Hacking How to do an efficient system backup?

[themanuel]

I have my 3DS hacked and set up exactly the way I want it.

What is the best way to back up the system NAND and contents of the SD card so that it would be easy to recover from serious data loss, but without having to back up the actual 3DS game files, which take up a lot of space?

I wold not mind reinstalling all the 3DS cia's in case of a disaster but would want to preserve everything else.

 

[TurdPooCharger]

Creating a NAND Backup
Restoring a NAND Backup
Checkpoint or JKSM

Revisit the 3ds.hacks.guide for other tips and tricks.

 

[themanuel]

Thanks. That is useful. However, from where I'm standing, I may not be able to get around having to back up the entire SD card, given all the stuff I have set up on it. It would be nice to be able to delete installed 3DS CIA's from those backups but worst case, I'll just buy a bigger hard drive.

If I do just back up everything, I'll still use Checkpoint or similar to back up my saves with more frequency. However, I think it will not back up my saves from DS games launched using forwarders and GBA injected games, so I expect I'll need to back those up separately.

 

[DSoryu]

Thanks. That is useful. However, from where I'm standing, I may not be able to get around having to back up the entire SD card, given all the stuff I have set up on it. It would be nice to be able to delete installed 3DS CIA's from those backups but worst case, I'll just buy a bigger hard drive.

If I do just back up everything, I'll still use Checkpoint or similar to back up my saves with more frequency. However, I think it will not back up my saves from DS games launched using forwarders and GBA injected games, so I expect I'll need to back those up separately.

NDS savefiles are stored in your NDS directory under tha folder called "saves", just copy it as it is, them will work even on any other emulator. for the GBA games, unfortunatelly you have to open game by game and doing the sav blackup with godmode each time as well.

 

[themanuel]

NDS savefiles are stored in your NDS directory under tha folder called "saves", just copy it as it is, them will work even on any other emulator. for the GBA games, unfortunatelly you have to open game by game and doing the sav blackup with godmode each time as well.

OK, that is what I expected. Would it be possible to back up the entire agbsave.bin and then restore it, after recovering from a failure?

 

[DSoryu]

OK, that is what I expected. Would it be possible to back up the entire agbsave.bin and then restore it, after recovering from a failure?

The only way to do that is doing a NAND and "Nintendo 3DS" folder backups it seems, because the GBA savegames are encrypted before AGB_FIRM mounts them when you load their respective game (AFAIK, I'm not that inmersed into the 3DS scene technically-wise).

 

[themanuel]

The only way to do that is doing a NAND and "Nintendo 3DS" folder backups it seems, because the GBA savegames are encrypted before AGB_FIRM mounts them when you load their respective game (AFAIK, I'm not that inmersed into the 3DS scene technically-wise).

Thanks. It sounds like it's not practical. I don't have very many GBA games so I can just backup the recently played ones.