PS1/2 PS2 Memory Card Help

[mar789]

So a few months back I was backing up my PS2 saves onto my PS3 with a knock-off PS2 to USB adapter, and I ended up accidentally copy a PS1 save onto the card. To my dismay the card didn't show my saves anymore but it did show that the data was still used.

Proceeding that I got my PS2 to run homebrew with the FMCB and all that jazz to see if there was any program that could access the saves or look at raw data of the PS2 memory card and none of the programs I used worked or did anything. I used one program to get a raw dump of my memory card, and if I can recall correctly it was called Memory Card Annihilation or something along those lines. The memory card I dumped is not an official Sony memory card, it is a 64MB I-Con memory card. The dump came out as two files, a 65.5MB .bin file, and a 1KB .mci file. I did some research on this and eventually I got to something saying I was missing the ecc data, and I had to add it and tried to do something with that to no avail. Still nothing could access the data and look at raw files or anything. I will also add that in the program that dumped my memory card, I could browse it and see each individual save.

Now I have been sitting on this memory card for a few months and decided to ask here. I figured I should ask here for help before I try any of my last resorts which probably wont work.

The first thing is this www.consolesandgadgets.co.uk/catalog/memory-adapter-playstation-p-1002.html to see if it could actually browse my memory cards data and extract individual saves and work my way from there.

And the last resort and most time intensive is hex editing. If nothing works I'm going to try hex editing chunks of data onto a clean 64MB dump and then put it on the 64MB memory card and see if anything like that would work, though this method would take allot of time and I don't believe anything would come from it.

So I ask here if anyone can help with this problem, any help or insight into my problem would be much appreciated.

 

[trumpet-205]

First of all, do yourself a favor and only use official licensed memory card that has MagicGate. That means either,

* 8 MB Sony brand.
* 8 MB Mad Catz and Nyko brand
* 16 MB Katana brand (actually 2 x 8 MB card in one physical card with a toggle switch)

Any other memory card will only give you more trouble than good.

Secondly, you don't need hex editing, memory card annihilation or whatever program out there. Simply use FMCB to launch uLaunchELF. From there move to mc0: or mc1: (memory card slot 1 or 2). Mark all folders then navigate to mass: (USB ports) and paste to copy all save files to USB flash drive.

If you didn't see anything under uLaunchELF that means your memory card is corrupted. Hex editing won't save you from a corrupted memory card dump.

 

[mar789]

If you didn't see anything under uLaunchELF that means your memory card is corrupted. Hex editing won't save you from a corrupted memory card dump.

I have tried uLe, when my problem first happened a few months back I tried using uLe, and when I used it nothing showed up. So I tried it again a couple of weeks ago to see if I did anything wrong and still nothing.


I realize it is bad to use nonofficial PS2 memory cards, but I never thought I would have a problem and simply wanted the extra given space without the need of multiple memory cards.

Since uLe doesn't work, I am out of hope? There's nothing that can be done to salvage any data off the memory card?

Thanks for your help.

 

[trumpet-205]

Since uLe doesn't work, I am out of hope? There's nothing that can be done to salvage any data off the memory card?

Thanks for your help.

That memory dump you made is just an image, meaning it makes an exact copy of the memory card in whatever state it was in. In this case since uLE didn't pick up any files the memory card is corrupted, so the dump itself is also corrupted. Hex editing is a lost cause here because you don't know how corrupted the dump is or what files is to expect.

I'm surprised you managed to get this 64 MB memory card working. PS2 games do check to see if the memory card has MagicGate (which only licensed one has) on it and refuse to save if it is not there.