Hacking Oh god. I changed from exfat to fat32

slaphappygamer · Oct 18, 2020

I’ve got emunand with sxos on my exfat card. I just copied everything over and reformatted my card to fat32. I’ve lost my emunand now. I had it set up as a “hidden partition” and I copied my emutendo folder and everything before I formatted the card. I was just trying to prevent issues on exfat. Even though I haven’t had any trouble for the last 3 years. I’ve left the “hidden” partition intact and just formatted the exfat area. When I was copying my emutendo folder, I got some errors on files that didn’t copy over. I though they just might be games that I would lose. Is there any way I can recover my emunand? I was able to get my emunand running in atmosphere before I reformatted my card. Could I even recover my emunand with atmosphere. Am I totally fucked? Thanks.

XpertNoobhacker · Oct 22, 2020

Normally when you plug an emunand sd card into a pc it says to mount this drive (the emunand part) you have to format.
I'm assuming you pressed yes to this as it seems the most likely way to 'lose' a 32 gb file.

Ive nearly done this a few times as when you put the card in a prompt comes above everything telling you ypu can acess the drive until it's formated but it's refuring to the emunand partion as it appears on a pc as it's own drive letter

If not then don't you have a backup still on the pc? Just relation the card and put it back there's alot of guides for that here and Google.

slaphappygamer · Oct 23, 2020

I checked the guides. They say to just copy everything to the pc and reformat the card as fat32. Then just put everything back. I have a hidden partition as my emunand, I think. I was understanding that I just left that alone.
I say “I think” I have emunand on my hidden partition because, I also have as emutendo folder. It’s over 200gb. All of my homebrew is intact, so I hope my saves are too.
I should’ve stayed as exfat. I totally regret this, but hey, I’m still alive.

XpertNoobhacker · Oct 23, 2020

Yeah I thought this when I did it but it's not hidden. The pc won't mount it until it's formatted go on pc and see if your sd card shows up as 2 separate drives or one big drive

Also bare in mind I'm pretty sure that Everytime you put that card in a pc unless you did something very different to me it will nag to format the emunand partion. Do u remember making two pations?

slaphappygamer · Oct 23, 2020

Thanks for sticking with me.

I’ve got 2 partitions. My pc doesn’t prompt me to format. The first partition. It is recognized as unallocated space.

I only remember making one partition at the time.

XpertNoobhacker · Oct 23, 2020

No worries theres nothing worse than being stuck

Okay well basically I think your emu nand should be on its own partion I forget the exact way to set it up now but basically one 32 gb partion that should not be able to be mounted by pc. Although having said this I now realise also I think the emunand part needs to be ext4 or some strange extension possibly if it's now fat32 it won't work either you may have used a hekete folk to create your emunand. I have hacked two switches one with emu and one without. But I remember nearly batching up the emunand one so much because when the card was put into a pc it would say'windows cannot read the volume on the storage device and needs to format' prompt Everytime.
I'd think if you can see the partion it isn't hidden but I'm not certain about that it may not have been formatted right to be read by windows rather than hidden as this is what happened to me.

I'm gonna try looking though some guides as it's been more than 6 months scince as I ended up selling my switch after some time.

XpertNoobhacker · Oct 23, 2020

Right sorry i'm at my pc now so heeeeeres paragraphs lmao.

as i was searching a guide on how to to refresh myself i've realised thats unallocated space means the partion that was formatted was deleted somehow? (most likely caused by pressing yes to the aforementioned prompt as windows/mac cant read the switches EXT4 Nand pation so it most likely saw corrupt data and deleted the partion) not just formatted as in outright deleted so you my have to start again by making a new emunand. unless you have a backup?(if im right by the way im sorry for the stuff you lost hopefully not too much)

did u hack the switch yourself? are you confident putting it back on your own?

godreborn · Oct 23, 2020

that's not necessarily true. unallocated memory could be a part of the sd card that contains a partition not recognized by windows. redNAND on the wii u will show up as unallocated as well the partitions of a ps4 hdd if you plug it into a pc. I wouldn't mess with it or you could corrupt it.

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btw, don't initialize if it asks you to. that will overwrite the first sector making it unreadable by the original device that it was for (i.e. wii u, ps4, or even switch).

XpertNoobhacker · Oct 23, 2020

yeah like i said im going off what i know from when i did mine but what i know unallocated space in normally completely emptyand has no format let alone store things on)as it doesnt have a filesystem and i find it highly suspicious theres no prompt connecting the card to a pc like it should tell you how big it is roughly but not let you even open to view it because windows i believe wont handle the EXT4 format of the switch so it should still come up as a partion.

