Hacking Homebrew I lost everything on my 3ds' SD card

[Overlord_of_Overqwils]

Uh so my SD got formatted and wiped to the point my computer can't recognize the format. The last things I did prior were copying some rom hacks to inject into the Wii U off the SD and putting the Wolfenstein 3D port on my SD card. I don't know what to do.

 

[Deleted member 653399]

Hi, I would proceed as described here, format the SD card, test the SD card and then put the necessary files for your 3DS on the SD card, so that everything works, I would also recommend that you back up your data after this incident, either on the cloud (MEGA, Google Drive, OneDrive etc.) or on an external storage device or if possible both.

Spoiler: Format the SD card that cannot be read by the system

I just assume that you have Windows on your laptop or desktop PC, if not you would have to search online for a tutorial for your operating system.

1. Insert the unreadable SD card into your PC.
2. Press the "Windows key" + "R" on your keyboard.
3. Now a small window should pop up at the bottom left of your screen with the title "Run", in the input field below you write "diskpart" (without the quotes) and press enter.
4. Now a user account control prompt should pop up, you have to click on yes.
5. Now a black window should open which looks like this:
   
6. In this window write: "list disk" (without the quotes) and press enter.
7. Now a sort of chart should be displayed in which all connected disks to your PC are displayed, including the storage media sizes, all disks are also numbered (this is relevant for the next step), the whole thing looks like this:
   
8. Now you have to select your unreadable SD card from this list with the following command: "select disk NUMBER" (without the quotation marks and replace NUMBER with the number of the respective SD card) and press enter.
9. Now you have to write "Clean" (without quotation marks) and press enter, this will remove all existing partition or volume formatting of the selected disk.
10. Now you have to write "convert mbr" (without quotation marks) and press enter, this will convert the selected and empty SD card to the MBR partition style.
11. Now you have to write "create partition primary" (without quotation marks) and press enter, in order to make a partition on your empty and selected SD card.
12. Now you have to write "format quick" (without quotation marks) and press enter, so that your SD card will be formatted properly now.
13. Now you have to write "exit" (without quotation marks) and press enter, because we are done with the DiskPart part of the tutorial.
14. Open the Explorer and right-click on the SD card that you have now freshly formatted and click on "Format" on the menu that popped up.
15. A new window should now open, from there you don't have to change anything, you just have to click on the "Start" button at the bottom and wait for it to finish:
16. 
    
    
17. Optionally, to be on the safe side, you could test your SD card using H2testw.
18. Optionally, if your SD card is over 32GB and cannot be formatted in "FAT32" file system using Windows, I would use this software to format your SD card in "FAT32": https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/
19. If you don't have CFW installed on your 3DS you can insert your SD card into your 3DS from this step and now everything should work, but if you do have CFW on your 3DS go straight to the next instructions.

Spoiler: Copy important files to your SD card (if you have CFW)

1. Download Luma3DS: https://github.com/LumaTeam/Luma3DS/releases/download/v12.0.1/Luma3DSv12.0.1.zip
2. Unzip the ZIP file and move the "boot.3dsx" and "boot.firm" file to the root of your SD card.
3. From this step you can easily follow these instructions starting from step "What You Need": https://3ds.hacks.guide/finalizing-setup

If you had any ROMs, other homebrews or games on your SD card before, you will have to get them again using the same way you got them before, I hope I could help you.
Have fun with your 3DS

 

[Overlord_of_Overqwils]

I'll probably try that

 

[frozencat]

Buy a new one and redownload or try and use an external program to format again

 

[Kwyjor]

Even when an SD card is otherwise unreadable, the files can sometimes be recovered using Testdisk or Easeus. But if you've already tried formatting your SD card, it's too late for that.

In any case, if your SD card was corrupted, you should probably buy a new one rather than trying to reformat it. They're cheap enough, and do you really want to take a chance with it failing again?

Optionally, to be on the safe side, you could test your SD card using H2testw.

Those are very thorough instructions, but testing with h2testw should never be optional, especially with a card that's already failed once already.

 

[Overlord_of_Overqwils]

Hey, uh I apparently had a 3ds backup from May this entire time