Hacking A9LH: What if I lose SD card or it goes bad?

[Rfire]

In the Plailect guide it gives this caveat at the end: "You will no longer be able to boot without the SD card in, that is normal."

And I noticed that without the SD card you can no longer even get back into Decrypt9 to restore a backup.

My question is, given the unbootable state after potentially losing the SD card and/or it going bad how do you proceed? Is it just as simple as copying a few files to a FAT32 formatted SD/SDHC card? Should I use a low level partitioning utility to make a 1:1 sector by sector backup of the SD card itself? Anything else I'm missing?

Also, exactly why does it depend on the SD card to boot? The guide refers to the end result as a "CFW ... SysNAND" implying this is on the internal NAND. I'm guessing it relies on those "payload" files on the SD card?

Thanks.

 

[Davidosky99]

In the Plailect guide it gives this caveat at the end: "You will no longer be able to boot without the SD card in, that is normal."

And I noticed that without the SD card you can no longer even get back into Decrypt9 to restore a backup.

My question is, given the unbootable state after potentially losing the SD card and/or it going bad how do you proceed? Is it just as simple as copying a few files to a FAT32 formatted SD/SDHC card? Should I use a low level partitioning utility to make a 1:1 sector by sector backup of the SD card itself? Anything else I'm missing?

Also, exactly why does it depend on the SD card to boot? The guide refers to the end result as a "CFW ... SysNAND" implying this is on the internal NAND. I'm guessing it relies on those "payload" files on the SD card?

Thanks.

If your SD card goes bad just copy a new arm9loaderhax.bin from a luma 3ds (newest) release.
Simple as that.
If the SD card slot goes faulty, that's another story.
But that's very uniquely .
If you're still worried install shadownand or the newest fork of aurora's arn9loaderhax

 

[Ironknight]

With menuhax you booted the emunand by starting the Luma3ds payload from the hblauncher, right? A9LH does the same, but before the OS even booted, so when theres no payload, you wont get intp the OS. Its just a safety measure to make sure you dont accidentally kill A9LH. But if you want I can compile you the newest commit of Auroras A9LH, that one can boot without SD, because theres a mini-Luma IN the NAND.

 

[Gray_Jack]

In the Plailect guide it gives this caveat at the end: "You will no longer be able to boot without the SD card in, that is normal."

And I noticed that without the SD card you can no longer even get back into Decrypt9 to restore a backup.

If you don't have a SD on your A9LH 3DS, where do you would have a backup to restore?

My question is, given the unbootable state after potentially losing the SD card and/or it going bad how do you proceed? Is it just as simple as copying a few files to a FAT32 formatted SD/SDHC card? Should I use a low level partitioning utility to make a 1:1 sector by sector backup of the SD card itself? Anything else I'm missing?

Buy another SD card and put a arm9loaderhax.bin payload file and it will work again

Also, exactly why does it depend on the SD card to boot? The guide refers to the end result as a "CFW ... SysNAND" implying this is on the internal NAND. I'm guessing it relies on those "payload" files on the SD card?

Depends on the arm9loaderhax.bin file on your SD card. The A9LH installation rewrite in the FIRM partition, making your 3DS load the code of the arm9loaderhax.bin file in the root of your SD card (of course that is very, very resumed in the way I put it)

ShadowNAND, KGB and Aurora's last commit on her arm9loaderhax have a cfw payload and can boot without SD card

 

[Tony_93]

My question is, given the unbootable state after potentially losing the SD card and/or it going bad how do you proceed? Is it just as simple as copying a few files to a FAT32 formatted SD/SDHC card?

Thanks.

Just copy everything from your SD to a folder on your PC, if you get the SD lost or faulty just get a new SD and problem solved.

And make frequent backups so you dont lose save progress/new games installed if you ever need to make a restoration (twize a month or so).

