Hardware How do I tell what NAND chip I have?

[Spork Schivago]

Hello,

We have an older original 3DS. Is there a way to tell what NAND chip is inside it without opening it up? We're in the process of upgrading the SD card and there's different directions for Toshiba based NAND and Samsung based NAND for backing up the EmuNAND on the SD card. I don't really want to open the 3DS up to tell if I don't have to.

 

[Spork Schivago]

I used the Gateway to dump the NAND and NAND.bin is 943MB, that means it's a Toshiba NAND, correct?

 

[_Pro_Man_]

I used the Gateway to dump the NAND and NAND.bin is 943MB, that means it's a Toshiba NAND, correct?

Hmm, I haven't heard of having to use a different sd card for different nand chips. Could you please link the directions that you are following. If I recall correctly, you can use any sd card for the 3ds. Do you just have the base 3ds files on the sd or do you also have an emunand setup?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hello,

We have an older original 3DS. Is there a way to tell what NAND chip is inside it without opening it up? We're in the process of upgrading the SD card and there's different directions for Toshiba based NAND and Samsung based NAND for backing up the EmuNAND on the SD card. I don't really want to open the 3DS up to tell if I don't have to.

The instructions are the same, you have two options:
Either you make an image of the entire card with Win32DiskImager, restore that image on the new card and then resize the FAT32 partition with the Windows Disk Management or a partition manager tool.

Or you can dump your emuNAND with the emuNAND tool and copy the files from the card, use format emuNAND on the new card, restore the emuNAND backup you made earlier, and lastly delete the "Nintendo 3DS" folder on the new card before copying the files you backed up from the other card onto it.

The first option seems easier and faster to me.

 

[Spork Schivago]

Hmm, I haven't heard of having to use a different sd card for different nand chips. Could you please link the directions that you are following. If I recall correctly, you can use any sd card for the 3ds. Do you just have the base 3ds files on the sd or do you also have an emunand setup?

I'm trying to backup the EmuNAND so when I install the 32GB SD card (the current one is 8), the EmuNAND is still linked to the 3DS. The steps to backup the EmuNAND are different depending on what NAND chip you have, according to this article, because they're different sizes. Here's the article I'm following:
http://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/3DS_Fl...my_EmuNAND_partition_located_on_my_SD_card.3F

After reading a bit further, I got the answer to my question:

The two different NAND sizes

Toshiba NAND:
1931264 sectors
988.807.168 bytes = 943 MB

Samsung NAND:
1953792 sectors
1.000.341.504 bytes = 954 MB

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

The instructions are the same, you have two options:
Either you make an image of the entire card with Win32DiskImager, restore that image on the new card and then resize the FAT32 partition with the Windows Disk Management or a partition manager tool.

Or you can dump your emuNAND with the emuNAND tool and copy the files from the card, use format emuNAND on the new card, restore the emuNAND backup you made earlier, and lastly delete the "Nintendo 3DS" folder on the new card before copying the files you backed up from the other card onto it.

The first option seems easier and faster to me.

The second option seems kinda complicated. The article I'm following just has me using dd a few times. Win32DiskImager sounds kinda like a Windows program and although I can usually run Windows programs through Wine, I'd rather just stick with dd if I could.

Is the article I found on gbatemp.net outdated? Or can I still just follow the instructions under the Linux section? I probably should of mentioned my OS before hand, but I figured there wasn't a need because the article pretty much covers what I have to do.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I'm trying to backup the EmuNAND so when I install the 32GB SD card (the current one is 8), the EmuNAND is still linked to the 3DS. The steps to backup the EmuNAND are different depending on what NAND chip you have, according to this article, because they're different sizes. Here's the article I'm following:
http://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/3DS_Fl...my_EmuNAND_partition_located_on_my_SD_card.3F

After reading a bit further, I got the answer to my question:

The two different NAND sizes

Toshiba NAND:
1931264 sectors
988.807.168 bytes = 943 MB

Samsung NAND:
1953792 sectors
1.000.341.504 bytes = 954 MB

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


The second option seems kinda complicated. The article I'm following just has me using dd a few times. Win32DiskImager sounds kinda like a Windows program and although I can usually run Windows programs through Wine, I'd rather just stick with dd if I could.

