I bought a Switch on my trip to Australia last summer, and managed to brick it a few weeks ago (post-5.0 brick on a CharJenPro dock that had no pre-5.0 reports of bricking on Amazon when I got it).
I already got a replacement machine (an EU unit this time) with the help of a home insurance claim. The cost of getting a replacement was never the real issue, it's the hundreds of hours sunk into Zelda and other titles that bother me. I'm trying to arrange a warranty repair in Australia (not a trivial thing to arrange from Finland, lemme tell you), and hopefully they'll be able and willing to repair or replace the console while also keeping my user account data intact.
However, before I send it in and risk a console replacement that DOESN'T transfer the saves for whatever reason (eMMC actually fried, or service personnel not even trying to salvage the account data), I'd like to know what the current state of the art is regarding account data transfer between consoles, and if there are any promising prospects on the horizon regarding this.
Since the old unit won't even boot beyond the Switch logo or enter maintenance mode, a salvage operation would likely have to operate at the eMMC level. I'm assuming that the actual flash chip inside the console is encrypted with a device-specific key, so I can't just take it from the bricked unit and insert it into the new one. Correct?
Is it worth me even trying to hold on to the old, broken unit in hopes of a method being discovered one day for reading the saves off the eMMC and into the new Switch? Should I just throw caution to the wind and try for a warranty repair, hoping that they at least make an effort to preserve the data?
I already got a replacement machine (an EU unit this time) with the help of a home insurance claim. The cost of getting a replacement was never the real issue, it's the hundreds of hours sunk into Zelda and other titles that bother me. I'm trying to arrange a warranty repair in Australia (not a trivial thing to arrange from Finland, lemme tell you), and hopefully they'll be able and willing to repair or replace the console while also keeping my user account data intact.
However, before I send it in and risk a console replacement that DOESN'T transfer the saves for whatever reason (eMMC actually fried, or service personnel not even trying to salvage the account data), I'd like to know what the current state of the art is regarding account data transfer between consoles, and if there are any promising prospects on the horizon regarding this.
Since the old unit won't even boot beyond the Switch logo or enter maintenance mode, a salvage operation would likely have to operate at the eMMC level. I'm assuming that the actual flash chip inside the console is encrypted with a device-specific key, so I can't just take it from the bricked unit and insert it into the new one. Correct?
Is it worth me even trying to hold on to the old, broken unit in hopes of a method being discovered one day for reading the saves off the eMMC and into the new Switch? Should I just throw caution to the wind and try for a warranty repair, hoping that they at least make an effort to preserve the data?