 

[Rfire]

If the SD card slot goes faulty, that's another story.
But that's very uniquely .
If you're still worried install shadownand or the newest fork of aurora's arn9loaderhax

Ah, ok. Well if the slot goes faulty I'd probably just get a new 3DS since most of my uses on the 3DS depend on one anyway and even if it were bootable it would lose most of its usefulness if the slot went bad since the internal NAND isn't going to be enough space for game installation (even if that were possible).

With menuhax you booted the emunand by starting the Luma3ds payload from the hblauncher, right? A9LH does the same, but before the OS even booted, so when theres no payload, you wont get intp the OS. Its just a safety measure to make sure you dont accidentally kill A9LH. But if you want I can compile you the newest commit of Auroras A9LH, that one can boot without SD, because theres a mini-Luma IN the NAND.

Yeah followed the guide to a T. I'll leave it as it is for now. Thanks for the offer, I have Visual Studio installed so I could compile it if/when I decide to switch to the fork (or GCC via Linux if required since I also have that as an alternate OS). For now though I'll just stick with this.

 

[Ironknight]

Ah, ok. Well if the slot goes faulty I'd probably just get a new 3DS since most of my uses on the 3DS depend on one anyway and even if it were bootable it would lose most of its usefulness if the slot went bad since the internal NAND isn't going to be enough space for game installation (even if that were possible).



Yeah followed the guide to a T. I'll leave it as it is for now. Thanks for the offer, I have Visual Studio installed so I could compile it if/when I decide to switch to the fork (or GCC via Linux if required since I also have that as an alternate OS). For now though I'll just stick with this.

You need DevkitPro to compile it.

 

[Gray_Jack]

Yeah followed the guide to a T. I'll leave it as it is for now. Thanks for the offer, I have Visual Studio installed so I could compile it if/when I decide to switch to the fork (or GCC via Linux if required since I also have that as an alternate OS). For now though I'll just stick with this.

What??? Use the Visual Studio? It cannot even access the libraries needed to build it. The source of these V2 CFW and Aurora's arm9loaderhax fork have a make file to not have to build it using several commands in the terminal

 

[hibachib]

The most recent commits to A9LH do allow for the 3DS to boot w/o a SD card, although there hasn't been an "official" release as such yet. You can see more details at /r/3DSHacks

 

[Rfire]

What??? Use the Visual Studio? It cannot even access the libraries needed to build it. The source of these V2 CFW and Aurora's arm9loaderhax fork have a make file to not have to build it using several commands in the terminal

Yeah, I just assumed but I now see Devkitpro is used for compilation.

The most recent commits to A9LH do allow for the 3DS to boot w/o a SD card, although there hasn't been an "official" release as such yet. You can see more details at /r/3DSHacks

Yeah I probably would go ahead and use the latest commit but apparently it still has issues that need to be resolved as per Plailect's comment here.
. So I am waiting until it is deemed stable and released as such as an official release on Aurora's git releases page.

 

[Quantumcat]

Yeah, I just assumed but I now see Devkitpro is used for compilation.



Yeah I probably would go ahead and use the latest commit but apparently it still has issues that need to be resolved as per Plailect's comment here.
. So I am waiting until it is deemed stable and released as such as an official release on Aurora's git releases page.

It works fine as is - go to the thread "A9lh can now boot without SD card" for the payload files & instructions. No need to compile anything.

 

[The Catboy]

Actually you can now boot into your 3DS with A9LH without the SD card using one of these two builds
ShadowNAND
LumaNAND (not official name)
Of course, if you loose your SD card, you loose all your games tethered to it and you will have to re-install them again

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Actually you can now boot into your 3DS with A9LH without the SD card using one of these two builds
ShadowNAND
LumaNAND (not official name)
Of course, if you loose your SD card, you loose all your games tethered to it and you will have to re-install them again

Are any of these offical or just more of a on need to know basis testing kind of thing? I don't remember announcements for this so i wanna make sure is official.