Hacking How to access your Switch's eMMC or microSD card as an USB disk on your PC

[rajkosto]

Get my memloader payload from https://switchtools.sshnuke.net
Extract the contents of the "sample" folder in the zip to the root of your microsd, before inserting it into the Switch
Run the memloader.bin payload using your preferred launcher (fusee-launcher, TegraRcmSmash, NXLoader, whatever)
On the screen, choose ums_emmc.ini to have the eMMC appear as a USB disk, or ums_sd.ini to have the microSD appear as a USB disk on your PC (with volume buttons), then press the Power button to launch selection

WARNING: RUNNING U-BOOT UMS MODE ON eMMC MIGHT MAKE YOUR SWITCH NOT BOOT ANYMORE (works for me but if they're being truthful, happened to a user), MAKE SURE TO HAVE A RAWNAND BACKUP AND A WAY TO RESTORE IT IF YOU ARE TO DO THIS

The screen should clear (but the backlight should still be on) and you should hear a device plugged in notification, and the disk drive should appear (in windows, eMMC does not get a drive letter because there's nothing to mount)
This is going to be quite slow (3-6MB/s) as it doesn't run the switch memory at its high frequency (because this requires a non-redistributable proprietary blob), and also u-boot does not use UHS-I modes of the microSD (keeps the IO at 3.3v only), however it's still quite useful for adding/replacing some files on your microSD, or exploring the eMMC partitions via HacDiskMount (the USB disk device is openable as a Physical Drive inside of it)

(On Windows, if after launching the ums ini, in device manager you see a device with a yellow exclamation mark, right click and uninstall it, then click the Scan for Hardware changes button to get it to appear properly)

Memloader source code available at https://github.com/rajkosto/memloader

 

[eliboa]

Awesome, this will be very useful ! Thank you for your work and for sharing it.

 

[AngryCinnabon]

I loved how ps vita had this through vitashell, thanks for this OP.

 

[Gren22]

Very cool, thanks. Just out of curiosity, is it possible to mount the switch's SD card to computer through USB via homebrew as well?

 

[AngryCinnabon]

Very cool, thanks. Just out of curiosity, is it possible to mount the switch's SD card to computer through USB via homebrew as well?

Correct me if i'm wrong but that's the main use of this.

 

[Gren22]

Correct me if i'm wrong but that's the main use of this.

I thought this was just a Fusee-gelee payload, not a homebrew app.

 

[PatrickStarSb]

Does this mean we can backup our nand using a computer? I tried using hekate but it failed with a write error half way though for some reason.

 

[rajkosto]

You can, but you're going to be waiting for a long time if youre doing the whole 29GiB.

 

[AngryCinnabon]

I thought this was just a Fusee-gelee payload, not a homebrew app.

Oh, i expected you to be using fusee. i think it's the only option right now.

 

[PatrickJr]

So the eMMC appear as a USB disk right? how will I see it on Windows or you just flat out can't? I waned a nice easy way to back up my stuff. Will I have to use Linux to see it?

 

[Ronhero]

Get my memloader payload from https://switchtools.sshnuke.net
Extract the contents of the "sample" folder in the zip to the root of your microsd, before inserting it into the Switch
Run the memloader.bin payload using your preferred launcher (fusee-launcher, TegraRcmSmash, NXLoader, whatever)
On the screen, choose ums_emmc.ini to have the eMMC appear as a USB disk, or ums_sd.ini to have the microSD appear as a USB disk on your PC (with volume buttons), then press the Power button to launch selection

The screen should clear (but the backlight should still be on) and you should hear a device plugged in notification, and the disk drive should appear (in windows, eMMC does not get a drive letter because there's nothing to mount)
This is going to be quite slow (3-6MB/s) as it doesn't run the switch memory at its high frequency (because this requires a non-redistributable proprietary blob), and also u-boot does not use UHS-I modes of the microSD (keeps the IO at 3.3v only), however it's still quite useful for adding/replacing some files on your microSD, or exploring the eMMC partitions via HacDiskMount (the USB disk device is openable as a Physical Drive inside of it)

(On Windows, if after launching the ums ini, in device manager you see a device with a yellow exclamation mark, right click and uninstall it, then click the Scan for Hardware changes button to get it to appear properly)

Memloader source code available at https://github.com/rajkosto/memloader

Thanks steve, hope the boneitis clears up

 

[rajkosto]

So the eMMC appear as a USB disk right? how will I see it on Windows or you just flat out can't? I waned a nice easy way to back up my stuff. Will I have to use Linux to see it?

It's visible as a Physical Disk, just not as a drive letter (since no partitions from it can be mounted outright), you can explore it with HacDiskMount and the Physical Drive option, or just use tools like dd/Hex Workshop/whatever can open physical disks to save/restore

 

[PatrickJr]

It's visible as a Physical Disk, just not as a drive letter (since no partitions from it can be mounted outright), you can explore it with HacDiskMount and the Physical Drive option, or just use tools like dd/Hex Workshop/whatever can open physical disks to save/restore

I tried HacDiskMount using the Physical Drive option already, I'll try again though!
When running it as Admin, clicking Open Physical Drive it crashes.

 

[rajkosto]

It should show up here or something's wrong

 

[PatrickJr]

I see that it works here, but when running HacDiskMount as Admin, clicking Open Physical Drive it crashes.

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

Ohh it's working now, ignore me!

 

[Deleted User]

So many releases from you ,cool thank you.

 

[Deleted User]

@rajkosto you can use it to access the file system from NAND?

 

[Rizzorules]

You can, but you're going to be waiting for a long time if youre doing the whole 29GiB.

Challenge accepted, jokes aside it is working perfectly. Thank you very much!

 

[Sonicbrawler]

since we can access the eMMC this simply, is there a way to use this to dump/rip games files?

 

[rajkosto]

Sure ? just mount your USER partition, find the game's NCA, copy it to your computer and then decrypt/extract it using hactool