Hardware Homebrew SD Card corrupted because of CTGP-7 Installation

[neonathan]

So, i've modded my 2DS some months ago, and today I saw the CTGP-7 installer in Universal Updater and I decided to download it, since it seemed like a cool add-on and I love Mario Kart 7 (I only have it digitally.). So I opened the installer, let it do its thing and waited. When it finished I let it reboot, and i get an error on Luma saying "Failed to mount SD Card". Keep in mind this is directly after i downloaded CTGP-7, so i thought i'd turn it off and just take the sd card out, and putting it back in would be okay, since that has happened to me before, but it still couldnt read it. I decided to take it out and put it into my Laptop, and my Laptop wants me to reformat it, causing all of my files there to be deleted. Im a bit devastated, since I'm assuming all of my game saves (digitally) are gone and all that D:

- Has this ever happened to anyone else? Did i do anything wrong? Was it because my copy of Mario Kart 7 was digital and not on a cartridge? Could I try to somehow get the data back and if so, how?

- Sorry if i made any spelling mistakes or some things i worded weird, english isn't my first language and i can't describe things well.

 

[Kwyjor]

SD cards sometimes go bad, and yours just happened to go bad when you downloaded this installer. It's just a coincidence.

SD card data is sometimes recoverable using standard PC recovery tools. Testdisk and Easeus are popular.

And your English is practically flawless. Good job.

 

[neonathan]

SD cards sometimes go bad, and yours just happened to go bad when you downloaded this installer. It's just a coincidence.

SD card data is sometimes recoverable using standard PC recovery tools. Testdisk and Easeus are popular.

And your English is practically flawless. Good job.

I've heard that they go bad sometimes, just didnt know when. And about the programs you mentioned, they seem to be fine but both need money to restore files. This might sound cheap, but do you by any chance know a free program? If not, I could try to buy, just feels bad to buy something once when you might not use it so often haha. Thank you for the recommendation though.
And thank you for the compliment
(sorry for late reply, wasnt using my pc)

 

[r1vver]

And about the programs you mentioned, they seem to be fine but both need money to restore files.

Even TestDisk?

 

[neonathan]

Even TestDisk?

from what i saw yes, it could be possible that i downloaded the wrong software, but i will check again incase i mislooked (if thats a word lol)

Post automatically merged: Apr 22, 2023

Even TestDisk?

yeep, i overlooked (correct word), downloaded a different software thinking it was Testdisk, thank you for making me realize haha

Post automatically merged: Apr 22, 2023

Now uhm.. awkward part, I (think I) got all of my files back, just how do i put them back in? do i need to sort them all into the folders they used to be? And rename all of them? Sorry, this has never happened to me before as you can tell.

 

[Kwyjor]

Now uhm.. awkward part, I (think I) got all of my files back, just how do i put them back in? do i need to sort them all into the folders they used to be? And rename all of them? Sorry, this has never happened to me before as you can tell.

What files did you get back, exactly?

I don't know what you did, but if they don't already have their original names and original folders, sorting them out is going to be nearly impossible. You might be able to pick out your save data by looking for files of the appropriate size.

 

[neonathan]

What files did you get back, exactly?

I don't know what you did, but if they don't already have their original names and original folders, sorting them out is going to be nearly impossible. You might be able to pick out your save data by looking for files of the appropriate size.

(sorry for late reply)
I used TestDisk to recover some files, im not sure if all since they are all renamed and unorganized, some have bits of their original name like on NDS roms but thats it.. so i dont know if i can organize them.
Is there a way to recover the files without them being disorganized and renamed somehow?

 

[Kwyjor]

I used TestDisk to recover some files, im not sure if all since they are all renamed and unorganized, some have bits of their original name like on NDS roms but thats it.. so i dont know if i can organize them.
Is there a way to recover the files without them being disorganized and renamed somehow?

As I already said, I have no idea what you did or what files you have! You are either going to have to provide a screenshot of the files you retrieved, or explain in greater detail what you did with Testdisk.

 

[neonathan]

As I already said, I have no idea what you did or what files you have! You are either going to have to provide a screenshot of the files you retrieved, or explain in greater detail what you did with Testdisk.

