything of value that's been recovered. I'll still probably try to repair the card itself, these issues may have been caused by my own curiosity 10+ years ago or something. In any case, I have a backup and some helpful people online here to help me reconstruct it if it comes to that.

 

[Kwyjor]

Huh. I'd have thought it be mostly empty space, but I guess it isn't? And that string "sBuildArg1" is everywhere.

I'd be just as curious if anyone can make sense of it.

 

[reha]

I see what you're all saying, I'll keep my eyes out for a small, cheap microsd to replace this one. In the meantime, here's the disk image if anyone can help me find out if there's anything of value that's been recovered. I'll still probably try to repair the card itself, these issues may have been caused by my own curiosity 10+ years ago or something. In any case, I have a backup and some helpful people online here to help me reconstruct it if it comes to that.

Just tried to scan the .img file with EaseUS Data Recovery (by flashing the .img to another sd card but it just skipped to the part that has .img written on it and it just recovered the unused partition instead, tldr: no luck), WonderShare Recoverit (This program had an option to scan .img files but it just rejected the file and said that it's corrupted) and Stellar Data Recovery (This one had a support aswell but basically it simply rejected the file and nothing happened when I tried to import the .img file) but it looks like none of the popular data recovery programs can recover stuff from it. At this point I'd just recommend you to try some stuff out on Linux.

Well I've just noticed something right now. The kernel that @JORGETECH sent in this thread shows as 44,8 MB on Windows, and your raw .img file shows as 45,8 MB. Only a MB difference. I assume that you only had the kernel installed on that microSD card, and nothing else. Maybe a few .sav files but that wouldn't make a sense since you literally can't do anything with .sav files without the rom itself. At least this is my theory.