Hacking Save not restored in game

[xWaterLily]

I have a sky3ds card which is working fine and well I moved some roms around and what not. I played rune factory 4 and quite a bit and backed up its save data along with the rest of my games. it seems like all the saves are there but rune factory 4 (perhaps this is because i played it through regionfour?) either way I still have the saves on my computer but is there a reason why they aren't applying to the rom?

The same said as i loaded it up it was "reformatting" if that means anything...

 

[DSpider]

Probably because you:

1. Started the game for the first time.
2. Played for about 4+ hours.
3. Quit the game.
4. Pulled out the Sky3DS flashcart. <- And this was your mistake right here.
5. Pulled out the microSD card.
6. Placed the microSD card in a card reader.
7. Backed up your imaginary save (we'll get to why it's imaginary in a moment).
8. Did shit with your microSD (probably added new games, formatted, whatever).
9. Tried to restore the imaginary save file.

Your problem was that after quitting the game (and BEFORE pulling out the flashcart out of the 3DS) you didn't press the ROM switch button on the flashcart.

How do people still not know this by now?

I swear, Sky3DS should come with this printed on the back of the packaging. Jesus.

The games themselves save to a temporary "EEPROM", which if you don't press the blue button it won't transfer to the microSD.

It's imaginary because there wasn't any save to begin with if you started the game for the first time, played for 15 h straight and then quit the game and pulled out the flashcart. DiskWriter saves the 1 MB portion of the microSD where the ROM is stored that usually contains save games, regardless if there's actually any data in there or not. After "restoring" the save game, it was as if the game started for the first time. That's why it's not restoring. Because the save file is blank.

 

[duwen]

I'd like to weigh in here too... I've been having a similar problem with Diskwriter creating "empty" save files - and I HAVE been pressing the blue button after saving/quitting the game.
Games that show as "eeprom-yes" in Diskwriter backup and restore without issue, but "eeprom-no" titles (like Pokemon ORAS, for example) just create an invalid 1kb .sav file.
What happens to the "imaginary" save file on the sky3ds for these titles, and what can I do to actually back them up and restore them?

 

[xWaterLily]

Okay Ill fill in some more information here. I know about the press the blue button before taking your card out, I do it every time I shut my DS off after using the card (as I really don't want to lose my saves) I am aware of the eeprom-yes and eeprom-no issue too. all my game are eeprom yes and where backed up the same way. Just so you know I played for about 3 weeks in total about 3 hours average a day

Edit : I have tested this before witht he same game
I press blue button before taking it out of the flashcard
open diskwriter
backed up saves separately
and restored them about jigging things around and my save for rune factory 4 was there

This only happened to this one game and not the other 5 on the card. The others have there saves this is the only one I lost and it is also the only one with regionfour

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

I'd like to weigh in here too... I've been having a similar problem with Diskwriter creating "empty" save files - and I HAVE been pressing the blue button after saving/quitting the game.
Games that show as "eeprom-yes" in Diskwriter backup and restore without issue, but "eeprom-no" titles (like Pokemon ORAS, for example) just create an invalid 1kb .sav file.
What happens to the "imaginary" save file on the sky3ds for these titles, and what can I do to actually back them up and restore them?

EEprom-no I have seen around and forgive me if I havent explained this right but eeprom-no has a different way of saving and isnt as easy to restore and back up like eeprom-yes.
If you look around the forums a little some people have talked alot of it

 

[Fire_Slasher]

I came here hoping to help but as I read trough I saw your problem is with an EEPROM=yes game, I haven't played any games with that, all the ones I played are eeprom=no and haven't had any problems with saves. But is your micro sd Sandisk's? I had a samsung evo before and it gave me all kinds of problem and when I switched to a sandisk all of the problems disappeared, games don't freeze randomly anymore and saves don't get corrupted in the process.

 

[xWaterLily]

I came here hoping to help but as I read trough I saw your problem is with an EEPROM=yes game, I haven't played any games with that, all the ones I played are eeprom=no and haven't had any problems with saves. But is your micro sd Sandisk's? I had a samsung evo before and it gave me all kinds of problem and when I switched to a sandisk all of the problems disappeared, games don't freeze randomly anymore and saves don't get corrupted in the process.

I am using a Sandisk

 

[gamesquest1]

did you happen to switch to a private header or anything like that?

i guess it could've just "messed up" in either the dumping of the save or the restoring and corrupted the save

 

[Fire_Slasher]

Well then that seems to be an eeprom=yes issue after all. Not sure if RF4 forces EEprom=yes and you prob know but you shouldn't switch to Yes unless a game truly requires it.

 

[xWaterLily]

did you happen to switch to a private header or anything like that?

i guess it could've just "messed up" in either the dumping of the save or the restoring and corrupted the save

Uhh I hadn't changed the rom at all no private header stuff or anything like that, just write and use. I saved a few of different backups at different days and all of them don't show up in game.. also the "reformatting" thing that happened when you start up the game for the 1st time hasnt happened since..

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

Well then that seems to be an eeprom=yes issue after all. Not sure if RF4 forces EEprom=yes and you prob know but you shouldn't switch to Yes unless a game truly requires it.

I didn't know you could switch it, I havent it was eeprom-yes from the write

 

[Fire_Slasher]

It could also be a regionfour bug now that I think about it. Did you do the press and hold the blue button + remove and reinsert sky 3ds process after restoring saves to the sd card?

 

[xWaterLily]

It could also be a regionfour bug now that I think about it. Did you do the press and hold the blue button + remove and reinsert sky 3ds process after restoring saves to the sd card?

Yes if I didnt nothing would show up
Would the fact that regionfour isn't updated and i have updated to 9.9 because of ninjhaxs having anything to do with it even though ninjhax has regionfour on it?

 

[Fire_Slasher]

It could be, did you play a lot before updating to 9.9? if so it could help to know as it can be a mix of updates+regionfour messing the saves up.

 

[xWaterLily]

It could be, did you play a lot before updating to 9.9? if so it could help to know as it can be a mix of updates+regionfour messing the saves up.

I more or less completed the game before updated and I believe didnt play it since updating. I updated it sunday and installed ninjhaxs yesterday before I was using regionfour alone without ninijhax but I'm currrently using regionfour through ninjhaxs as the regionfour website won't allow for my version number to get the right QR code.

Edit: Yeah.. Im thinking its something to do with that, I should have just not updated but the stupid prompt was driving me crazy!

 

[Hopeful Death]

Probably because you:

1. Started the game for the first time.
2. Played for about 4+ hours.
3. Quit the game.
4. Pulled out the Sky3DS flashcart. <- And this was your mistake right here.
5. Pulled out the microSD card.
6. Placed the microSD card in a card reader.
7. Backed up your imaginary save (we'll get to why it's imaginary in a moment).
8. Did shit with your microSD (probably added new games, formatted, whatever).
9. Tried to restore the imaginary save file.

Your problem was that after quitting the game (and BEFORE pulling out the flashcart out of the 3DS) you didn't press the ROM switch button on the flashcart.

Wait, really? I've only had mine for like a week and haven't used it much, but you have to press the button before you even pull the cart out? I mean, I get that you'd have to press the button before messing with the MicroSD card inside of it, but you're saying that even if you don't touch the MicroSD card, just removing the cart will somehow delete the save data currently stored on the Sky3ds? How does the Sky3ds even know you removed it from the 3DS? What are the technical workings on how the save is stored before pressing the button? This seems pretty weird.