Hardware Homebrew I need to replace my motherboard unfortunately. What data am I able to keep? How do I go about restoring the data?

kitttwilight · May 28, 2023

I need to replace my motherboard but I have games on my 3ds that i bought on it. Are those games stored on the motherboard? Will they be gone forever when I replace it?

Another question. As a way of saving the data, could I system transfer all the data to my old 3ds(that I don't use anymore) and then system transfer that data to my 3ds xl after I replaced the motherboard?

I have custom firmware

Kwyjor · May 28, 2023

kitttwilight said:
I need to replace my motherboard but I have games on my 3ds that i bought on it. Are those games stored on the motherboard? Will they be gone forever when I replace it?

Built-in games like Face Raiders and Mii Plaza store their data in the NAND on the motherboard; everything else is stored on the SD card. However, almost all data on the SD card is encrypted, and to decrypt it you need the encryption key – which is also stored on the NAND.

You cannot do a System Transfer from a system that has a broken motherboard (or that otherwise won't turn on). But if you have the encryption key, you can use a PC to decrypt the save data on the SD card restore that using Checkpoint after re-installing the games. You can also contact Nintendo to transfer the NNID.

See https://gbatemp.net/threads/restore-save-data-from-dead-3ds-2ds.606907/ . Make sure you read all the posts in the thread.

Hardware Homebrew I need to replace my motherboard unfortunately. What data am I able to keep? How do I go about restoring the data?

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