Hacking Practical differences between EmuNAND and RedNAND?

[driverdis]

Just use Emunand9Tool. It even can convert a EmuNAND to RedNAND.

there is close to 0 benefit doing this, especially if you want to save space on a New 3DS. to gain all the benefits of RedNAND, you need to create a RedNAND partition from scratch using EmuNAND9's Complete RedNAND setup.
afterward, you are free to restore an EmuNAND backup.

 

[Rosselman]

Do I need to backup the sd card before doing the conversion or no?

Nope.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

there is close to 0 benefit doing this, especially if you want to save space on a New 3DS. to gain all the benefits of RedNAND, you need to create a RedNAND partition from scratch using EmuNAND9's Complete RedNAND setup.
afterward, you are free to restore an EmuNAND backup.

Very true. That's the only way to conserve the emuNAND and shrink it to 1.2GB.

 

[pustal]

Do I need to backup the sd card before doing the conversion or no?

Though never bad idea to backup.

 

[xx4xx4]

how do i start i dont even have RedNAND....
am i suppose to downgrade to 2.1 with RXtools?

 

[driverdis]

one of the main differences for Windows users, It screws you over if you format the FAT32 partition on the SD Card as Windows cannot see the second partition anymore (the one with all your games and stuff on it)

it seems RedNAND uses some MBR tricks to set 2 active primary partitions so Windows reads the second one (the one with your data). once you format, it "fixes" the MBR.
GW EmuNAND never had this issue.

Source: Myself as I just screwed myself over trying to get 64K allocation unit size on FAT32. I am back to redoing the RedNAND setup then backing up the MBR via HxD in case I get screwed over again.

I do not have any experiance with messing with the MBR directly but I am going to figure it out now so I can have my RedNAND alongside 64K allocation unit size.

 

[Rosselman]

one of the main differences for Windows users, It screws you over if you format the FAT32 partition on the SD Card as Windows cannot see the second partition anymore (the one with all your games and stuff on it)

it seems RedNAND uses some MBR tricks to set 2 active primary partitions so Windows reads the second one (the one with your data). once you format, it "fixes" the MBR.
GW EmuNAND never had this issue.

Source: Myself as I just screwed myself over trying to get 64K allocation unit size on FAT32. I am back to redoing the RedNAND setup then backing up the MBR via HxD in case I get screwed over again.

I do not have any experiance with messing with the MBR directly but I am going to figure it out now so I can have my RedNAND alongside 64K allocation unit size.

Oh, that's unexpected. Luckily for me, GParted handles it just fine, but I'm a Linux user.

 

[driverdis]

Oh, that's unexpected. Luckily for me, GParted handles it just fine, but I'm a Linux user.

I ended up finding a fix so I could have 64K Allocation Unit with RedNAND and still have access on Windows.
After doing the RedNAND setup, I backed up 0x0 to 0x300 to file with HxD Hex Editor (via the physical disk option) then used EaseUS Partition Manager to format the larger FAT32 Partition (which is my data and not the RedNAND) as FAT32 64K Allocation Unit

Afterward, I used HxD Hex Editor to open the disk (Physical Disk Option) then I overwrote 0x0 to 0x300 with my backup from before the format. Afterward, I could read the SD Card again in Windows. ChkDsk gives the partition an ok and shows it as 64K so it is good to go now. the 3DS can read it fine also, A9LH still works and RedNAND works also. All my installed games still work also.

 

[democracy]

I feel I need to add; rednand is more difficult to remove than gateway

 

[democracy]

I ended up finding a fix so I could have 64K Allocation Unit with RedNAND and still have access on Windows.
After doing the RedNAND setup, I backed up 0x0 to 0x300 to file with HxD Hex Editor (via the physical disk option) then used EaseUS Partition Manager to format the larger FAT32 Partition (which is my data and not the RedNAND) as FAT32 64K Allocation Unit

Afterward, I used HxD Hex Editor to open the disk (Physical Disk Option) then I overwrote 0x0 to 0x300 with my backup from before the format. Afterward, I could read the SD Card again in Windows. ChkDsk gives the partition an ok and shows it as 64K so it is good to go now. the 3DS can read it fine also, A9LH still works and RedNAND works also. All my installed games still work also.

I was trying to do this earlier this week but failed, awesome find!

Can you elaborate on what you hex edited? What file?

 

[driverdis]

I was trying to do this earlier this week but failed, awesome find!

Can you elaborate on what you hex edited? What file?

I hex edited the actual SD card itself. HxD has an option to open disk and you can select the physical disk.

Edit, I will write a tutorial on how to do this later today

 

[democracy]

Any issues? What size card do you have?

 

[driverdis]

Any issues? What size card do you have?

I have a 64GB Class 10 UHS1 MicroSD Card (Samsung EVO)

I have had no issues with any 3DS homebrew, A9LH, any of the A9LH payloads, or any of the normal 3DS functions. RedNAND also boots fine with zero issues.

 

[democracy]

I have a 64GB Class 10 UHS1 MicroSD Card (Samsung EVO)

I have had no issues with any 3DS homebrew, A9LH, any of the A9LH payloads, or any of the normal 3DS functions. RedNAND also boots fine with zero issues.

So I did this but after the change have been made, chkdsk reports the drive having 32kb cluster again?

Also, creating a small file on disk as a test properties reports 32k file size, so it looks like this work around isn't working for me.

 

[GerbilSoft]

one of the main differences for Windows users, It screws you over if you format the FAT32 partition on the SD Card as Windows cannot see the second partition anymore (the one with all your games and stuff on it)

EmuNAND9 started doing this before it added support for RedNAND, and in my opinion it's the right thing to do, since the EmuNAND/RedNAND area isn't actually "unallocated space".

Formatting the FAT32 partition shouldn't modify the MBR, though I haven't formatted an SD card on Windows 7 recently.

 

[TVL]

I feel I need to add; rednand is more difficult to remove than gateway

If you format the card using Emunand9 it's just as easy.

 

[nop90]

rednand and emuNand on 3ds is absolutely the same thing. A copy of the nand is written on the SD and the access to the NAND is REDIRECTED to this copy. redNAND name is more precise ad smea used for it's first CFW, but GW was already out and used Emunand, so this second name bacame very popular.

At the moment every CFW uses the GW format with sector0 reallocated, the other format was used only by Palantine CFW that was a reengineering of GW. But such details are not very important.

 

[democracy]

If you format the card using Emunand9 it's just as easy.

For me, emunand9 failed to remove Rednand completely evidenced by me not being able to boot with reinand. I posted in reinand thread about it.

 

[driverdis]

So I did this but after the change have been made, chkdsk reports the drive having 32kb cluster again?

Also, creating a small file on disk as a test properties reports 32k file size, so it looks like this work around isn't working for me.

I made a guide on how to have 64K sectors with RedNAND
https://gbatemp.net/threads/tutoria...s-sector-size-with-rednand-on-windows.422255/

 

[xx4xx4]

how do i start i dont even have RedNAND....
am i suppose to downgrade to 2.1 with RXtools?

 

[Just Passing By]

how do i start i dont even have RedNAND....
am i suppose to downgrade to 2.1 with RXtools?

Download this:
https://github.com/d0k3/EmuNAND9/releases

Then do this once you have it in your sd card:

• Backup your current EmuNAND and SD card contents (via EmuNAND Manager Options).
• Either use 'Complete RedNAND Setup' or 'Format SD for EmuNAND (min size)' to setup your SD card.
• Restore your EmuNAND and copy back the contents of your SD card.