# convert .srm to .sav



## Hockeydavid (Jun 25, 2019)

I want to transfer my progress from retroarch to VBA, but in order to do that I need to convert my .srm file(136 KB) into a .sav file(128 KB). How do I do that? Is there any apps or .exe files that can do this for me?


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## FAST6191 (Jun 25, 2019)

I don't know if there are such tools, or if retroarch has an export function somewhere (VBA will have one saying import battery save which you might find yourself using).

What I would suspect is as the GBA has no header for its save files that retroarch adds its own header or footer (section before or after the save file respectively) detailing what game it belongs to and giving people that rename their ROMS a chance of matching things back up when they return in a few years.

8 Kilobytes is quite a bit for such a thing though (the various GBA flash carts/DS handling programs that also do it only use a few dozen bytes as that is all you really need) but should still be a matter of deleting the additional 8KB.

I have not looked but if SRM is instead a savestate rather than the conventional in game tave then it will be a compressed one (the GBA has nearly 400 kilobytes of memory all in) so you will have to figure out what goes there. You can convert between savestates but I am not aware of any existing programs to do it, though that is just as likely as because I don't use or care for retroarch as a project.


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## xYuunax (Jun 25, 2019)

google search came up with a guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/9oqqiu/guide_how_to_convert_srm_and_sav_gba_save_files/


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## Hockeydavid (Jun 25, 2019)

How do I compile gbaconv?


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