Hacking Question Importing saves from a dead switch with backup Nand

[Boomerams]

So, I initially posted this under the Saves discussion board, but didn't receive any hits or a single bit of help. Figured I would try it here because I'm desperate. Moderators, I apologise if I improperly placed this thread under the wrong discussion board, so please feel free to delete if necessary. If this thread is successful here please feel free to delete or close the initial thread HERE.

So, basically, my main switch seemed to just die on me and I had to start using my backup switch as my daily driver and I don't have anyway of accessing the saves, through system transfer or the likes, from my old (now broken) switch to transfer them over, I do have a recent backup of everything from right before i updated to 6.1.0 and can access it through hacdiskmount or whatever. Question is, how in the heck do I get my old saves from the broken switch over to and working with my new switch?

I have tried mounting my backup from my old broken switch with hacdiskmount and tried copying over the save folder, but the new switch just greets me with a corruption error when it boots up and then deletes the "corrupted" save data. Also, the new switch I am using now has yet to be banned and isn't linked to my Nintendo account and never been on the internet. Would signing into my linked account that was associated with those saves on the broken switch on the new switch make it so these saves would work or is it more of because the saves are tied to a different console?

Thanks for any help on the matter and hope this all makes sense.

Spoiler: Recent Edits:

EDIT 1 - Well, was messing around with my broken switch nand dump (the one with the saves I need) in hacdiskmountand and just realized there is a save folder in both the user and system partitions...hmm seems to be the exact same info in both locations. Before, I was just looking inside the user partition for the saves. Thoughts anyone?

EDIT 2 - Well copying over the saves folder from the System and User partitions from the old switch to the new one seemed to have bricked my switch. Did a Nand restore and everything good as new...any thoughts anyone?

EDIT 3 - Wonder if I use the Nand backup from the old broken switch I need the saves from and flash just the System and/or User partitions to the new switch if that would work enough to either copy the saves with Edizon or just work period? Thoughts anyone? Not sure if those partitions contain any console specific information, but I seem to be all alone her so what the hell gonna give it a shot later.

 

[ZachyCatGames]

The save folder in SYSTEM is for system save data, and the save folder in USER is for game save data

 

[Boomerams]

The save folder in SYSTEM is for system save data, and the save folder in USER is for game save data

Yeah, I figured that out lol, but when I just copy over the saves from the User partition to the new switch User partition it gives me the corrupted data error thing and the saves don't work. Currently, I am going through and analysing the save data from both switches to see if I can somehow hex edit the saves to work. Not getting much help here so just gonna wing it for now and try an learn to do this myself after a little bit of research.

 

[bundat]

I have this old post saved:

As far as I know, there is only one way to backup save games in a way that has minimal chance of a ban. This is only for backing up, no editing. No tools exist to edit these yet as far as I am aware.

1. Get TegraRCMSmashGUI. Unpack to a folder somewhere. Call it something convenient, like Tegra.
2. Go here and download biskeydump, memloader, and HacDiskMount.
3. Unpack biskeydump.bin, and memloader.bin. Put in the Tegra folder.
4. In memloader.zip, there is a folder called sample. Unpack the contents to your SD card.
5. Turn off your Switch, get jiggy, and go into RCM mode.
6. Launch TegraRcmGUI. It should say "RCM OK" in the bottom left of the UI. Select "biskeydump.bin" as the payload, and click Inject Payload.
7. Note down everything manually or take a shot of the QR code, then save it somewhere.
8. Press the power button to turn off your Switch, get jiggy, and go into RCM mode.
9. Go back to TegraRcmGUI. It should say "RCM OK" in the bottom left of the UI. Select "memloader.bin" as the payload, and click Inject Payload.
10. In the resulting screen, select "ums_emmc.ini". If this option is not present, you didn't do step 4 correctly. Turn off your switch, and go do it. Continue from step 8.
11. Once selected, press power once.
12. Launch HacDiskMount, run as Administrator. Go to File-Open physical drive.
13. You should see "Linux UMS disk 0 (21.121 GiB)" or something very similar. Select this then click OK.
14. Now you should see a list of items starting with PRODINFO and ending with USER. Double click USER.
15. A window called "Operations on USER" should have appeared. At the top it should say "BIS Key 3", along with two text boxes for Crypto and Tweak.
16. Go to the keys you noted from biskeydump. Copy the correct keys from this to the appropriate text boxes. Click Test. If the result is green with OK! Entropy, continue. Otherwise double check your keys.
17. Below the keys section there is Virtual Drive. Click install, if it hasn't been done already after previously following a different tutorial.
18. Select an empty/unused drive letter. Click Read Only (for safety). Click Mount.
19. Open Explorer, navigate to the newly mounted drive. If nothing appears or Windows says it needs to be formatted, abort and check your keys.
20. In the mounted drive, you will see five folders (Album, Contents, save, saveMeta, temp) and one file (PRF2SAFE.RCV). Copy save and saveMeta somewhere safe, and good luck identifying which one is which.
21. Click Unmount in HacDiskTool. You can now turn off your Switch, hold down Power for 13 seconds.

