I accidentally formatted my 3ds

[JoeSwanson]

So my friend was thinking about getting a 3ds so I thought I could reset one of my SD cards and give him it with the games that he wanted on it.

But when I did that I formatted the 3ds without knowing it would reset the entire system, so I stupidly went and did that.

I had a copy of that exact SD card because I recently upgraded from the default SD card to a 128GB one. I tried putting the 2nd SD card in thinking it would just go back to normal but nothing happened.

I saw somebody say somewhere to run the SD card through Stellar Photo Recovery so I went ahead and did that, but know I don't know what to do.

 

[godreborn]

iirc, it's possible to get the movable.sed for an old format by using the essentials.exefs, but I'm not sure of the exact procedure. the key only changes slightly, so you have to bruteforce it iirc.

 

[PewnyPL]

Did you have EmuNAND? Because sounds like you did, otherwise formatting an SD card (especially outside of the console) wouldn't touch anything on it.

 

[JoeSwanson]

Did you have EmuNAND? Because sounds like you did, otherwise formatting an SD card (especially outside of the console) wouldn't touch anything on it.

Idk , all i had on there was the homebrew channels like checkpoint and all that stuff, and TWilightmenu ++

 

[CoolMe]

Idk , all i had on there was the homebrew channels like checkpoint and all that stuff, and TWilightmenu ++

Well if you didn't have much stuff on it, just start from scratch with the new sdcard instead of trying to recover from the old one,as it's the easy way imo.

 

[JoeSwanson]

Well if you didn't have much stuff on it, just start from scratch with the new sdcard instead of trying to recover from the old one,as it's the easy way imo

Well if you didn't have much stuff on it, just start from scratch with the new sdcard instead of trying to recover from the old one,as it's the easy way imo.

i had so much stuff on there, i have a copy of the data tho

 

[KleinesSinchen]

So my friend was thinking about getting a 3ds so I thought I could reset one of my SD cards and give him it with the games that he wanted on it.

But when I did that I formatted the 3ds without knowing it would reset the entire system, so I stupidly went and did that.

I had a copy of that exact SD card because I recently upgraded from the default SD card to a 128GB one. I tried putting the 2nd SD card in thinking it would just go back to normal but nothing happened.

I saw somebody say somewhere to run the SD card through Stellar Photo Recovery so I went ahead and did that, but know I don't know what to do.

Did you really use "Format System Memory" thinking it would not... delete things from system memory? Is this even possible?!

*Sigh* There are still possibilities

Making previous SD backups work again (including savegames):

a) Find KeyY with "CTRTransfer Type D9" (or restore from embedded essentials backup). You might have to run Faketik to make all titles appear again on Home Menu​

- or -​

b) Install everything again and restore previously backed up saves (Checkpoint, JKSM)​

- or -

Restore everything, including previous data on NAND (Activity Log, saves of preinstalled software, photos on SYSNAND TWLP):

Restore previous NAND image, the newer the better. You might have to run faketik to make all titles appear again on Home Menu​

==============================



*Sigh* In any case:
Good luck and have fun!

 

[JoeSwanson]

"Restore everything, including previous data on NAND (Activity Log, saves of preinstalled software, photos on SYSNAND TWLP):
Restore previous NAND image, the newer the better. You might have to run faketik to make all titles appear again on Home Menu"

is there like a video on how to do that?

 

[CoolMe]

"Restore everything, including previous data on NAND (Activity Log, saves of preinstalled software, photos on SYSNAND TWLP):
Restore previous NAND image, the newer the better. You might have to run faketik to make all titles appear again on Home Menu"

is there like a video on how to do that?

You can restore the nand backup on GodMode9. Faketik is a homebrew software just install it like any other cia file, and run it.

 

[godreborn]

"Restore everything, including previous data on NAND (Activity Log, saves of preinstalled software, photos on SYSNAND TWLP):
Restore previous NAND image, the newer the better. You might have to run faketik to make all titles appear again on Home Menu"

is there like a video on how to do that?

not a bad idea. let's hope he made one.

 

[JoeSwanson]

not a bad idea. let's hope he made one.

i dont think i did, when i open the gm9 folder all i see is NANDmanager.gm9

 

[godreborn]

your only option might be the movable.sed, but it says on the bruteforce page that if you inject it, you'll get a black screen or brick. it will just be to decrypt what's on the sd card. I don't know the process though.

