ROM Hack Is there any hope salvaging save data from a dead 3DS to be transferred to a different 3DS?

reiyu

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Got a friend's 3DS that's physically dead and they'd want to salvage the saves. Is there any hope?

*edit*
Dead 3DS has a NAND backup.

Thanks!
 
Last edited by reiyu,

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Got a friend's 3DS that's physically dead and they'd want to salvage the saves. Is there any hope?

Just for context, dead 3DS never had mods, but the new target 3DS is modded. Just wanted to know if there's like a save adapter or something.

Thanks!
Nope no way
 

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If you had the movable.sed from a nand backup or that consoles essential.exefs, you could use that movable to decrypt the saves, but since its not modded, you can't do that. IIRC there is a way to get the consoles movable if you have a Mii QR code from a Mii that was made on console A.
 
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reiyu

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If you had the movable.sed from a nand backup or that consoles essential.exefs, you could use that movable to decrypt the saves, but since its not modded, you can't do that. IIRC there is a way to get the consoles movable if you have a Mii QR code from a Mii that was made on console A.
it seems that the 3DS was modded and he did a NAND backup! what are the tools that we can use for recovery?

Did you or anyone else you guys know ever added your friend's Friend Code to yours or theirs Friend List? If so, there's a very slim chance of recovering his/her Nintendo 3DS folder through SDTransfer methods.
sadly he was playing offline all the time as he was scared of a ban going online.
 

lone_wolf323

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it seems that the 3DS was modded and he did a NAND backup! what are the tools that we can use for recovery?


sadly he was playing offline all the time as he was scared of a ban going online.
Seems his unneeded scaredness of online has screwed him more than he thought with his console. That friend ID was and is very much needed to get at that data. Without it. his data is a lost cause.
 

lilyuwuu

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With the NAND backup, you can open the NAND backup using ninfs (you might also be able to mount it using GodMode9 on a modded 3DS),then you should be able to find movable.sed in /private/. You From there you have a couple options:

- You could likely mount the Nintendo 3DS folder via ninfs, and decrypt it with the movable.sed. From there you can grab and then unpack the 00000001.sav files with 3ds-save-tool.
- You could manually decrypt and unpack the save files with 3ds-save-tool. This would require keys that we are unable to provide.
- You could inject movable.sed into a working console, fix CMACs, run faketik, then make backups via Checkpoint. Make a NAND backup before doing this.
 

reiyu

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With the NAND backup, you can open the NAND backup using ninfs (you might also be able to mount it using GodMode9 on a modded 3DS),then you should be able to find movable.sed in /private/. You From there you have a couple options:

- You could likely mount the Nintendo 3DS folder via ninfs, and decrypt it with the movable.sed. From there you can grab and then unpack the 00000001.sav files with 3ds-save-tool.
- You could manually decrypt and unpack the save files with 3ds-save-tool. This would require keys that we are unable to provide.
- You could inject movable.sed into a working console, fix CMACs, run faketik, then make backups via Checkpoint. Make a NAND backup before doing this.

Thanks! I have the OTP and the NAND backup, but no boot9 in which ninfs requires. Can I use a boot9 file from any 3DS?
 

reiyu

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upload_2020-12-26_5-21-2.png

I only have these files after the mount, the essential folder is empty as well. where can i get said movable.sed file from?
 
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KleinesSinchen

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View attachment 239415
I only have these files after the mount, the essential folder is empty as well. where can i get said movable.sed file from?
Did you try to mount ctrnand_full with OSFMount on your Windows computer?
 

reiyu

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upload_2020-12-26_5-46-40.png

Thank you all for all your help so far! Trying to extract MH4U (0004000000126300) save, but I found like 3 directories. each of them has a 00000001.sav file. Which one would be the best bet?

**edit**
Actually only title\0004000\data and backup\002 has the 00000001.sav file. The one in the backup folder has a more recent date modified. I'm assuming that's the actual correct latest file?

Next would be what's the most user-friendly tool that I can use to transfer this to a different 3DS? 3ds-save-tool seems complicated to me.
 
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-snip-

Next would be what's the most user-friendly tool that I can use to transfer this to a different 3DS? 3ds-save-tool seems complicated to me.
Data recovery Recovering data from on the Nintendo 3DS folder is tedious and cumbersome affair procedure, but the previously mentioned SDTransfer methods does not involves don't involve require 3ds-save-tool.