Now, wasn't that fun?

According to step 20, you need both the "save" and "saveMeta" folders?
Never actually tried this myself

 

[Boomerams]

I have this old post saved:

According to step 20, you need both the "save" and "saveMeta" folders?
Never actually tried this myself

Yeah, I have already tried with copying over both folders, but still get the corrupted data thing. I am pretty sure the saves are tied to either the particular User and/or System. Gonna take a look in a little while to test a few things if anyone else has any ideas or good places to start let me know.

 

[Khar00f]

not sure if this would work BUT, what if you restore the user partition from your old switch to the new one, just so that you can boot it and do a save backup using checkpoint, then you can restore your new switch backup and restore the saves (a shot in the dark)

OR, maybe,

on your new switch, do a save backup with checkpoint for any game, see on the sd card which files it's backing up and copy thos same files for the games that you want from your old nand backup and use check point to restore them. I doubt y po u can simply copy paste as files are encrypted, but maybe restoring them with Checkpoint will resign them with right keys as I've already restored saves from my 1st switch to my second using checkpoint.

not sure if any of this makes sense the way I explained it, but I think you'll have more chances of getting it working using the second method.

Keep us updated,

 

[Boomerams]

not sure if this would work BUT, what if you restore the user partition from your old switch to the new one, just so that you can boot it and do a save backup using checkpoint, then you can restore your new switch backup and restore the saves (a shot in the dark)

OR, maybe,

on your new switch, do a save backup with checkpoint for any game, see on the sd card which files it's backing up and copy thos same files for the games that you want from your old nand backup and use check point to restore them. I doubt y po u can simply copy paste as files are encrypted, but maybe restoring them with Checkpoint will resign them with right keys as I've already restored saves from my 1st switch to my second using checkpoint.

not sure if any of this makes sense the way I explained it, but I think you'll have more chances of getting it working using the second method.

Keep us updated,

Yeah, not really sure how correct I am on this, but I am pretty sure that injecting a partition from a different switch console would not work at all. Every partition and layer is encrypted and unique to a switch console, hence the amount of keys, so any "alien" data would just be considered corrupted or lead to a (semi)brick, which are the problems I have had thus far.

Moving forward, what I am thinking is that utilizing Hacdiskmount, and the appropriate BISkeys, you can gain access to the raw data in a certain partition. So, basically, if mounted and then copied over from Hacdiskmount that data is unencrypted, but could still be somehow linked to a certain user or console ID.

Furthermore, when using a program like Edizon or checkpoint several of those layers of security are already bypassed (bypassed probably not the right word) as well as you are able to select a specific profile when backing up. Not really sure if anything is involved with those programs that unlinks a save from an account, or how it works period, but that is what I will start reading up on probably tomorrow.

In conclusion, if entirely correct about everything, I am pretty sure that my problem is just that the raw save data that I am able to retrieve from Hacdiskmount is just linked to my old profile and/or switch console ID somehow. I have become tired of trial and error with copying files to and from with the switch (semi)bricking on me in the hopes that shit would just work...Sooo, just gonna do a little bit of research and then hit the ground running sometime tomorrow with my head truly in the game.

EDIT - Can't help but shake this feeling that I am really just over thinking things. Please, step up and give me a shout if anyone can help. I don't consider myself a genius by any means because I have no friggn clue what I am doing here, but I damn sure ain't afraid to try figureand shit out myself. Adapt and overcome...OORAH!!

 

[bundat]

In conclusion, if entirely correct about everything, I am pretty sure that my problem is just that the raw save data that I am able to retrieve from Hacdiskmount is just linked to my old profile and/or switch console ID somehow.

Not sure if it might be relevant, but there's also this post that talks about how to transfer a linked Nintendo account manually (it might be that your old profile is linked to a Nintendo account, and since profiles/accounts could no longer be unlinked since 6.x, you need the same link... maybe?)

Anyway, supposedly you can do that manually by:

Copy 80...10 and 80...11 in SYSTEM/save from your nand backup or from someone else who can link their account to your current SYSTEM/save.

Enjoy.

 

[Lucky16]

I tried the manual account transfer, and all it did was cause my Switch to hang at the logo when I tried to boot it.

However, I did find this thread, with a script to convert saves from a NAND dump to Checkpoint-compatible format, and that did work! (I haven't got around to restoring them yet, but they look right - the Breath of the Wild one has all the right folders, etc.)

