Deleted usr/save folder, semi-bricked with only a partial NAND backup (just the 4 essentials). Fixable?

[Jediweirdo]

Someone I'm helping did a dumb and deleted their saves folder via FTP when trying to import Cemu saves or something like that. They can still boot to homebrew, but they can't get to the Wii U menu without a crash. They don't have a full NAND backup, but they have the essential 4 parts (slc, slccmpt, top, and seeprom). This sounds somewhat fixable with today's technology, but is it?

 

[4d1xlaan]

it might be possible to go nuclear and boot into minute_minute, and from there wipe mlc and then boot into ios using stroopwafel with the setup mlc plugin to reinstall mlc from scratch and "reset" the system

I'm guessing they deleted the folders from mlc since we're talking about game save data, restoring slc wont help because that's a different part of the system

there shouldnt be anything important on mlc besides save data, if they already backed up the save data. if they havent actually correctly backed up the save data, well it's already gone anyway. the only data left on mlc would be game files which is kinda whatever, you can reinstall those later

paging @SDIO , do not begin to attempt any of this until they confirm if this can work or not

Spoiler

https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-set-up-isfshax.642258/

strictly speaking you dont need to install isfshax, but do it. seriously. you will be glad it's installed, especially if this restore attempt fails and leads to a non-bootable system.

I assume your person has environment loader autoboot right now so they should be able to get into minute using fw_img_loader

then you can rebuild mlc with this method, but I'm not entirely sure if you can just rebuild mlc on the on board mlc chip and then "reset" scfm somehow (or disable it) to keep onboard mlc functional. it might be necessary to move to rednand

https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-upgrading-rebuilding-wii-u-internal-memory-mlc.636309/

note restoring the slc backup isnt going to help, because of scfm cache which will not match with mlc contents

 

[Jediweirdo]

Dangit, I was hoping it wouldn't come to that because it takes a while, especially since the person I'm helping is new to the hacking scene . I didn't think the 4 basic backups would help either (if they did then nobody would get full NAND backups), but you never know. You're probably right (I was thinking more or less the same thing, but I hoped that there was an easier way since the crash happened so late into the launch), but I'll still wait for Sido to reply in case they bring more info to the table

 

[SDIO]

You don't have to erase anything

Just run the wafel setup with an empty wafel_install folder. That will:
- recreate necessary safe folders
- trigger initial setup on next boot, which in turn will recreate necessary system saves.

It should be safe to do it without ISFShax, but if you want to be extra safe, install ISFShax first

 

[Jediweirdo]

Sick-- I had no clue that you could just leave it empty like that and it'll regenerate it on its own. Gonna try that whenever they come back and install ISFSHax while I'm there because it's just a nice thing to have. Thanks man

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2024

So apparently, this guy accidentally solved it by themselves while I was offline... Before I made this thread, I told them to get Tiramisu so they could properly launch homebrew from a launcher (they were homebrewed with Aroma, so you could imagine how hard it would be to launch homebrew when you can't get to the Wii U Menu). And apparently, after they set up Tiramisu, they just exited to the home menu, "accepted everything," then restarted their Wii U... and then the Wii U fixed itself. Literally no clue how the heck that's even possible, but here we are. Any insight on how this is even possible? I was under the impression that usr/saves/system housed pretty important stuff...

Spoiler: Their exact words

 

[V10lator]

"accepted everything,"

What was that "everything" cause it sounds like a (partly?) initial setup was triggered here for some reason and this would explain it, as SDIO said:

which in turn will recreate necessary system saves.

 

[SDIO]

I wouldn't be surprised if eShop Downloads and game updates are broken now