Edit- bad grammar.
 
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reiyu

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Data recovery Recovering data from on the Nintendo 3DS folder is tedious and cumbersome affair procedure, but the previously mentioned SDTransfer methods does not involves don't involve require 3ds-save-tool.

Edit- bad grammar.
Seems that the SDTransfer method is far more complicated than 3ds-save-tool. Are there any tutorials on how to use 3ds-save-tools around, like some examples on how to decrypt and encrypt?
 
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Seems that the SDTransfer method is far more complicated than 3ds-save-tool. Are there any tutorials on how to use 3ds-save-tools around, like some examples on how to decrypt and encrypt?
You're basically a quarter way done in the SDTransfer method when you managed to image mount that SysNAND *.bin and extract the (source) movable.bin. The biggest hurdles are installing the ninfs program, familiarizing yourself in how to use its menu & features, and obtaining that movable.sed with the correct exact 0x10 bytes KeyY.

The rest of the work involves grabbing the other (target) movable.sed, some back and forth copying + pasting the contents (decryption & re-encryption), correcting the CMACs, restoring the tickets, mass unwrapping gift icons, resetting all the secure values, and a final backing up the saves + extdata in a proper save manager as an extra safety precaution.

If the SDTransfer method seems difficult to you, I'm not sure if approaching this from the 3ds-save-tool route would necessarily be better or any easier. As far as I know, there aren't example tutorials on how to use 3ds-save-tool. The type of user who may want to is likely to have a basic grasp about programming and feel right at home entering line codes in Command Prompt (Windows) or Terminal (Linux, Mac).
 
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reiyu

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If the SDTransfer method seems difficult to you, I'm not sure if approaching this from the 3ds-save-tool route would necessarily be better or any easier. As far as I know, there aren't example tutorials on how to use 3ds-save-tool. The type of user who may want to is likely to have a basic grasp about programming and feel right at home entering line codes in Command Prompt (Windows) or Terminal (Linux, Mac).
I think I'm more comfortable with Python and CLI. But I'll try my luck. Thanks all for the info!
 

lilyuwuu

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There are examples in the 3ds-save-tool repo of what to enter. If you've got decrypted `00000001.sav` files retrieved via ninfs, you can run
./disa-extract.py \
"sdmc/gm9out/00000001.sav" \
"output/savedata"
somehow -- obviously replace the directories with your actual directory.
 
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- You could inject movable.sed into a working console, fix CMACs, run faketik, then make backups via Checkpoint. Make a NAND backup before doing this.
@reiyu, a bit of warning about modifying the [1:] SYSNAND CTRNAND. You really do need to backup the sysnand beforehand if this is attempted.

Exchanging the movable.sed will cause the 3DS firmware to permanently erase your user profile setup the next time you boot up HOME Menu. It's because the 3DS won't find the 1:/data/<ID0> directory due to the change in the 0x30 KeyY, so it'll delete everything within the data folder from the assumption the user initiated a factory reset (Format System Memory).

Also, don't plan on keeping the injected (source) movable.sed on the donor (target) 3DS system for the long term. You can read more about the risks of doing that from the (Very Messy Tutorial) SDTransfer [...] in the section, WARNING: About unauthorized System Transfer, and these threads.

You should be fine as long as certain safety precautions are observed and followed.
  • (1) The (target) system injected with the (source) movable.sed keeps its WiFi turned off at all times.
  • (2) The purpose of doing this is to backup the saves + extdata in the Nintendo 3DS folder with user friendly save manager(s): Checkpoint, JKSM, SaveDataFiler, and/or GBAVCSM.
    • You only want to pull out those data in their decrypted, more usable form.
  • (3) The (target) system's own sysnand is restored once all the sought after data has been recovered.

I'm still not sure what advantage you're trying to gain from 3ds-save-tool because after backing up those saves + extdata, there's still the question of restoring them to the (target) system's Nintendo 3DS folder. The games, dlcs, and updates from the (source) system's Nintendo 3DS folder can't be directly switched over to the (target) system unless you take into account the pesky console unique KeyY<ID0> encryption hurdle, which is what the SDTransfer method entails. If not, there's collecting and reinstalling all the CIAs (FBI , custom-install) to rebuild the library from scratch, but that kinda seems like way more work than necessary to get to restoring everything.
 
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