Sorry, i'll attach screenshots of the files, most of them are just screenshots from games or badges so i'll skip those.
For what i did in testdisk, i opened the Photorec_win.exe file, waited until it recognized the SD Card, and then selected it. It recovered the files in an hour, but as i said (and you can see), completely unorganized and renamed.
(I'm sorry if i did anything incorrect, it is hard for me to do this online then in person, and if it isnt detailed enough, i cannot explain well.)

 

[Kwyjor]

For what i did in testdisk, i opened the Photorec_win.exe file

Bloody heck, sir, why are you running Photorec when you are supposed to be running Testdisk!? Did I mention Photorec in any of my posts!? Maybe you should find someone with more experience with computers who can help you in person?!

Admittedly I am not sure what is the best option to select in Testdisk when it comes to cases like these, but repairing the FAT32 boot sector is probably a good idea for starters, as per https://www.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/comments/96kg4v/my_3ds_sd_got_corrupted_and_i_successfully/.

 

[neonathan]

Jesus christ, my bad, there were too many files and I got confused, didn't check clearly enough even though i should've.
Thank you for being patient with me online at least haha.
I'll try to just look at the guide step by step now.

 

[Nintoad]

A bit of a late response, but the exact same thing happened to my card when downloading CTGP-7. I was not able to restore the card to working condition (something I’m reasonably experienced at). But I did manage to get most of my game saves (a few were corrupted).

I used DMDE to access the bad card and on the new card manually made the 3DS game folders (Nintendo 3DS/<ID0>/<ID1>) matching the folder names to the ones on the bad card. And I recovered the files in the DBS folder from the bad card onto the new one (Not sure if that was necessary or not).

Then I setup Custom-Install and reinstalled all my games to the new card using it and saved the console log it makes to a txt. Doing that, it used the same encryption key as on the old card (I think, I am not very knowledgeable about how the 3ds game installs work) so now all the files located in Nintendo 3DS/<ID0>/<ID1> should be the same as before. And the log from custom-install shows what game is in what folder. (example from log: Attack of the Friday Monsters! - 00040000000e7600… Writing /title/00040000/000e7600/content/00000000.tmd)

So then I (very tediously) went down the list. Like with the example, find the 000e7600 folder in DMDE on the old card, in that folder is a data folder with a .sav file in it. I copied that to the same folder on the new card and then did it one by one for all the games I had installed.

It may just have been a coincidence that it happened to both of us, my card was pretty old. But I definitely won't ever use the CTGP-7 downloader again just in case.

 

[Kwyjor]

I used DMDE to access the bad card

Did you not try Testdisk first? Or did you use DMDE because Testdisk failed? (I don't think I've heard of someone using DMDE to access a bad card before, so that would be intriguing.)

I usually advise people to look up title IDs at https://hax0kartik.github.io/3dsdb/ .

 

[Nintoad]

Did you not try Testdisk first? Or did you use DMDE because Testdisk failed? (I don't think I've heard of someone using DMDE to access a bad card before, so that would be intriguing.)

I usually advise people to look up title IDs at https://hax0kartik.github.io/3dsdb/ .

Yeah testdisk did not work, or EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, or Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier or any of the others that I threw at it. Most would crash or freeze when trying to read the card. Testdisk was the one other program besides DMDE that did actually see the card without freezing, as long as I stopped windows from mounting the drive first (otherwise it would also freeze). But it could not fix it. Even tried everything again on a different PC with a different card reader just to be sure and got the same results.
And I'm just now realizing that the folders the games are in is not more random encryption stuff but the Title ID... But at least I did finally manage to recover the saves.

 

[PabloMK7]

It may just have been a coincidence that it happened to both of us, my card was pretty old. But I definitely won't ever use the CTGP-7 downloader again just in case.

The CTGP-7 downloader downloads about 900 files, if your SD card is in bad shape it will have a high chance that one of those 900 files corrupts the SD card. It's not related to the CTGP-7 installer itself because all the file operations are handled by the 3DS operating system. If you didn't use the CTGP-7 installer you would have gotten file system corruption at some point as well.