Hacking Sky3DS DiskWriter V202b1 eats all of my micro SD's space and acts buggy

[Darkness63]

Here is everything that happened:

I loaded my Sandisk 64GB Micro SD with DiskWriter V202b1 using template1005 (through this SD reader), then formatted the Micro SD with the software and wrote 3 games on it. Then I put my Micro SD on the Sky3DS and loaded it with my 3DS. The three games loaded fine and I switched between them perfectly.

But then I put my Micro SD back on DiskWriter to add a few more games and problems started to arise. It added two more games perfectly, but as I kept adding games, they started to display their Title ID under "Image Name" instead of the game's title. I ignored it and kept adding more games, but then it started to bother me and so I quit DiskWriter and ran it again.

After reloading, I saw that all of the "faulty games" (the ones with their Title ID under Image name) were all gone. The only ones remaining were the first 5 games that I managed to add without trouble.

Not only that, but all of the free space of my Micro SD was gone as well. It displayed as "0mb free". That's ridiculous since just 5 3DS games can't add up to 64GB together.

That said, in order to recover my free space, I reformatted the Micro SD back to default settings. I got the 64GB of space back, but needless to say, all working games are also gone now. So I'm back to square one.

I'm hesitating to go through the whole process of writing games again since I can't tell if bugs will happen again. And if they keep happening, it will become an endless cycle.

What can I do to fix this problem? I just want to be able to write games properly and play them on my Sky3DS. Help?

 

[Xenon Hacks]

Here is everything that happened:

I loaded my Sandisk 64GB Micro SD with DiskWriter V202b1 (through this SD reader), then formatted the Micro SD with the software and wrote 3 games on it. Then I put my Micro SD on the Sky3DS and loaded it with my 3DS. The three games loaded fine and I switched between them perfectly.

But then I put my Micro SD back on DiskWriter to add a few more games and problems started to arise. It added two more games perfectly, but as I kept adding games, they started to display their Title ID under "Image Name" instead of the game's title. I ignored it and kept adding more games, but then it started to bother me and so I quit DiskWriter and ran it again.

After reloading, I saw that all of the "faulty games" (the ones with their Title ID under Image name) were all gone. The only ones remaining were the first 5 games that I managed to add without trouble.

Not only that, but all of the free space of my Micro SD was gone as well. It displayed as "0mb free". That's ridiculous since just 5 3DS games can't add up to 64GB together.

That said, in order to recover my free space, I reformatted the Micro SD back to default settings. I got the 64GB of space back, but needless to say, all working games are also gone now. So I'm back to square one.

I'm hesitating to go through the whole process of writing games again since I can't tell if bugs will happen again. And if they keep happening, it will become an endless cycle.

What can I do to fix this problem? I just want to be able to write games properly and play them on my Sky3DS. Help?

These are the symptoms of a fake Micro sd card format the card in fat32 using sdformatter4 with format type as full erase and format size adjustment on then run the card through h2testw and do a write+verify test. post the log of h2testw when it is done.

 

[Osmosis]

Easy solution:

First, run the damn thing through Disk Writer until it is functional (unformatted for Sky3DS). Then format the mSD into NTFS using Windows format. Then format it back to FAT32. Then take it back to Diskwriter FORMAT.

Congrats. No such thing as "fake mSD error". It's just bad formatting.

Another app you might like to help you fix this is Partition Master. You can find it for free at Filehippo.com. Just don't format your hard drive by accident and then try to blame me for your mistake. You've been warned.

Before you do anything, BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP (if you can)!!!

Format, format, format, format.... for some odd reason, Sky3DS is OCD about its MPT structures. We had our adventures figuring this out when it was first released. I actually revived a corrupted mSD from a bad Diskwriter format.

You know what's worse? Having formatted in RAID-5 and blowing out your HDD BIOS chips. It is near impossible to fix. Yup. I now have three metal bricks I'll never be able to fix or recover. What fun. I've revived HDD's before, but when you blow out the BIOS chip before copying it, you're screwed. Only way it'll work is if I buy thre exact duplicates and format them in RAID-5 and then physically transfer the disks. Not happening. Too expensive.

