Hacking DSTwo crashed, files recovered, but which are the saves?

[biluinaim]

So, earlier today my card froze while loading a DS game, and I had to close it via the HOME button (I'm on a 3DS XL). Launching it again gave me a "no find system files" error, and when I plugged in the SD card I saw that it was completely empty.
I mistakenly (I've now learned my lesson) let Win 8 run an attempt to fix the disc, but to no avail.

Thanks to various older threads in this forum I have used a few different programs to restore my files, which are detected in two different forms -
With Recuva, I mostly got bmps.
With GetDataBack, I can get the chk files created by windows.
With PhotoRec, I got a bunch of nds files and a bunch of txt and ini.

Now, no program I could find was able to identify the DSTwo file types from the chk ones (they only identified the bmps, I believe, no .nds or anything). So I'm not sure there actually is a program out there which is able to do this.
I think PhotoRec is my best bet, but I believe a lot of the txt files are actually saves etc. The problem is that PhotoRec renamed all these files so I have no idea what's what, and it didn't keep directories.

What's the best way to identify these files? It's really frustrating because they're all there, but they're just slightly too far for me to get a hold of them!
If its of any importance, I only had DS and GBA games on the card - GBA I am not worried about losing as I actually have a backup from the other day (I had a problem with TEMPGBA and its icons or whatever it was), but I have no backup of my DS saves and there were lots of RPGs with tons of hours in there I'd hate to lose forever.

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[trumpet-205]

Save file uses extension .sav or .nds.sav. Also look out for files with size 512KB. If you don't find one then it is not recovered.

Honestly, when a memory storage is corrupted, the chance of recovering the file is even glimmer than regular HDD. Even if you were to recover the file you have no way to verify its integrity without calculating a checksum prior hand. Sorry you had to learn your lesson the hard way. Make backups now and then.

 

[biluinaim]

Thanks for the reply! In the meanwhile, GetDataBack Simple seems to have found all my .nds & .sav files! But it looks like I can't copy them unless I purchase the full version. Would you know if there's a free program that uses the same system to scan the drive so that I can access those files?

ETA: Yeah, I definitely learned my lesson now... !

 

[migles]

Thanks for the reply! In the meanwhile, GetDataBack Simple seems to have found all my .nds & .sav files! But it looks like I can't copy them unless I purchase the full version. Would you know if there's a free program that uses the same system to scan the drive so that I can access those files?

ETA: Yeah, I definitely learned my lesson now... !

it is free if you look enough (go into pirates meeting point)

 

[biluinaim]

So, I managed to recover all my files! Sorta.
I formatted the SD card, re-installed/updated the DSTwo firmware and it launches fine. I also installed TEMPGBA and CATSFC, and they both run fine and pick up the roms even though the TEMPGBA folder is already corrupted (full of files with weird names and dates, and I can't delete the folder - given an unknown error). Weird, but as long as it runs...
Now the problem is that I can't get the DS roms to work anymore? I did the exact same as I had done before it all broke, which is create a folder within _dstwo and dump all the .nds, .sav and .dtc in there. However, they don't show when I try and access them - none of them does (and there's quite a few).
At first I thought that it might have been that the roms I recovered were actually corrupted, but I tried loading a fresh one on and it also isn't picked up.

Am I missing something or there's some damage I haven't quite pinpointed?

 

[9thSage]

You shouldn't be having these issues unless something is very wrong with either the DSTwo or the SD card. If there's something wrong with either of the two, that could be why you're not having those NDS files be detected (try the SD card first, it's the more likely culprit I feel and is cheaper to replace. It's the first thing I'd have done if I were you and it corrupted immediately after I formatted the card and tried to use it for something).