Edit dude that what im saying

godreborn · Oct 23, 2020

it's because it's in a format that windows doesn't understand. if you go into disk management, you can see the drive, but initializing pretty much ruins it. I hope that's not what's happened. enough is known to fix this on the ps3 phats or early slims, but not beyond that. it's not fixable on the wii u, ps4, and probably switch as well. I can't tell for the switch, but to get the nand off of the wii u, you have to use something sdio to extract the nand. the nand will still be on an unallocated section of the drive, but it's the only way to make changes to it. also, if you ever get a new hdd, it's usually unallocated memory by default. I think the system is seeing these other formats as raw data, hence the unallocated memory thing.

Mythical · Oct 23, 2020

I know it's not exactly convenient always, but PHat32 is preferred especially if you're reporting bugs ever. Some people won't even help you unless you can duplicate the issue not on exPHAT

XpertNoobhacker · Oct 23, 2020

Unallocated Space
A computer describes any physical space on a hard drive that doesn't belong to a partition as unallocated. This means that no programs can write to the space. For all practical purposes, the space doesn't exist to the operating system.

this was ripped directly off google and is what ive been saying. i think OP probably knows now tbh. its gonna be
take another nand dump with hekete and follow a guide to setting up emunand again.

also just some other notes. fat 32 should only be used as the secondary partion that also could have caused this as you cant fat 32 format a nand pation or well...and every time you put the SD card into a computer it bitches about not reading all the drives press 'NO' next time because you can still see the pation it thinks is the SD card and format that.

godreborn · Oct 23, 2020

yeah, I was told by @Hayato213 , one of my bffs , to go with fat32 as well even though I'm legit. I think nintendo might've fucked up the driver responsible for formatting and/or using the sd card. I have over 123 games, and I've encountered none that had some sort of issue with fat32. I don't think any games have a file over 4GBs.

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that's only for windows partitions. other partitions will show up as unallocated like linux partitions or even the rednand: https://github.com/dimok789/sdio_nand_manager

XpertNoobhacker · Oct 23, 2020

to be honest a quick google will tell you the difference of that also. fat 32 does not create so many directory's as exfat so its just less likely to corrupt by nature. only thing is windows wont fat32 anything bigger than 32 Gb but it can still be done with additional software.

any and all homebrew advises to run on fat32 as if it crashes its less likely to ruin the users data.

i used exfat until the other day then i updated and changed to fat 32 but i never saw a single problem the entire time console was like it science last year

also it is theorised that nintendos exfat driver are kinda SHITE
actually it was a combination of this and not wanting to use online was the reason i sold my emunand Switch. too complicated too naggy and too annoying

smf · Oct 23, 2020

XpertNoobhacker said:
actually it was a combination of this and not wanting to use online was the reason i sold my emunand Switch. too complicated too naggy and too annoying

I switched from exfat to emunand+fat32 and I kinda feel like it was a mistake.
I might restore my nand backup and start again.

None of the stuff I ran on it ever corrupted the card, it seems to mostly be retroarch users who get hit & I hate retroarch.

XpertNoobhacker · Oct 23, 2020

yeah i love emulators but i just stuck to switch games only and i was fine too for about 12 months but it had a lump in my throat the entire time id lose all my stuff :@
personally if your not worried about playing with random people online id just use fuseeglee primary and screw the big N. you can still play locally with friends assuming you know someone with a switch (i dont)

if i were you your best bet is to use hekete to make a new backup if you want to use emunand and start again but personally i dont think its worth the hassle/complications id format the card as fat 32 and just push fuseeglee.(lol dont think im spelling that right) i do this because i nearlly cleared my emunand this way 3 times i put the damn card into the pc i was literally hovering over yes to format its very easily done. Also with emunand it shrinks your card by 32 gb because obviously you have to emulate the nand. it turned my 256 gb card into 200 just under real quick between bytes lost to formatting and that haha

anyway hope things work out for you man that sucks to lose data like that i think we can all appreciate that here in a IT based forum like this one. Feel free to pm me if you need any help that you think i can provide you

slaphappygamer · Oct 23, 2020

Mythical said:
I know it's not exactly convenient always, but PHat32 is preferred especially if you're reporting bugs ever. Some people won't even help you unless you can duplicate the issue not on exPHAT

That right. That’s why I’m switching to fat32, but everything worked fine as exfat. I’m just trying to change it to avoid problems. Boy I was wrong. Lol

Also, yes. I know about unallocated space. I didn’t include that partition in my reformat. I only formatted the exfat petition to fat32. I wasn’t prompted to reformat the unallocated space.

I used SXOS to created this emunand. I used hekate only once ever to make a nand backup when I first hacked my switch. I never play online and have no intention of doing so, so I’m not going to use emunand anymore. We now have a second switch. It’s a lite and “for the kids”.

Oh wait, I just thought, as I type, I’ve got to look more into moving saves from emunand to sys nand. Ill read more about that then start all fresh as fat32. I’ll probably gain some space on my card.

Hacking Oh god. I changed from exfat to fat32

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