Anyone know a great way to grind HDD's?

 

[Darkness63]

These are the symptoms of a fake Micro sd card format the card in fat32 using sdformatter4 with format type as full erase and format size adjustment on then run the card through h2testw and do a write+verify test. post the log of h2testw when it is done.

I did the write+verify test. All systems on green. No errors reported at all. There's no need to post the log.

Easy solution:

First, run the damn thing through Disk Writer until it is functional (unformatted for Sky3DS). Then format the mSD into NTFS using Windows format. Then format it back to FAT32. Then take it back to Diskwriter FORMAT.

Congrats. No such thing as "fake mSD error". It's just bad formatting.

Another app you might like to help you fix this is Partition Master. You can find it for free at Filehippo.com. Just don't format your hard drive by accident and then try to blame me for your mistake. You've been warned.

I did all of that, except with SDformatter instad of Partition Master. SDformatter is optimized for mSD's.

Anyway, I already tried two different mSD's. A Sandisk 64GB and a Samsung 32GB. I also tried them with two different mSD readers. Both gave me the same error: only the first 5 games are writable, the remaining games simply vanish.

Plus, I returned one of the mSD's to default settings (after reformating/formating again, etc), so I could get rid of everything on it. Then I wrote 4 different games as the new first 4 games on the mSD for a change. Only the last game worked on Sky3DS. Seriously?

Honestly, I'm already getting tired of those little Sky3DS adventures. I've been doing nothing since yesterday morning other than messing with Sky3DS and formatting/reformatting stuff compulsively. Nothing I do seems to work and I keep wasting my time. I really can't understand why it works for everyone else except for me. I've done every step written on the official Sky3DS tutorial precisely. Hell, I've even watched videos of people doing it and replicated THE SAME VERY STEPS they did. To no avail.

 

[LittleRod]

I'm thinking that you have some faulty mSD, but im not sure. If you have time, run h2testw to check your mSD.

 

[Xenon Hacks]

I'm thinking that you have some faulty mSD, but im not sure. If you have time, run h2testw to check your mSD.

I did the write+verify test. All systems on green. No errors reported at all. There's no need to post the log.

 

[Quantumcat]

Congrats. No such thing as "fake mSD error". It's just bad formatting.

No such thing as a fake mSD? Yes there is - ebay is full of them! We're you just kidding or what??? I have personally bought at least three fakes (all checked with h2testw). They said they had 32GB and actually only had 8-12GB of useable space. Your PC gets tricked into showing more space and using ts own memory to store thing a greater than the real space.

By the way if you were kidding I am sorry, I didn't read your whole reply. It probably needs a tl;dr in it.

 

[Darkness63]

I did the write+verify test. All systems on green. No errors reported at all. There's no need to post the log.

To tell the truth, when I said that I had only tested like 10% of the storage space. It'd take too long to finish so I aborted the operation and thought the mSD was perfect.

...turns out it's highly likely it's fake. I did some tests here and there (even tried to load games with it through gateway and they failed). So everything is pointing out it's fake. It's late where I live right now so I will call it a day. But tomorrow I will do the write+verify test on the WHOLE mSD to determine for once if it's fake or legit. (Pretty sure it's the former). Once it's done, I will post the results for you guys.

I'm considering buying another LEGIT 64GB mSD. I don't live in the United States so I can't buy stuff from newegg and the like, so I prefer to stick to mercadolivre (pretty much the Latin America equivalent to ebay). I did a quick search for 64GB mSD's and those were the first results:

http://lista.mercadolivre.com.br/64gb-micro-sd#D[A:64gb-micro-sd]

Can you guys recommend me a good one from this list? I will be waiting for the answer and check it out when I wake up. Good night.

