Hacking Help moving Gateway NAND from one SD to another

[bikewow]

I bought a 16gb SD card, since the Gateway NAND limits the available space on my 2GB. I was planning on recovering some of my eshop titles from the backup I made of my SD card before formatting it with Gateway, but in order to do that I need the extra space - So I need to somehow move the Gateway updated NAND partition from the 2GB sd card to the 16GB sd card. Can it be done? Anyone know how?

 

[FR0ZN]

Make a backup of the card and write it back onto the 16 GB card (it SHOULD work, but I dunno 100%).

 

[Ryft]

Wow I was wondering the exact same thing... I was thinking of experimenting with it tonight. I'll do it if I have time and see how it goes.

 

[gamesquest1]

its all a bit complicated, i think if you do a backup using win32diskimager (the same program used to write games to the micro SD), of your current emunand then write it to the 16GB card it should work but you will then need to extend the fat32 partition to fill up the rest of the unallocated space.....just make sure you dont extend it to the unallocated space before the fat32 partition....this is your emunand

 

[kyogre123]

Nothing complicated. Use win32diskimager for the task

If you have used your GW to load ROMs, you must be already familiarised with this program, so this time instead of selecting a ROM, you choose a name for your backup and then, instead of WRITE, select READ, and the tool will back up the entire SD.

I suppose you don't need an explanation to write the backup to your new SD.

 

[gamesquest1]

yeah but for a lot of people i have seen they don't know anything about how partitions work and the win32diskimager will only restore a partition the same sixe as the one that was on the smaller SD which will need to be extended....so not as simple as copy and write

 

[kyogre123]

yeah but for a lot of people i have seen they don't know anything about how partitions work and the win32diskimager will only restore a partition the same sixe as the one that was on the smaller SD which will need to be extended....so not as simple as copy and write

I wasn't aware of this.

Then the next step is using a program such as MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition (you better use another alternative since this is not understanding the structure of the partitions) to increase the size of the FAT32 partition. I remember that the actual emuNAND is placed before the FAT32 partiton, so you just need to extend the FAT32 partition to the right, or something even simpler, extend FAT32 to the unallocated space that IS NOT EQUAL to 1GB.

 

[gamesquest1]

well if your on windows vista/7 or 8 there is a built in partition management tool, it is quite simple but i just warn people in case they screw up their current emunand and cant get their eshop games back.....so just a warning either keep the copy made by win32DI or keep your original SD card as a backup. for a worst case scenario

 

[inuyasha555]

well if your on windows vista/7 or 8 there is a built in partition management tool, it is quite simple but i just warn people in case they screw up their current emunand and cant get their eshop games back.....so just a warning either keep the copy made by win32DI or keep your original SD card as a backup. for a worst case scenario

I don't think the included partition manager is equipped for this task. It shows the partition but doesn't allow backing it up or copying it:

Oh so I misunderstood then? Nevermind.

 

[gamesquest1]

no not for backing up the partition....for extending the FAT32 partition on the larger card

backup and restore will work using win32Diskimager......THEN extend FAT32 partition.....leaving the 1GB unallocated the start alone...that is the emunand

 

[kyogre123]

For the sake of science, I confirm what I said before:

Your emuNAND SD must look like this. The emuNAND is the first partition of the SD, which is treated as unallocated space, then there's the FAT32 partition.

After you write your back up in your higher-capacity SD, you'll get something like this edited in paint image:

So, you only need to inscrease the size of the FAT32 partition to the right.

Something additional: Apparently this tool can't do this task since it's not understanding the structure of the partitions, but in essence, this is how it's done.

 

[kyogre123]

If resizing partitions is conventionally impossible There's a second method:

1. Do a backup ONLY of the unallocated space of your SD (emuNAND).

2. Back up the 3DS folder of this same SD.

3. On your new SD, create another emuNAND partition

4. Change the new unallocated space data with the backup of emuNAND. This awesome user is doing a program for this: #79

 

[Cyan]

Depending on your partition tool, resizing the partition could also alter the MBR (sector 0 of the card) which is used by Launcher.dat
You will have to restore the "header" of the MBR after resizing the FAT32 partition if the partition is not detected by the Launcher.dat

Spoiler

00000000 4741 5445 5741 594E 414E 4420 2D20 5448 GATEWAYNAND - TH     <---- Start
00000010 4953 2049 5320 4455 4D4D 5920 5345 4354 IS IS DUMMY SECT
00000020 4F52 2C20 5345 4152 4348 2046 4F52 2022 OR, SEARCH FOR "
00000030 4E43 5344 2220 464F 5220 5245 414C 2053 NCSD" FOR REAL S
00000040 4543 544F 5200 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ECTOR...........   <----------  Here
00000050 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000060 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000070 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000080 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000090 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
000000A0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
000000B0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
000000C0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
000000D0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
000000E0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
000000F0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000110 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000120 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000130 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000140 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000150 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000160 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000170 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000180 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
00000190 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
000001A0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
000001B0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0001 ................    <----------  partition table (0x1BE)
000001C0 0100 0CFE FFB7 0000 2000 0020 C900 0000 ........ .. ....
000001D0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
000001E0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
000001F0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 55AA ..............U.   <-------- end

Replace From Start to "here", it's the header used by Launcher.dat
from Partition table (0x1BE) to end, keep the one created by your resizing tool.
between "here" and the start of the partition table, it's unused.

 

[bikewow]

This seems a lot more complicated than I had anticipated!
I'm on a mac, too. I suppose I could do this in VMware, but I won't bother trying until someone with more knowhow than I can confirm a working method.

 

[bikewow]

If resizing partitions is conventionally impossible There's a second method:

1. Do a backup ONLY of the unallocated space of your SD (emuNAND).

2. Back up the 3DS folder of this same SD.

3. On your new SD, create another emuNAND partition

4. Change the new unallocated space data with the backup of emuNAND. This awesome user is doing a program for this: #79

If we could extract the NAND all over again, couldn't we just run the gateway formatter on the 3ds like the first time?

 

[Armadillo]

EaseUS partition manger can do it, without messing anything up.

Backup sd card with win32imager
Flash backup to new card
Extend partition into the unallocated space.

Works fine, no need to do anything. That's how I moved mine from a 4GB card to an 8GB one.

 

[kyogre123]

If we could extract the NAND all over again, couldn't we just run the gateway formatter on the 3ds like the first time?

I'm afraid I'm not getting your idea. But the tool that I linked on the last post should do the task, just wait until he releases an stable version, or ask him for the beta to see if you can just extract the emuNAND partition of the original SD, convert it to .bin and then inject it to the new SD. Since you aren't touching the real NAND in this, the beta should be harmless.

 

[Cyan]

he said he won't add restoring backup on a different SD size with his first version.
Maybe he will add it anyway on first release if a lot of users ask it.

 

[kyogre123]

he said he won't add restoring backup on a different SD size with his first version.
Maybe he will add it if a lot of users ask it.

- Injecting of a NAND backup to the Gateway SD (emuNAND backup & sysNAND backup).

I thought this meant the SD (ie: size) involved is trivial.

 

[Cyan]

#73

We have so many threads for the same thing, we can't follow what everyone is saying


So if the program doesn't touch MBR, just make two EmuNAND. one on small SD card, one on bigger sized SD card.
you can then restore any EmuNAND on any of the SD cards with an already prepared partition.