Is the article I found on gbatemp.net outdated? Or can I still just follow the instructions under the Linux section? I probably should of mentioned my OS before hand, but I figured there wasn't a need because the article pretty much covers what I have to do.

Oh, you're on Linux, well that changes things. Rather than using Win32DiskImager then you can just use dd to mirror the entire SD card (or write it to a file temporarily) and resize it with gparted/parted afterwards. Win32DiskImager is basically just a very limited GUI Windows alternative to dd.

 

[_Pro_Man_]

Oh, you're on Linux, well that changes things. Rather than using Win32DiskImager then you can just use dd to mirror the entire SD card (or write it to a file temporarily) and resize it with gparted/parted afterwards.

Yeah, I do not know much about Linux. This user seems to know what they are doing so I would follow their instructions. And yes, that tutorial appears to be correct, at least for Windows. I am assuming this is the same case for the Linux section.

 

[Spork Schivago]

I got it working successfully. I just needed to know the size. Thanks for all the help though guys. For Windows users, you shouldn't have to resize your FAT32 partition if you can just find the Windows equivalent to dd and backup the first sector of the new SD card and then after writing the old image to the disk, just write the new SD card bootsector back to the SD card. In Linux, it's just:

dd if=/dev/sdX of=boot.sect count=1

to read the DOS/MBR boot sector and then to write it, just

dd if=boot.sect of=/dev/sdX

X is whatever device the SD card. So essentially, you just format the new SD card for the EmuNAND, read the boot sector to disk, then make a disk image of your old card, write that disk image to the new disk, and then write the boot sector to the new disk. Hope that helps someone.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Oh, you're on Linux, well that changes things. Rather than using Win32DiskImager then you can just use dd to mirror the entire SD card (or write it to a file temporarily) and resize it with gparted/parted afterwards. Win32DiskImager is basically just a very limited GUI Windows alternative to dd.

So I take it Windows doesn't have a native utility like dd? That's a bit weird. I couldn't imagine living without something like dd or ddrescue. I guess it's good someone at least wrote something like that Win32DiskImager for it though. Hopefully it's free and you guys don't have to pay for it.

 

[_Pro_Man_]

I got it working successfully. I just needed to know the size. Thanks for all the help though guys. For Windows users, you shouldn't have to resize your FAT32 partition if you can just find the Windows equivalent to dd and backup the first sector of the new SD card and then after writing the old image to the disk, just write the new SD card bootsector back to the SD card. In Linux, it's just:

dd if=/dev/sdX of=boot.sect count=1

to read the DOS/MBR boot sector and then to write it, just

dd if=boot.sect of=/dev/sdX

X is whatever device the SD card. So essentially, you just format the new SD card for the EmuNAND, read the boot sector to disk, then make a disk image of your old card, write that disk image to the new disk, and then write the boot sector to the new disk. Hope that helps someone.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


So I take it Windows doesn't have a native utility like dd? That's a bit weird. I couldn't imagine living without something like dd or ddrescue. I guess it's good someone at least wrote something like that Win32DiskImager for it though. Hopefully it's free and you guys don't have to pay for it.

Yeah, lol it is the opposite for me. I prefer to use .exe files as apposed to using lines of code. Personally, it is more easier and it is what I am used to. Emunand Tools and Win32DiskImager are both free and work great for me. I don't plan on fixing something that isn't broken

 

[Spork Schivago]

Yeah, lol it is the opposite for me. I prefer to use .exe files as apposed to using lines of code. Personally, it is more easier and it is what I am used to. Emunand Tools and Win32DiskImager are both free and work great for me. I don't plan on fixing something that isn't broken

Yeah, it's probably one of those things, you know, we're each just accustom to different things. I grew up with Linux, you grew up with Windows. The one thing I love about Linux is how just about everything is free. I don't play video games a lot and when I do, they're usually on an emulator and they're old ones, like NES or SNES. I guess Windows has a lot of video games, where as Linux has some, but not really the big ones like they have in Windows. I don't think you'd find something like Call of Duty for Linux any time soon.