 

[LittleRod]

I dont buy mSD in MercadoLibre because a high % of them are fakes. I recommend you to go to a Shop so you will have warranty if its fake. Probably you will pay a little more, but you will be sure that your microsd will be legit. At least in eBay, you have Paypal in case something go wrong, but Mercadolibre doesnt do anything if the mSD you bought its fake.

But first, run a h2testw lol.

EDIT: If you HAVE to buy it in Mercadolibre, just get this
http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/...dhc-64gb-ultra-sd-sandisk-classe-10-30mbs-_JM
or this
http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/...cro-sdxc-64gb-48mbs-sd-xperia-mini-galaxy-_JM
At least for me, i didnt have any problems with Sandisk and Samsung c10

 

[Quantumcat]

I dont buy mSD in MercadoLibre because a high % of them are fakes. I recommend you to go to a Shop so you will have warranty if its fake. Probably you will pay a little more, but you will be sure that your microsd will be legit. At least in eBay, you have Paypal in case something go wrong, but Mercadolibre doesnt do anything if the mSD you bought its fake.

But first, run a h2testw lol.

EDIT: If you HAVE to buy it in Mercadolibre, just get this
http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/...dhc-64gb-ultra-sd-sandisk-classe-10-30mbs-_JM
or this
http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/...cro-sdxc-64gb-48mbs-sd-xperia-mini-galaxy-_JM
At least for me, i didnt have any problems with Sandisk and Samsung c10

+1 to buying it in a shop. I've never seen anyone get a fake from a physical shop. Worth the extra $ to avoid all the hassle.

 

[Darkness63]

Took far longer than I expected, but I finally have the h2testw results. I tested it with both my 32GB Samsung mSD and my 64GB Sandisk one. Here they are:

The media is likely to be defective.
6.4 GByte OK (13613374 sectors)
23.7 GByte DATA LOST (49817282 sectors)
Details:23.7 GByte overwritten (49817277 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
2.5 KByte corrupted (5 sectors)
1.0 MByte aliased memory (2095 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x000000019e72be00
Expected: 0x000000019e72be00
Found: 0x000000019f72be00
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 2.74 MByte/s
Reading speed: 8.90 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

http://imgur.com/PRyMolO

Warning: Only 63967 of 63968 MByte tested.
The media is likely to be defective.
7.6 GByte OK (16129006 sectors)
54.7 GByte DATA LOST (114875410 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
54.7 GByte corrupted (114875410 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x00000001de28fe00
Expected: 0x00000001de28fe00
Found: 0x0000000000000000
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 1.56 MByte/s
Reading speed: 8.27 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

http://imgur.com/a43E6L1

So... it seems like they are damaged, right? I don't know for sure since this is the first time I use h2testw.

 

[Quantumcat]

Took far longer than I expected, but I finally have the h2testw results. I tested it with both my 32GB Samsung mSD and my 64GB Sandisk one. Here they are:





So... it seems like they are damaged, right? I don't know for sure since this is the first time I use h2testw.

Yep, you have a fake card.

 

[Darkness63]

...damn <_<

I must say whoever made this fake did a HELL of a convincing job because it looks just like an original.

anyway, is there not a way to tell for sure a card is legit before buying it? Only buying it from a shop, maybe?

 

[QCLasky]

Fake SD card

 

[Quantumcat]

...damn <_<

I must say whoever made this fake did a HELL of a convincing job because it looks just like an original.

anyway, is there not a way to tell for sure a card is legit before buying it? Only buying it from a shop, maybe?

Really the only way to be certain is to buy from a physical shop. If you have to buy from ebay then only buy from people with 100% feedback or close (look at the negatives and neutrals to see if anyone got a fake from them). Always use PayPal, so you can get your money back (if you use the "counterfeit" option when filing a claim you shouldn't have to send it back for a refund). If you have to buy from an online retailer only use ones that accept Paypal.

 

[DjoeN]

Since i bought a fake, i never buy SD's online again, just in stores physical!