Transfer saves from BANNED NS to unpatched clean NS

Zannael · Feb 9, 2023

Hi everybody. I've spent quite a few time searching online for a solution, but I didn't find anything exactly for my scenario.

I have two unpatched Nintendo Switch:
- Console A is clean.
- Console B is banned.

I recently got A, thus up to now I only played on B. I'll have a decent amount of game cartridges and obviously I have all their save files on B, and I want to transfer those saves from B to A.
Certain saves are modified through a save editor (e.g.: Pokémon, Xenoblade 2, BoTW), on some games I've only used cheats (XCDE, XC3 for movement speed, not for items, thus I think it's not a big deal), other games are completely untouched. Besides, on XC3 I have a non-legit DLC pack installed, but let's assume I've already bought the pack on A on the e-shop (hoping this will not cause problem when trasnferring saves).
I kindly ask you what saves I can safely transfer (if any) and how.
Thanks in advance!

ccfman2004 · Feb 9, 2023

I was in that situation a while back and when I used a home-brew app to transfer the saves and reboot into normal mode that Switch also got banned. But that was a few years ago so I don't know if a better method has been developed where you can install game saves without booting into a hacked system firmware.

binkinator · Feb 9, 2023

Zannael said:
Hi everybody. I've spent quite a few time searching online for a solution, but I didn't find anything exactly for my scenario.

I have two unpatched Nintendo Switch:
- Console A is clean.
- Console B is banned.

I recently got A, thus up to now I only played on B. I'll have a decent amount of game cartridges and obviously I have all their save files on B, and I want to transfer those saves from B to A.
Certain saves are modified through a save editor (e.g.: Pokémon, Xenoblade 2, BoTW), on some games I've only used cheats (XCDE, XC3 for movement speed, not for items, thus I think it's not a big deal), other games are completely untouched. Besides, on XC3 I have a non-legit DLC pack installed, but let's assume I've already bought the pack on A on the e-shop (hoping this will not cause problem when trasnferring saves).
I kindly ask you what saves I can safely transfer (if any) and how.
Thanks in advance!

Offline single player games saves are minimal risk
Online games that have not been cheated on are minimal as well.
Online that you have cheated on in any way can go from moderate to nuclear so unless you have specific reason to believe they are safe, don’t bring them over.

As for methodology, JKSV will export game saves from your old switch and import to your new switch but you will have to run CFW and homebrew on both to do so.

Atmosphere (CFW) alone is very low risk.
JKSV alone is low risk as well.

The tricky bit is all the other stuff that you might be running under CFW. Keep it to just Atmosphere and JKSV on your unbanned Switch and only import Offline saves and you will be at low risk (notice I didn’t say zero risk)

Here’s a decent list of things to look out for:

https://rentry.org/AvoidSwitchBan

Unfortunately anything other than 100% pure Ninty approved activities introduces risk and you will ultimately have to make your own decisions on how much risk you are willing to take vs the reward you want to achieve.

Zannael · Feb 9, 2023

First of all, thanks for the long answer!

This means obviously that I have to boot with CFW on my sysNAND on console A, and thus that I'll end up "dirtying" A (I'd like to avoid it, if there's a way).
So, my idea to keep A clean would be to:
- Backup sysNAND of A.
- Boot with CFW on sysNAND on A.
- Transferring B' save files to A thanks to JKSV.
- Restore A sysNAND backup.
But this would be useless if save files are included in the NAND backup. So, is there something I'm missing to maintain A "clean" while exporting saves?

Could be worth it to access the sysNAND storage from PC and manage save files "by hand"? (if I remember correctly it can be done with hacdismount and bis keys, but maybe it's even more dangerous?).

Sorry if the questions seem dumb, but I'd like to be as safe as possible.

P.S.: I must say that with console B I have spent a lot of time going online with legit games booting into CFW. Yeah, I ended up getting banned*, but I managed to do it for a whole year. Thus maybe I'm way too concerned, idk.

* I didn't care too much about online back in the days, and my computer scientist-side told me to test how ban works, so I knew what I was walking into

I had to erase the whole quoted text because I'm a newbie and it didn't let me answer, lol. Removing the links wasn't enough, a little bit weird but that's it :v

binkinator · Feb 9, 2023

Zannael said:
First of all, thanks for the long answer!
This means obviously that I have to boot with CFW on my sysNAND on console A, and thus that I'll end up "dirtying" A (I'd like to avoid it, if there's a way).

yes, at some point you need something to push the saves into your Nand. Even if you do an Emunand (copy of Sysnand)

Zannael said:
So, my idea to keep A clean would be to:
- Backup sysNAND of A.
- Boot with CFW on sysNAND on A.
- Transferring B' save files to A thanks to JKSV.
- Restore A sysNAND backup.
But this would be useless if save files are included in the NAND backup. So, is there something I'm missing to maintain A "clean" while exporting saves?

The dirt will follow wherever you inject the game saves. The injection comes after any cleaning up so yeah, there will be dirt.

Zannael said:
Could be worth it to access the sysNAND storage from PC and manage save files "by hand"? (if I remember correctly it can be done with hacdismount and bis keys, but maybe it's even more dangerous?).