I used to do a lot of programming and I'm slowly getting back into it (once I get some free time!). I need to write my program for Linux and Windows and I'll you what, setting up a programming environment in Windows is a real pain! My wife has a laptop running Windows (I haven't been able to convince her to switch over yet). With Linux, all I need to do is tell my package manager to install an IDE, it'll automatically download and install any libraries that it depends on. In Windows though, oh man, I had to look for everything by hand. If a package depending on another package, I had to download that manually, install it, or I'd get some error about a DLL missing. It was a nightmare! But once I got it setup, it wasn't so bad.

I don't really like writing code for Windows, but unfortunately, I think most users run it in one form or another. My program, once I get it written, will probably have mostly Windows users. Anyway, thanks for all the help again guys! Really appreciated it!

 

[shinyquagsire23]

Yeah, it's probably one of those things, you know, we're each just accustom to different things. I grew up with Linux, you grew up with Windows. The one thing I love about Linux is how just about everything is free. I don't play video games a lot and when I do, they're usually on an emulator and they're old ones, like NES or SNES. I guess Windows has a lot of video games, where as Linux has some, but not really the big ones like they have in Windows. I don't think you'd find something like Call of Duty for Linux any time soon.

I used to do a lot of programming and I'm slowly getting back into it (once I get some free time!). I need to write my program for Linux and Windows and I'll you what, setting up a programming environment in Windows is a real pain! My wife has a laptop running Windows (I haven't been able to convince her to switch over yet). With Linux, all I need to do is tell my package manager to install an IDE, it'll automatically download and install any libraries that it depends on. In Windows though, oh man, I had to look for everything by hand. If a package depending on another package, I had to download that manually, install it, or I'd get some error about a DLL missing. It was a nightmare! But once I got it setup, it wasn't so bad.

I don't really like writing code for Windows, but unfortunately, I think most users run it in one form or another. My program, once I get it written, will probably have mostly Windows users. Anyway, thanks for all the help again guys! Really appreciated it!

Linux is great, glad you got your problem fixed. dd is nice but at the same time I've ruined plenty of flash drives with it (hence it's namesake, disk destroyer), but for 3DS images it works well. You should try Arch when you have the time, building things is super easy since dev packages aren't separated and there's a fairly consistent naming scheme for libraries.

 

[hippy dave]

I used the Gateway to dump the NAND and NAND.bin is 943MB, that means it's a Toshiba NAND, correct?

For the record, yeah that's the easiest way to tell.

 

[Spork Schivago]

Linux is great, glad you got your problem fixed. dd is nice but at the same time I've ruined plenty of flash drives with it (hence it's namesake, disk destroyer), but for 3DS images it works well. You should try Arch when you have the time, building things is super easy since dev packages aren't separated and there's a fairly consistent naming scheme for libraries.

I've heard a few things about Arch. I was going to install it once but went with OpenSuSE instead. Some of the Linux distro's I've used (either live disc or installed):
Slackware (This is where I got my start back in the summer after 7th grade, going into 8th grade)
Debian
Redhat
Gentoo
Ubuntu
Mint
Backtrack 4

And then there where a few odd ball ones, like Linux System Rescue, etc. Mainly just to give me a Linux environment when I needed to fix people's PCs (ie, run Gparted, etc). I've also ran something for rainbow tables, can't remember what it was called. It was some live disc that had Ophcrack on it. I'll be sure to look into Arch Linux some more. I'm really interested in finding a good, secure rolling distro. You know, for example, when Opensuse 13.4 comes out, I'll have to reinstall my OS. With a rolling distro, I just update it.