Note that if you run Checkpoint (or similar) and restore the saves then your new Switch won't be "clean", so if you go online, you run the risk of a ban. That said, any sudden save file changes are probably detectable, if Nintendo care to check, so I don't think there's any safe way of restoring saves.

 

[Astoria]

You need to use the script from this post to decrypt the saves to a Checkpoint compatible format.

 

[Boomerams]

You need to use the script from this post to decrypt the saves to a Checkpoint compatible format.

Holy crap, thanks!! Will give it a try a little later and let everyone know if it worked.

 

[adev]

Heads up. I was successful at injecting a skyrim save extracted from a nand dump from a different user account. I used the "extract nand gamesave.rar" to organize my nand backup game save folders and moved them to my checkpoint save folder. I figured out the correct save folder by using Checkpoint to create a normal backup and going through each of my save backup folders to see which file scheme matched. Note that when I tried to restore the whole backup save folder, skyrim recognized the files but said that they were corrupted. However, I was finally able to get it to work by deleting my Skyrim save data in the settings, starting a new game, creating a checkpoint backup, and copying a single pair of game save files from my backup into that backup folder and restoring that. Hope that made sense.

 

[Anisse]

Holy crap, thanks!! Will give it a try a little later and let everyone know if it worked.

@Boomerams Did you ever figure out this issue? I am currently trying to import saves from my dead switch to my stock switch while also keeping my NAND clean/without launching CFW. Ive tried renaming the save folders from the User partition on one switch and placing them in the other with HacDiskMount but I got the same corrupted save message.

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

Heads up. I was successful at injecting a skyrim save extracted from a nand dump from a different user account. I used the "extract nand gamesave.rar" to organize my nand backup game save folders and moved them to my checkpoint save folder. I figured out the correct save folder by using Checkpoint to create a normal backup and going through each of my save backup folders to see which file scheme matched. Note that when I tried to restore the whole backup save folder, skyrim recognized the files but said that they were corrupted. However, I was finally able to get it to work by deleting my Skyrim save data in the settings, starting a new game, creating a checkpoint backup, and copying a single pair of game save files from my backup into that backup folder and restoring that. Hope that made sense.

@adev Im a little confused on your explanation. Were you able to get the saves to work on the switch without having to use any homebrew programs or CFW? or did you restore that save through Checkpoint?

 

[ZachyCatGames]

@Boomerams Did you ever figure out this issue? I am currently trying to import saves from my dead switch to my stock switch while also keeping my NAND clean/without launching CFW. Ive tried renaming the save folders from the User partition on one switch and placing them in the other with HacDiskMount but I got the same corrupted save message.

The save needs to be signed with one of your console unique key (I don't remeber which key it is tho)

 

[Anisse]

The save needs to be signed with a console unique key (I don't remeber which key it is tho)

I have all of my console keys Im fairly certain. How would I go about doing this? Is there a file that repacks it with that console key so that I can place it into my User partition?

 

[ZachyCatGames]

I have all of my console keys Im fairly certain. How would I go about doing this? Is there a file that repacks it with that console key so that I can place it into my User partition?

It looks like hactoolnet can sign save files, so I guess you could try using that (also saves are signed with the device key)
Edit: https://github.com/Thealexbarney/LibHac

 

[Anisse]

It looks like hactoolnet can sign save files, so I guess you could try using that (also saves are signed with the device key)

Thank you. I dont have very much understanding of how to use this though. I have used the script mentioned in the post linked by the two users earlier in this thread, however the uploader gave a step by step. Im not quite sure how to repack them for transfer to my other switch.

 

[ZachyCatGames]

Thank you. I dont have very much understanding of how to use this though. I have used the script mentioned in the post linked by the two users earlier in this thread, however the uploader gave a step by step. Im not quite sure how to repack them for transfer to my other switch.

Those extraction scripts? Just restore the output of those with a save manager like checkpoint or EdiZon

Edit: oh, I forgot you're trying to transfer them to a stock system, yea the only way in that case is the hactoolnet thing

 

[Anisse]

Those extraction scripts? Just restore the output of those with a save manager like checkpoint or EdiZon

I was hoping to avoid that because I want to keep the target switch clean/unhacked. Im trying to salvage a couple of long time save files from my girlfriends switch which got bricked.

 

[ZachyCatGames]

I was hoping to avoid that because I want to keep the target switch clean/unhacked. Im trying to salvage a couple of long time save files from my girlfriends switch which got bricked.

Yea, I forgot about that, read the edit.

I guess if you can't do the hactoolnet thing, you could make a rawnand and boot0/1 backup with hekate, boot into CFW, restore the save with checkpoint, shutdown the system, extract your saves from the user partition, restore the rawnand and boot0/1 backups, and copy the saves you extracted from your user parition earlier back over