 

[JoeSwanson]

your only option might be the movable.sed, but it says on the bruteforce page that if you inject it, you'll get a black screen or brick. it will just be to decrypt what's on the sd card. I don't know the process though.

nvm its good i found the sysnand backup, i had to remember where i put the backup, thanks anyway

 

[KleinesSinchen]

your only option might be the movable.sed, but it says on the bruteforce page that if you inject it, you'll get a black screen or brick. it will just be to decrypt what's on the sd card. I don't know the process though.

Don't mix up the two:
Running Seedminer normally after formatting will give the current KeyY¹, not the previous. With CFW already installed we can just copy the full current movable.sed from CTRNAND (which is of no use for the old SD content). The reason why injecting the result of Seedminer will lead to a softbrick situation is that everything but KeyY in the file is just filled with 0x00 bytes. The Seedminer file is just enough to decrypt/encrypt SD contents which allows injecting exploits into save files and DSiWare.

So the warning is important: Never inject the Seedminer movable.sed into your NAND!

=================

For anybody with a similar problem: Full previous movable.sed including previous KeyY can be retrieved:

• With a NAND backup from before formatting; ideally brand new backup right before formatting.
• [S:] SYSNAND VIRTUAL/essentials.exefs (can be mounted in GodMode9) – unless the essentials backup has already been updated/overwritten
• By trying to bruteforce with the script "CTRTransfer Type D9" (IIRC there are just 255 possibilities, can take a while though; Turdpoocharger mentioned it may fail if the console in question had been involved in "System Transfer")

Please forgive me my lengthy reply here. Warnings about ideas that can lead to bricking and/or data loss can't be said often enough.

not a bad idea. let's hope he made one.

Too many people don't have any backups. No safety net at all. Good to know it's not the case this time:

nvm its good i found the sysnand backup, i had to remember where i put the backup, thanks anyway

@JoeSwanson
Good luck with the recovery! …and please have a look at my signature. Backups are important; we all make mistakes. One moment of "derangement" and the damage is done. I once mixed up a device letter /dev/sda and /dev/sdb and deleted the wrong HDD. The whole neighborhood must have heard it. The rest of the day was waiting for rsync to restore the backups. I won't even think about how I would have reacted on losing several TB of data.







_________________________
¹If the old friend code is still known, Seedminer might be able to find the old key. Not sure about the procedure.

 

[BaamAlex]

How can someone "accidentally" format the console? Is this possible?

 

[BETA215]

How can someone "accidentally" format the console? Is this possible?

Well, there's people that "accidentally" have children. There are worst possible things

 

[KleinesSinchen]

The word "accidentally" is overused in context of console modding. Why doesn't anybody say: "I made a mistake."
This is why I included this guy:

I think it is impossible to accidentally format a 2|3DS. I have been trying to find out why so many people think the following when encountering a problem with CFW on consoles:

• Start from scratch
• A fresh start
• Delete everything
• Go back to stock

For the last one, "Go back to stock", I have found out: That is actually the way on Android devices when modding went wrong. Re-install the complete stock operating system. On Android devices this does work since re-installing the stock OS is an officially intended possibility – opposed to Nintendo consoles where you shouldn't have the possibility/access rights to damage the OS. No official reinstall possibility on Nintendo devices.

People seem to mistake CFW on consoles with a complete custom operating system. "Just remove the custom stuff and the stock OS will work again!" – which is plain wrong.

What I don't get is that so many people seem to be surprised when they lose data when starting their "virtual deletion nuclear missile". They format the SD, "format" the console (throw away the user profile) and afterwards they say: "Help! I accidentally […]" instead of "I committed a fallacy. Can the damage be undone?"
==========



Lastly the off-topic but arguably creative "accidentally have children":

Well, there's people that "accidentally" have children. There are worst possible things

I can imagine someone intents to indulge the carnal desire without reproducing… and then the condom fails. Of course this is a possibility to take in account before starting the fun. But I have never heard someone had to click three times on warnings with "accept", "agree", "okay" or whatever in bed to start a pregnancy.