Heyo, so back in 2012, I took pictures and audio with my grandma, which are reaaaaally precious to our family, whenever we come together, we always look at my DSi. Anyways, I have some games that I wanna transfer to my new 2DS xl, but don't want to lose that precious data. How could I move my data without wiping either system, because I got a 2DS in 2017, and have data from then, such as game data. I just want to copy/move the games, and the games only to my 2DS xl. Thanks in advance!
The transfer software DSi → 2|3DS is actually more flexible than the one doing the (full) transfer 2|3DS → another 2|3DS.
Official transfer app for the DSi connects to the servers, checks what DSiWare was purchased and allows moving the licenses individually (choose which game(s) you want to move).
Data that is irrecoverably lost in this process is the save data. I can't think of any sensible reason for this
but the game saves are just thrown away (unlike the System Transfer in between two 2|3DS systems).
I used the transfer app on a dying DSi to salvage the licenses and from just looking at it as well as the results, it seems to work like this for games (could be wrong):
- Get list of licenses from ticket directory and server
- Move selected license(s) to 2|3DS
- Ticket(s) gets deleted on DSi
- Game and save gets erased
- Server remembers that said DSi does no longer have the license(s)
- 2|3DS downloads the DSiWare right from the server
- Nothing is transferred directly DSi → 2|3DS in home WiFi.
If I remember correctly there was an option to
move some kind of data in addition to the games. Could be photos and/or sound recordings. The recordings are stored in some
propriety format which a 2|3DS can use for backwards compatibility reasons. There is no reason why the transfer should delete any personal data (besides the saves) as it's not a full "move my system profile to another console".
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BUT:
Any device and any storage medium can fail at any time for no reason without warning. Because of this I always recommend backing up important data (look at my signature). DSi photos can be copied to the SD and are standard jpg files that can be used on almost any device (phones, PCs, TVs…). Note that DSi pictures look awful on large screens. The resolution of the camera is only VGA and it's not a good camera either.
The easiest method to backup the sound data is connecting the DSi to a computer with audio line in and record the audio.
A full NAND image (
https://dsi.cfw.guide/) contains all the data and it can be recovered using ninfs. For the worst case you should make such a backup. Recovering photos and recordings this way is tedious but it can be used to inject the data into any 2|3DS console.
In case you don't plan to modify a device holding precious information:
- If you stop following the guide right after the NAND backup NOTHING will be written to the NAND and no modification will be done. Remove Memory Pit = Nothing happened.
- Don't overwrite an existing pit file on SD without backup. When in doubt backup the complete SD before anything else.
Good luck and have fun!
