Hardware Hard drive format

[Burntzebra23]

I’ve come to the conclusion that my hard drives going to be the best storage other than my SD card yes I’m using SX.. so now firstly how do I format it or what’s the best Method and Secondly which format is better FAT32 or ExFAT?

 

[jajamundo]

My HDD is formatted as exfat

Never had a problem with it

 

[lordelan]

Unlike the sd card, your hard drive should be formatted to exfat.
NTFS is not supported as far as I know and the SD card exfat issues are not present at the HDD XCI mounting thing (since nothing is written to the drives, it just reads from there to mount the games).
And unless you want to split all of your games bigger than 4 GB just go with exfat there. Works pretty well.
Also there's literally no limit to how big the drive can be (they raised the limit for that to an unreachable high value with an SX OS update in the past so if you use the newest beta you will be fine).

 

[Burntzebra23]

Unlike the sd card, your hard drive should be formatted to exfat.
NTFS is not supported as far as I know and the SD card exfat issues are not present at the HDD XCI mounting thing (since nothing is written to the drives, it just reads from there to mount the games).
And unless you want to split all of your games bigger than 4 GB just go with exfat there. Works pretty well.
Also there's literally no limit to how big the drive can be (they raised the limit for that to an unreachable high value with an SX OS update in the past so if you use the newest beta you will be fine).

And it supports NSPs right ? Basically I’m trying to load all my NSPs too the hard drive and then put them on the switch when I wanna play them and delete from the switch when I’m done... but still keep The games on the hard drive for later

 

[EmulateLife]

You can't play NSPs off hard drive, only XCIs. NSPs can be installed to the sd card from hard drive only.

You can convert NSPs to XCIs using this program https://gbatemp.net/threads/nsc_bui...lder-game-updates-dlc-in-a-single-xci.522486/

You will need your keys from your Switch, use Lockpick_RCM.

 

[Burntzebra23]

I know that’s what I mean I’ll put them (NSP’s) on my hard drive then when I want to play them I’ll download them to the switch... and keys for xci right?

 

[EmulateLife]

What I do is have them all XCI then I can either play them or install them to sd card and if I want to delete them off sd card I still have them on external hard drive to play. Yes keys are needed if you want to convert NSP to XCI.

 

[Burntzebra23]

What I do is have them all XCI then I can either play them or install them to sd card and if I want to delete them off sd card I still have them on external hard drive to play. Yes keys are needed if you want to convert NSP to XCI.

Ok a couple more questions 1. What can I use to format the hard drive? 2. it is The file called keys.nro? I think that’s what it’s called something to do with keys, and if so I think I used the older version of lockpick and it said that it was just the old keys... and 3. How long does it take to convert them?

 

[Burntzebra23]

.

 

[EmulateLife]

Windows should be able to format it to ExFat no problem.

No use Lockpick_RCM google it, it's a payload you send like SX OS but instead it dumps your keys. Lockpick was the old version Lockpick_RCM is the new version. It takes a few seconds.

 

[Burntzebra23]

Windows should be able to format it to ExFat no problem.

No use Lockpick_RCM google it, it's a payload you send like SX OS but instead it dumps your keys. Lockpick was the old version Lockpick_RCM is the new version. It takes a few seconds.

And once I do that where do I put the keys? Just to my root?

 

[EmulateLife]

Sorry you meant how long does it take to convert to XCI that takes like 20-30 minutes, I thought you meant the keys.

I gotta go you should ask any further questions in the thread I linked above NSC_Builder.

 

[lordelan]

And once I do that where do I put the keys? Just to my root?

Usually the keys have to be in sd:\switch\ as prod.keys or keys.txt
Lockpick RCM creates a prod.keys at that directory and since some homebrews are looking for a keys.txt I just duplicate that file there and name it keys.txt

And yes, you can have NSPs on your hard drive as well and install them whenever you want.
You can store your NSPs and XCIs in these directories on HDD:

/sxos/updates
/sxos/dlc
/switch/updates
/switch/dlc
/sxos/games
/sxos/xci
/sxos/nsp
/sxos
/switch/games
/switch/xci
/switch/nsp
/switch

And as someone else already wrote, formatting it with Windows to exfat is completely fine.

I would recommend XCIs though since you can include the latest update and all DLCs along a game into one single XCI file using NSC Builder.

 

[Burntzebra23]

Usually the keys have to be in sd:\switch\ as prod.keys or keys.txt
Lockpick RCM creates a prod.keys at that directory and since some homebrews are looking for a keys.txt I just duplicate that file there and name it keys.txt

And yes, you can have NSPs on your hard drive as well and install them whenever you want.
You can store your NSPs and XCIs in these directories on HDD:

/sxos/updates
/sxos/dlc
/switch/updates
/switch/dlc
/sxos/games
/sxos/xci
/sxos/nsp
/sxos
/switch/games
/switch/xci
/switch/nsp
/switch

And as someone else already wrote, formatting it with Windows to exfat is completely fine.

I would recommend XCIs though since you can include the latest update and all DLCs along a game into one single XCI file using NSC Builder.

I put an xci on to test it and it doesn’t show? .... the only thing on my my hard drive is the xci file.... do I need to make folders to put them in?

 

[EmulateLife]

No it should work even if you put it at the root of your hard drive. You're saying it's not showing on the Switch? Did you go to album?

lordelan is giving you the folder formats if you want to try them, but for me I don't have my XCIs in any folder and they show up and work.

 

[Burntzebra23]

No it should work even if you put it at the root of your hard drive. You're saying it's not showing on the Switch? Did you go to album?

• Yeah I used SX launcher and didn’t see anything all those folder that have to do with the HDD are empty , I formatted it using windows to ExFAT

 

[EmulateLife]

Are you using a proper hard drive or a flash drive?

 

[Burntzebra23]

Are you using a proper hard drive or a flash drive?

Yeah I think I figured it out I changed the cord I was using to plug the HDD to the switch

 

[Burntzebra23]

Are you using a proper hard drive or a flash drive?

It won’t work unless I put the games directly on the root of the HDD, so I can Organizeit a lil bit? But other then that I got it figured out! Thank Ya’ll so much!!!!!!

 

[linuxares]

Since the Exfat from TX isn't as shit as Nintendo's is. You should go exfat for sure on the hdd.

 

[lordelan]

Since the Exfat from TX isn't as shit as Nintendo's is.

It's not that. It's because the exfat issues from sd card usage which are caused by writing to the card which can lead to corrupted sectors when somethings goes wrong are not really present by SX's HDD usage since they are only mounting (reading) things from there but not writing so they can't really corrupt it (at least theoretically).