You could do that if you’re clever but there is a numbering system that happens based on the order of games you install. You can see an example of this abstraction layer in this tutorial.

Zannael said:
Sorry if the questions seem dumb, but I'd like to be as safe as possible.

P.S.: I must say that with console B I have spent a lot of time going online with legit games booting into CFW. Yeah, I ended up getting banned*, but I managed to do it for a whole year. Thus maybe I'm way too concerned, idk.

* I didn't care too much about online back in the days, and my computer scientist-side told me to test how ban works, so I knew what I was walking into

I had to erase the whole quoted text because I'm a newbie and it didn't let me answer, lol. Removing the links wasn't enough, a little bit weird but that's it :v

There had to be something else besides CFW and legit games, but I hear you. ;-)

At the end of the day, CFW and JKSV aren’t very likely to bite you. It will be the other stuff you install under CFW and forget about (cheats, nsp.xci, dirty homebrew, etc)

Zannael · Feb 9, 2023

binkinator said:
There had to be something else besides CFW and legit games, but I hear you. ;-)

Oh yeah, I think I know the moment on which I got banned, that's a funny story. I had Tinfoil installed and the launcher was not only in the hb menu, but also in the main page (where games are). I clicked on Tinfoil and a pop-up error showed "game is corrupted" or something like that. I misclicked and I pressed something like "download again", spoiler: I thought I was in airplane mode, but not, lol. Like I said, I didn't give a s about online back in the days :')

binkinator said:
You could do that if you’re clever but there is a numbering system that happens based on the order of games you install. You can see an example of this abstraction layer in this tutorial.

Thank you, but I think I'll stick with the simple way at this point.

binkinator said:
At the end of the day, CFW and JKSV aren’t very likely to bite you. It will be the other stuff you install under CFW and forget about (cheats, nsp.xci, dirty homebrew, etc)

Yeah I imagined, I plan to keep switch A clean. Or at least use an emuNAND with all the attentions possible.

Thanks a lot again for all the help, I'll considering posting my experience with all the steps when I'll do it.

Marese310 · May 11, 2023

a better way that would make it possible if there was a way to trick the system to thinking it on the nintendo server like lan-play it may be possible to do save game transfer to non cfw switches but i dont think anyone looked into doing such deed, before i useto be able to transfer to non cfw switch if my cfw switch wasnt banned but you risk your cfw switch getting banned if not already banned just to copy of a save files over to the other switch. im sure it can still be done but know the risk that may come with it

Post automatically merged: May 11, 2023

it is possible to do, i use to do it with the pokemon saves but to do it you would need a cfw switch that is not banned and u would be risking your cfw switch getting banned trying to do it but if you transfer the save without doing a emunand and boot directly to your cfw to put the save u want to transfer to your nand and then boot to non cfw and transfer the save file to the switch A it would work but again you taking the chance of getting the cfw switch banned,

another option would be if we had a good programmer that can create a software that will mimic the nintendo server (like Lan-play) so the switches would think it on the nintendo server and communicate with each other which would then allow you to transfer the save file to any switch through the network

mbirth · Jun 11, 2023

This procedure is not for the faint of heart:

You'd need the memloader payload and HacDiskMount (or ninfs on Linux/macOS). This way, you can mount the storage partition of the Switch without booting it into the OS.

However, the savegame files are named 000000001, 000000002, 3, 4, etc. in the order they've been created by the respective games. You can inspect and unpack these with hactool.

So I'd copy everything from the old Switch to your PC. Check everything to find out which is for which game. Then run each game once on the new Switch and let them create the files. After that, mount the new Switch, copy all (empty) savegames from there and check them with hactool and, again, note down which is for which game. Then copy the old savegame from every game over the corresponding file on the new Switch.

Unmount everything and you should be fine.

The last time I've done this was a year ago, but it always worked for me.

LinksApprentice22 · Aug 9, 2023

Zannael said:
Oh yeah, I think I know the moment on which I got banned, that's a funny story. I had Tinfoil installed and the launcher was not only in the hb menu, but also in the main page (where games are). I clicked on Tinfoil and a pop-up error showed "game is corrupted" or something like that. I misclicked and I pressed something like "download again", spoiler: I thought I was in airplane mode, but not, lol. Like I said, I didn't give a s about online back in the days :')

Thank you, but I think I'll stick with the simple way at this point.

Yeah I imagined, I plan to keep switch A clean. Or at least use an emuNAND with all the attentions possible.

Thanks a lot again for all the help, I'll considering posting my experience with all the steps when I'll do it.

I thought I was the only one who had this tinfoil issue! It got me banned as well

did you ever figure out how to get tinfoil to work?

Viper187-OldSage · Sep 2, 2023

I don't understand why this is still so difficult. PS4 saves have been cracked for like 10 years. Never required a hacked system. Yet Switch and Vita have this half-assed solution of hack the hardware or you can't do shit in spite of the systems being dumped, cracked, emulated, etc etc. Modding/resigning saves for use on official firmware should be totally doable by now.

Transfer saves from BANNED NS to unpatched clean NS

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