Found out the hard way Nintendo only keeps cloud saves 180 days if you cancel online membership...

unvaluablespace · May 18, 2026

Recently purchased a switch 2 for my wife and kids after moving away from Nintendo due to steam deck and a switch 1 that died due to power fault. I assumed our cloud saves would still be there after all this time, only to find nothing exists for either account since we haven't used them in years. Thankfully I had the foresight to backup saves on my hacked switch, but currently I haven't had luck reviving my wife's old switch. I've been away from the switch hacking scene since I moved on to steam deck, are there any tools out there that would allow me somehow to inject my backed up saves to the Nintendo cloud so I can restore them onto the switch 2? Doubtful after some google searching, but thought I'd ask. I'm aware of save backup homebrew for modded switch systems, but hoping for a way to inject them to the switch 2 somehow or via the save cloud without a physical switch 1.

nWo · May 18, 2026

Well, to be fair, half a year is a very good time frame, in my opinion. If you don't care about a save that's been more than 6 months away, the best guess is that you would never want it back. I'm unaware if other companies keep them more time, but half a year is a good window. Sorry for the loss of data, it really is a dreadful feeling I know only too well.

Just my 2 cents.

thesjaakspoiler · May 18, 2026

To transfer save data from a Switch 1 to 2, you need a working non-banned Switch 1.
With a free regular account you can push your save data to the cloud and pull them back in on a Switch2.

The Switch2 hasn't been hacked so nothing exists to import the save data on it yet.

unvaluablespace · May 18, 2026

nWo said:
Well, to be fair, half a year is a very good time frame, in my opinion. If you don't care about a save that's been more than 6 months away, the best guess is that you would never want it back. I'm unaware if other companies keep them more time, but half a year is a good window. Sorry for the loss of data, it really is a dreadful feeling I know only too well.

Just my 2 cents.

Guess I'm just spoiled by Steam and my 20 year Cloud saves still existing. Could have swore PS3 having something like that back in the day as well, but a google search indicated no, lol.

My wife and I have 300+ save files in zelda, animal crossing, stardew valley. I kept them when I moved away from the switch and use them on my emulator of choice to occasionally collect koroks or just explore in 4k 60FPS back when it wasnt possible on the first switch. Alot has happened since then and I have two beautiful daughters but wanted a game system simple enough for them to jump on and play, as another option for my wife to keep them busy a couple hours here and there during the summer break, otherwise I would not have gotten a switch 2. For me the saves aren't really important since I have alternative methods for playing them now, but I am trying to get my wife's old saves if possible somehow.

Post automatically merged: May 18, 2026

thesjaakspoiler said:
To transfer save data from a Switch 1 to 2, you need a working non-banned Switch 1.
With a free regular account you can push your save data to the cloud and pull them back in on a Switch2.

The Switch2 hasn't been hacked so nothing exists to import the save data on it yet.

Guess its time to read up. I had my hacked switch 1 for like 7 or more years and somehow never managed to get the console itself banned. I was kind of hoping someone had managed to hack a tool to directly send saves to nintendo's cloud without requiring a hacked console, but it looks like I may try this and see if I can restore some of our old backed up games using my old hacked switch. (Glad I never got around to selling it after all this time).

I found the data transfer setting on the switch 2 but it looks like it requires a nintendo account on both systems?

Jayro · May 18, 2026

Long story short, OP couldn't be bothered to read the End User Licensing Agreements that they agreed to when first powering up the console. Bravo, good sir. You played yourself.

unvaluablespace · May 18, 2026

Jayro said:
Long story short, OP couldn't be bothered to read the End User Licensing Agreements that they agreed to when first powering up the console. Bravo, good sir. You played yourself.

The only clown around here is......*sigh* me :wacko:

To be fair, I wasn't planning to get a new nintendo console which was why I locally backed up my saves because I got tired of playing on a watered down system when I saw I could play them in 4K at better framerates on my PC. As for my wife, her system decided to die one day about a year or so ago due to one of the power management chips failing. She didn't play much anymore at the time, and I had already moved on, so I didn't even think about if the data was still in the cloud. Fast forward to today and having kids so we bought the switch 2 so they could play some of our old games and such. Now that we have it, my wife was asking about her old save files again, which brings me to where we are at lol.

Jayro · May 18, 2026

unvaluablespace said:
The only clown around here is......*sigh* me To be fair, I wasn't planning to get a new nintendo console which was why I locally backed up my saves because I got tired of playing on a watered down system when I saw I could play them in 4K at better framerates on my PC. As for my wife, her system decided to die one day about a year or so ago due to one of the power management chips failing. She didn't play much anymore at the time, and I had already moved on, so I didn't even think about if the data was still in the cloud. Fast forward to today and having kids so we bought the switch 2 so they could play some of our old games and such. Now that we have it, my wife was asking about her old save files again, which brings me to where we are at lol.

Ah, makes sense now that I have the full story.

unvaluablespace · 2026-06-20T21:19:01+0100

Update to this. It's been about a month since I moved everything over, no issues or bans (yet). Below is what I ended up doing:

I was able to move my wife's save data over to the switch 2, and I took extra care to ONLY transfer save data for games we own. On both the clean sysnand of the hacked switch, and on the switch 2, I took the time to insert the cartridge for every game we own, and let the system create a save data for it. I verified this by checking the save data in the game information itself. Once that was done, I made sure wifi was disabled, then rebooted the sysnand on the switch, used hekate to boot "Cfw" on the sysnand, and ONLY launched JKSV via applet mode (via album), then proceeded to inject the saves for all the games we own that she has files for. Once done, I powered off the system, removed the SD card just in case, then powered on normally, and re-enabled wifi, verified the linked nintendo account was still good by going into the eshop, as well as verify the saves of some games. Once ready, I then used the save data transfer on both systems and brought the switch 2 near it like it asked.

For Animal Crossing, used JKSV to inject both the system and BCAT save data, powered down and removed the sd card, re-enabled wifi after powering the system back up, went into the eshop and downloaded the animal crossing save transfer tool on both systems, followed the guide to transfer the data over. Then on the switch 2 It just asked me to link a user for the island.

I'm really paranoid that somehow they will detect something and eventually ban the system, but as already mentioned, ive only transferred data for owned physical games or purchased digital games, and the saves themselves are not modified in anyway. Pretty confident the sysnand is indeed clean, as no installed games on the emunand show up when booting the sysnand. Its been over 24 hours, so fingers crossed.

Found out the hard way Nintendo only keeps cloud saves 180 days if you cancel online membership...

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