Hardware Nandbackup verification.

[masterz87]

Since I don't have an mt-card, nor a gateway I had to use the ctr tools or wahtever it's called. I dumped teh nand, and the fat-16 padgen, but is there any way to verify that the dump is good? I know on my wii there was a utlity to make sure that they were good. I dumped both of my 3dses and I'm about to copy them around to all of my HDDs, SD cards, and flash drives but before I go through that effort I want to be sure that they're good.

 

[tsselle]

Dump it twice, at least, and compare the dumps in a hex editor. Right now, that I know of, that's the best way to verify

 

[masterz87]

OK, the program is clearly not dumping the nand right or something. Or it's changing the key or something as each dump is different. Even though looking at it,there's clearly repeating patterns within it. I guess the 3ds has to be storing some data about itself, probably the amount of steps someone has taken that's screwingthe whole thing up.

 

[tsselle]

Hmm. I currently can't test mine, but I'm pretty sure that two dumps should come out the exact same, as long as you haven't changed anything.
Can anyone correct me?

 

[gamesquest1]

Hmm. I currently can't test mine, but I'm pretty sure that two dumps should come out the exact same, as long as you haven't changed anything.
Can anyone correct me?

if you have a hardmod then yeah they will be the same but if you are dumping via software (unless you have some custom SW that makes 2 dumps at the same time) then they will always be different, the 3DS changes stuff on each bootup etc so you will never get a 100% identical dump as all the nand dumping tools i know of would require a reboot between nand dumps

 

[tsselle]

Can't the gateway launcher make two dumps at once? and you dont need a gateway card for it.

 

[gamesquest1]

Can't the gateway launcher make two dumps at once? and you dont need a gateway card for it.

nope it will always dump as NAND.BIN......iirc it doesnt dump it again if you remove the SD and take that nand backup off to dump again(unless you reboot but that would defeat the purpose of trying to dump twice to verify), but i may be wrong.........truth is though i think it would be very unlikely to get a bad nand dump unless your using a fake SD card

 

[tsselle]

Gotcha. I was thinking you could just take it out and do it again. And hey, it never hurts to check.

 

[gamesquest1]

Gotcha. I was thinking you could just take it out and do it again. And hey, it never hurts to check.

it *may* work, i think i tried a good while back, but im not sure, or even if it didn't use to work it may work now, no harm in trying i suppose

 

[tsselle]

I personally can't test right now, as my N3DS is out of commission for the time being. </3

 

[masterz87]

I wish the 3ds has a quick and easy tool to verify nand dumps like on the wii. Where it checks for bad sectors and compares them etc. I know the 3ds uses all kinds of weird encryption on it, but I wish there was an easier tool. Admitedly with emunand I could verify it much easier but I don't have an mt-card and I'm debating on it since I'm looking towards the supercard team and hoping.

 

[TriigerHappy]

If you're on an O3DS you could try out RxTools, it lets you boot into a "classic mode" emunand for free.

 

[masterz87]

Yeah no, it doesn't do it at all. The page itself says "to boot into emunand, you have to have already have an emunand partition". So itdoen't help me at all,yeah sure it lets me dump the nand, but there's no way to get emunand without paying for a 3ds card. Even though it pretends that it lets you do so. But it doesn't, and you cannot create an emunand partition unless you have a 3ds flash card. So this still doesn't let me verify that my nand dump is good or not.

 

[Cyan]

it *may* work, i think i tried a good while back, but im not sure, or even if it didn't use to work it may work now, no harm in trying i suppose

I tried it when they introduced NAND dumping, and it didn't work.
You couldn't eject/reinsert the SD and dump again, it freeze the GWmenu.

I don't know if they fixed it and allow SD card check and remount.

 

[Avalynn]

So the current way I handle it is taking multiple reads, checking the size, and checking the image out with a Hex editor.

This is the method that seems to work with me so far without having to decrypt the image or anything like that, and I'm not sure if there are any other checks, but I'm curious as well. When looking at the image with a Hex Editor, like HxD, the letter "NCSD" come up every time on working images for me at the beginning.

 

[TriigerHappy]

Yeah no, it doesn't do it at all. The page itself says "to boot into emunand, you have to have already have an emunand partition". So itdoen't help me at all,yeah sure it lets me dump the nand, but there's no way to get emunand without paying for a 3ds card. Even though it pretends that it lets you do so. But it doesn't, and you cannot create an emunand partition unless you have a 3ds flash card. So this still doesn't let me verify that my nand dump is good or not.

You can run the gateway launcher and format an emunand with it without the gateway flashcart, then proceed to boot the emunand with RxTools. I've personally done this and use RxTools daily.

 

[Cyan]

finding the NCSD letters doesn't tell you the NAND is correctly dumped.
it means the first sector is, but not necessarily all the other sectors.

booting the dump in EmuNAND like suggested above is a better way to check its validity.

 

[masterz87]

So then, is it true them, thatthe gateway launcher 2.0b1(I believe is the one that added emunand) safe to boot for creating emunand? I believe 2.0b2 is th eone that added bricking, but I'd like to use the oldest possible launcher since I don't want a brick sinceI don't have a confirmed good dump of mynand.

 

[Cyan]

yes, 2.0b1 is good and safe

 

[masterz87]

OK, so it worked and I made sureof it because I have a 3ds here that was on 4.3.0-U or whatever t's called, and I put in project x-zone which requires 4.4, and let it upate, and saw that the sysnand was still on 4.3U, also something odd.

Edit: removed my previuos stupidity.

I guess with the emunand I'll be able to getmy club nintendoprie and not have to worry aboutgetting another card for at least a litle while longer.