Hacking Is there a way to install emunand without formatting the SD card?

[FearItSelf23]

It seems kinda silly that the gateway has to format the SD card to set up emunand. Having to copy 13GB of files with slow SD readers seems like a waste of time when the format doesn't seem to actually do anything other than renaming the SD card partition and creating a new launcher.dat.

If I just do the format on another SD card then move the file over to my main one will that work?

 

[Drake008]

The sdcard will be partioned. So the data will be deleted.

 

[KazoWAR]

Actually it does more than that. it reformats the sd card. it makes a 1GB partition to store the NAND and the rest is partitioned as a normal drive. the 1GB NAND partition is not normally viewable on the 3DS or the PC, but it is there.

 

[FearItSelf23]

Actually it does more than that. it reformats the sd card. it makes a 1GB partition to store the NAND and the rest is partitioned as a normal drive. the 1GB NAND partition is not normally viewable on the 3DS or the PC, but it is there.

Ok, it makes sense to me now then haha. Thanks for the quick reply.

 

[Tomy Sakazaki]

FearItSelf23 you don't need to reformat the emunand everytime you try to update it. You only need to do it the first time you set a emunand on a SD card, after this you can update the emunand through emunand's system settings.
You can use emunand tool to backup and write back the emunand partition, so if you need to restore it or redo, you can copy a backup directly into the emunand partition of your SD card, without reformatting it through gateway's launcher.
Here's the link: https://gbatemp.net/threads/emunand-tool-release-and-support-thread.359239/

 

[Hashtastrophe]

Actually it does more than that. it reformats the sd card. it makes a 1GB partition to store the NAND and the rest is partitioned as a normal drive. the 1GB NAND partition is not normally viewable on the 3DS or the PC, but it is there.

Yeah, Windows doesn't like multiple partitions on removable media which is why you can't see it normally. (If it could it would just show as an unformatted drive anyway)

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Yeah, Windows doesn't like multiple partitions on removable media which is why you can't see it normally. (If it could it would just show as an unformatted drive anyway)

Just as well, so you don't get a prompt to format the card every time it's inserted into a PC.

 

[Hashtastrophe]

Just as well, so you don't get a prompt to format the card every time it's inserted into a PC.

Indeed. The amount of people that would format their RedNAND without hesitating because of that popup would make even The Reginator™ weep.
It's also a life saver for those of us that use truecrypt type tools to encrypt pen drives. Well, those of us that are smart enough to leave a blank partition in addition to the encrypted one.

 

[FearItSelf23]

I actually used the emunand tool earlier today while messing with downgrade and cfw (I'm not going to have a gateway for probably another week) and was confused on exactly where it was extracting the nand from. The tutorial I read didn't give much information on it. Makes since now though.