Hacking 2DS Hardmod - NAND write always fails at 47%

[vt4000]

Hello all,

I recently hard modded my 2DS, and am trying to write back the patched NAND image. I did 3 successful reads, all with matching checksums, using the Startech FCREADMICRO3. However, writing back the patched image with win32diskimager always fails at 47% with I/O Error 1117 (tried 10+ times, always fails at exactly the same point).

What is going on here? Is there somehow a bad block in the eMMC? Is this recoverable? For what it's worth, the 2DS still boots to the system menu after the failed writes.

 

[Altairseven]

whats the size of the images you read?

if they are 1.2 gigs then the 2ds you have is one of the several that came with the same nands as the N3ds, (probably the samsung ones)

if that is the case.. the error you are having is due to your card reader, you need to use one from the compatible list of the new 3ds, not the 2ds. I personally recommend the anker reader, it works in both o3ds and N3ds nands.

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

even if the 2ds still boots i would not trust the current nands state after the write error, save the images you already have, just in case, odds are, they are probably in good shape.

 

[vt4000]

The sizes of the dumped images (I did 3) are all 943 MB (988,807,168 bytes). The NAND chip is the Toshiba one.
I also triple checked my solder points and everything looks good.

 

[proflayton123]

@vb_encryption_vb @gamesquest1

 

[vb_encryption_vb]

Soldering issue on the sd card, probably wires touching each other and grounding out or it's your reader.

Don't get the anker, they are garbage.

 

[vt4000]

Well I re-soldered the SD adapter, making sure no wires were touching, and still get the same error at 47%. I have the Transcend TS-RDP8K coming from Amazon later in the week; we'll see if that makes any difference.

 

[gamesquest1]

I ran into a console that had a similar issue once, it always halted at about 12% (not sure if it was a ducky nand or something, but the "bad block" seemed to land in the agb_firmorning save section so it didn't seem to effect anything else,

but seeing as your just trying to do the firm downgrade you can just use HxD to write the firm sections at 0x0B130000-0x0B930000 with those from the patched firm.....this may have even already happened by the 42% mark

 

[Spore2]

I ran into a console that had a similar issue once, it always halted at about 12% (not sure if it was a ducky nand or something, but the "bad block" seemed to land in the agb_firmorning save section so it didn't seem to effect anything else,

but seeing as your just trying to do the firm downgrade you can just use HxD to write the firm sections at 0x0B130000-0x0B930000 with those from the patched firm.....this may have even already happened by the 42% mark

Were you able to rewrite the nand properly later on or were you stuck at 12%?

 

[gamesquest1]

Were you able to rewrite the nand properly later on or were you stuck at 12%?

I just used HxD to restore everything before and everything after the point of failure and the console still worked fine it just seemed to be one byte of the nand couldn't be written to for whatever reason, I had re-done the wiring etc about 4 times before I decided to just try skipping that block which ended up working fine, the console had been bricked so the owner was just happy to get it back working and AFAIK there wasn't ever any other issues with it

 

[Wojton]

You can use a Linux dd utility as a replacement for Win32DiskImager. I also couldn't get Win32DiskImager to write to my NAND (it could only read from it, everything is soldered together properly, SD lock is in place).

I got around that issue by booting up Linux Lite distro and using dd utility to restore a NAND backup without any issues:

 

[vt4000]

Just a quick update:

So I figured that with 47% of the NAND written that the important bits were flashed (thanks @gamesquest1) and I went ahead with the rest of 3ds.guide, using oot3dhax, and successfully downgraded to 9.2. But, when attempting to do the ctrtransfer to 2.1, I got a "SysNAND Write Error" about 30% of the way through. Guess my NAND really was bad... Luckily 2DSs are pretty cheap...

 

[gamesquest1]

Just a quick update:

So I figured that with 47% of the NAND written that the important bits were flashed (thanks @gamesquest1) and I went ahead with the rest of 3ds.guide, using oot3dhax, and successfully downgraded to 9.2. But, when attempting to do the ctrtransfer to 2.1, I got a "SysNAND Write Error" about 30% of the way through. Guess my NAND really was bad... Luckily 2DSs are pretty cheap...

seeing as your hardmodded just try running the normal 2.1 downgrade with plaisysupdater, as was the case for me the bad block may be just a single block in a non essential area of the nand, while crtransfer writes the entire ctrnand a normal downgrade will only install the specific fw titles