Hacking Corrupted(?) saves in EZ-flash V

[Gildur]

Hi there all!

I've been looking for an answer for this for a long time. I've been to countless forums and googled myself tired. I even sent totalGBA a mail asking if they knew the cause and the solution for it, they said they never heard of it.

Anyhoo....

Ok, so I've got this EZ flash V card which I've used for over one year and had different kernel-releases along the way. I'm currently using 1.63. Everything is working fine except for one thing. I had the same problem all the time, namely my saves gets corrupted(?). Some games are more afflicted than others, it seems.

What happens?
I can play a game and the save works for some time, even when I turn off my DS and come back to the game and the save loads correctly. Everybody's a happy camper so far.... but.
When least expected the saves are lost. They can work fine for days and weeks, but suddenly they're gone. From what I've read the saves gets corrupted somehow. The save files are still there, in the save-folder. I never found a solution to this or even what's causing it. I was hoping I could get some help from you guys.

Example (you can never get enough of these =):
I was playing New Super Mario. I think I was playing it for some weeks, saves worked fine. Then one day when I start up my DS and start the game, the Files are all new, instead of File 1 being at the end of the last world, like.

Some other games I've played where this occured:
Warioware Touched
Crash of the Titans
Final FantasyIII
Dr. Kawashimas brain training
... and more.

-I've tried /chkdsk
-I've read people with other types of SD-card had the same problem. Never tried another one myself though.
-I've tried reinstalling the kernel (even tried different kernels as I said above)
-I've tried backuping the .sav:es.

Nothing of this seems to work, they keep getting corrupted.

I would really like to get to the bottom of this. Any of you guys know the cause or the solution to this?

Thanks in Advance!

 

[Psyfira]

I don't know the cause and a few others have reported issues as well, though not quite as frequently as it happens to you. Since I got the cart in April I've lost savefiles on 3 separate occasions, but they disappeared from the Micro SD completely. (upon finding one missing check the save directory before running any other games, so that the blank savefile wouldn't be automatically written there while swapping games)

I managed to recover the lost files by running chkdsk, telling it to attempt recovery of any broken files it finds (which it places in a hidden directory called "found.00" on the drive) and fishing them out of the results. chkdsk doesn't report any errors on the card, but still recovers the file fragments.

There's one part of your post that I don't understand; saying you've tried "backuping the .sav:es.". Maybe I'm just being dense or reading it wrong, but what do you mean by that?

 

[Wekker]

same things happen to my ez flash 5 saves i think
i was testing few game on ezflash 5, i made a backup's of every saves on ez flash5, and laterly one of my game save just disappear, i am glad that game wasnt very important to me ( it was important, but lucky i can beat that game in less than 10 hour... , to think if a RPG save gone away... )
for the godsake, i going to convert my very important save data to r4,
but i go for the 2nd choice, just make backup save once a awhile. because maybe i made a mistake... never knows oO

This game save disappear: Ultimate Spiderman

 

[Gildur]

By backing up the save-files I meant just copying them to a folder and when a save-file on my DS would get corrupted I tried copying the backup back from that folder onto the DS, overwriting the corrupted save-file. Though I am and was pretty sure this was not the way saves works in this matter.

The saves does not disappear from the card. They just get corrupted and wont work. A good way to put it is to say that they reset, so to speak. They work for a while, then they reset again. I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary when it happens, it just happens and all of a sudden I have to start from the beginning again.
This is very annoying as I'm sure you understand =)

Chkdsk did not create any hidden folder in my case, thus I could not save my save-files this way.

Well. I'll keep looking and experimenting, see if I can find a solution to this problem!

PS. Feel free to hand me that "just rename that folder"-solution *I wish* anytime =)) DS.

 

[Hooya]

I have the same problem. I'm thinking it's an issue with the latest kernel doing automatic save type finding, and sometimes it f*cks up or something. This never happened to me with the save list necessary kernels.

On my wife's DS I didn't install the most recent firmware, it's one revision behind. She plays Trioncube and Nintendogs almost exclusively and hasn't lost a save on either of those ever.

I lost saves on Galaxy Wars, Contra (a lot!) but haven't played my DS a lot since then.

 

[Gildur]

I had this issue in two earlier kernels as well, so in my case I dont think the problem is specific for the latest kernel with the automatic save type finding thingy. Actually the problem is less frequent now. However it's still very annoying and just like Wekker said, noone wants to play an RPG or a game that takes alot of time to complete in "fear" of their saves getting lost mid-way or later. =/

Edit:
Hooya, are you and your wife using the same kind of SD-card? I read somewhere on some forum that this may cause problems. But then again, on some other forum they said it didnt matter what SD-card you had. =)

 

[Psyfira]

By backing up the save-files I meant just copying them to a folder and when a save-file on my DS would get corrupted I tried copying the backup back from that folder onto the DS, overwriting the corrupted save-file. Though I am and was pretty sure this was not the way saves works in this matter

Sorry if you'd taken this into account already, but I'll mention it anyway: you are changing to a different game before putting the backup savefile on your MicroSD, right?

The save for the last game you ran is kept on the chip in the EZ-V itself, it will not access the memory card again unless the game is changed. So if you run GameA, find the savedata is blank, take the microSD out to copy the save from a backup then run GameA again the EZ-V will ignore the save on the microSD (restored from your backup) and keep running from the blank one on the savechip.

To get around it, turn it on and load a different game (forcing the blank save off of the savechip) before taking the microSD out.

As a side-note this also applies for making backups of the last game you played; you need to force the save onto the MicroSD before copying it to your PC. (actually pressing L+Select in the menu would do that on the old kernel, don't know if it's the same on 1.6)

 

[Gildur]

Actually I never thought of that. I'll try that next time. Thank you! At least it's to some comfort, having a backup somewhere.

Although, this doesnt solve the annoying problem of corrupted save-files. =/

Edit:

As a side-note this also applies for making backups of the last game you played; you need to force the save onto the MicroSD before copying it to your PC. (actually pressing L+Select in the menu would do that on the old kernel, don't know if it's the same on 1.6)

It still does.
And finally I know what that actually does, thanks again =)

 

[Psyfira]

No problem

It's one of those things that isn't very clear in the manual, I found out in exactly the same way by getting bailed out by someone else when I couldn't get it to work. We'll just have to see if they manage to fix the lost file issue in a future release.