Hacking CIA/3DS size

[Dotmore]

Im thinking of swapping to CIA files, but had a question. Im currently trying things out, but my NSMB2.3ds is about 500MB, while the CIA is ~300MB. What gives? Is the CIA fake?

 

[andzalot55]

I can promise you it is not a fake .cia file.

 

[Deleted-236924]

.3ds roms come with extra padding at the end. .cias don't need the extra padding so they just cut it out. Kinda like trimming a rom, pretty much.

 

[djalmafreestyler]

CIAs are smaller than .3DS but they need the double space they have in your SD and take time to install depending of the size.

 

[NoNAND]

.cias are much like .exe or .msi setup installation files on windows or .apk on android. Example the Facebook app setup file on Android is 34mb the installed app is 100mb+(don't remember correctly)

 

[Deleted-236924]

CIAs are smaller than .3DS but they need the double space they have in your SD and take time to install depending of the size.

Possibly unless you were using FBI's install from network feature.
(If that feature even works as I think it does, heh.)

 

[sarkwalvein]

CIAs are smaller than .3DS but they need the double space they have in your SD and take time to install depending of the size.

They don't need double space.
You need enough free space to install the CIA, you later have to delete it.
The CIA is just an installer.

E.g. you can have 30gb worth of games on a 32gb card, just delete the installers you already used before you install further applications.

 

[NoNAND]

They don't need double space.
You need enough free space to install the CIA, you later have to delete it.
The CIA is just an installer.

E.g. you can have 30gb worth of games on a 32gb card, just delete the installers you already used before you install further applications.

Yes. It's best to use FBI when installing games because you can delete the installer. Devmenu is recommended only when installing system things like mset downgrade and bluecardfix.cia..if I'm right @sarkwalvein

 

[Deleted-236924]

I prefer to use DevMenu/BBM over FBI because it seems FBI has problems with installing some .cias properly
For example, I could -not- get my custom theme .cia to install properly via FBI, but it worked just fine through BBM. Later on uninstalled BBM for actual DevMenu because it looks cooler
Being able to delete the .cia from within the .cia manager is a good thing though. Could just take out the SD card and delete them on your computer, or keep FBI alongside DevMenu/BBM just for deleting the .cias x)

 

[NoNAND]

I prefer to use DevMenu/BBM over FBI because it seems FBI has problems with installing some .cias properly
For example, I could -not- get my custom theme .cia to install properly via FBI, but it worked just fine through BBM. Later on uninstalled BBM for actual DevMenu because it looks cooler
Being able to delete the .cia from within the .cia manager is a good thing though. Could just take out the SD card and delete them on your computer, or keep FBI alongside DevMenu/BBM just for deleting the .cias x)

Yeah. I prefer the old devmenu that displays devmen
I don't use BBM

 

[djalmafreestyler]

They don't need double space.
You need enough free space to install the CIA, you later have to delete it.
The CIA is just an installer.

E.g. you can have 30gb worth of games on a 32gb card, just delete the installers you already used before you install further applications.

Need double space I mean, if you have a 4gb SD and you can't install DKCR which have 3.3 gb, you'll need at least 6.60gb to install, the space for the .cia and the space to the title will be installed on Nintendo 3DS folder.

 

[Urbanshadow]

Im curious about over 4 gb cia files (formerly Xenoblade Chronicles) as the 3ds only gets fat32. We can safely use exfat or theres issues with it ?

 

[honyo29]

uninstalled BBM for actual DevMenu because it looks cooler

i'm not alone.

i recommend devmenu (or bbm/title manager, but yea devmenu looks cooler) for everyday use because it's foolproof. there are many cases of installing gba vc using fbi resulting black icons because instead of install them to sd on sysnand, some people install it to nands... i only use fbi when i change emunand region to delete system titles.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Im curious about over 4 gb cia files (formerly Xenoblade Chronicles) as the 3ds only gets fat32. We can safely use exfat or theres issues with it ?

Xenoblade Chronicles wouldn't be an over 4GB .cia because the game's data isn't that big.
The rom is 4GB but that's because they had to use a 4GB chip, it's filled with padding at the end. Converting to .cia removes the padding at the end and it becomes smaller.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Im curious about over 4 gb cia files (formerly Xenoblade Chronicles) as the 3ds only gets fat32. We can safely use exfat or theres issues with it ?

You can't use exfat.
I don't have a clue what happens with CIAs over 4gb, never met one.

 

[Urbanshadow]

Xenoblade Chronicles wouldn't be an over 4GB .cia because the game's data isn't that big.
The rom is 4GB but that's because they had to use a 4GB chip, it's filled with padding at the end. Converting to .cia removes the padding at the end and it becomes smaller.

Oh ok. Still curious of what should happen before we could successfully play a cia file that big thought.

 

[Deleted-236924]

The only way that would happen is if 3DS games were made that were so large they wouldn't fit on 4GB cartridges and would need 8GB ones.
Then converted to .cia, would probably be bigger than 4GB. In this case, I would assume FBI install .cia over network could be an option, but we wouldn't be able to copy the cia over to our SD card to install it directly like that.