Tutorial
Updated
Quick NAND Backup Management Guide, reduce the size of your backups and make them fail-safe
EDIT: DO NOT UPDATE TO 6.2.0.
I highly recommend backing up your NAND in case you mess up your switch, it's much easier than most would think.
I hope to make it even more simple with this guide. Backing your switch up doesn't need to be hard or resource heavy with the right know how.
Yes some of this might be common knowledge to some, but we all have to learn these things from somewhere and maybe there will be one or two things to pick up from here even if you are an expert.
This is supposed to be an easy and simple guide for those who haven't yet to help encourage more people to make backups so they don't make expensive paperweights out of their consoles.
NAND BACKUP
BACKUP INTEGRITY
After you've copied your backups somewhere I recommend you make a "Simple File Verification" (*.SFV) file, which does as you would think.
We basically want to make a *.SFV file using a tool like QuickSFV so we can use the *.SFV file we made to validate whether or not our backup files are corrupt.
Files can go corrupt from things like drive failure, transfer errors, network issues during download/upload, etc.
It's important that we can make sure our backup files aren't corrupt when we need them.
BACKUP COMPRESSION
Last step (which suggest doing to save a lot of storage space) is compressing the files you backed up AND the SFV file you made earlier to a zip (quickest), rar (safest, moderately fast, good compression) or 7zip archive (highest compression/smallest archive size, but slowest compression/decompression speed).
EXTRA STEPS/CONCLUSION
All these steps took a little over half hour all together for me, and will be a lot less for you if you've already dumped your NAND from Hekate.
If you followed all these steps, you'll have your NAND backed up safely and easily to a lot of places with a lot of methods to verify integrity while taking up minimal storage space.
Too hard or too many steps for you?
6.2.0 currently breaks all CFW.
If you did by accident I hope you have backups to restore to! Last safe version is 6.1.0, I recommend staying on 5.1.0 if possible, you should be able to all or most current titles if you install with tinfoil using the ignore minimum required firmware option.
Use 90DNS to block connections to Nintendo so you don't get asked to update, even banned consoles will be prompted to update.
If you did accidentally update without a backup, backup your 6.2.0 console then try to downgrade with Choidujour.
If you did by accident I hope you have backups to restore to! Last safe version is 6.1.0, I recommend staying on 5.1.0 if possible, you should be able to all or most current titles if you install with tinfoil using the ignore minimum required firmware option.
Use 90DNS to block connections to Nintendo so you don't get asked to update, even banned consoles will be prompted to update.
If you did accidentally update without a backup, backup your 6.2.0 console then try to downgrade with Choidujour.
I hope to make it even more simple with this guide. Backing your switch up doesn't need to be hard or resource heavy with the right know how.
Yes some of this might be common knowledge to some, but we all have to learn these things from somewhere and maybe there will be one or two things to pick up from here even if you are an expert.
This is supposed to be an easy and simple guide for those who haven't yet to help encourage more people to make backups so they don't make expensive paperweights out of their consoles.
NAND BACKUP
https://guide.sdsetup.com/#/configuringhekate
You can also use the ReiNX Toolkit to dump your NAND (same as backing up your "eMMC RAW GPP" with Hekate), Boot0, and Boot1 (same as backing up your "eMMC BOOT0/1" with Hekate).
These are the files that your backup should consist of and will be all you need to restore your switch in most cases.
Just keep in mind you can't restore with the toolkit and will still need to use something like Hekate to restore your NAND, Boot0, and Boot1.
You can also use the ReiNX Toolkit to dump your NAND (same as backing up your "eMMC RAW GPP" with Hekate), Boot0, and Boot1 (same as backing up your "eMMC BOOT0/1" with Hekate).
These are the files that your backup should consist of and will be all you need to restore your switch in most cases.
Just keep in mind you can't restore with the toolkit and will still need to use something like Hekate to restore your NAND, Boot0, and Boot1.
After you've copied your backups somewhere I recommend you make a "Simple File Verification" (*.SFV) file, which does as you would think.
[Main Article/Guide Page] https://www.newsgroupreviews.com/quicksfv.html
- [Installation] https://www.newsgroupreviews.com/quicksfv-installation.html
- [Making *.SFV Files] https://www.newsgroupreviews.com/quicksfv-create-sfv.html
- [Verifying with *.SFV Files] https://www.newsgroupreviews.com/quicksfv-how-to.html
- [Installation] https://www.newsgroupreviews.com/quicksfv-installation.html
- [Making *.SFV Files] https://www.newsgroupreviews.com/quicksfv-create-sfv.html
- [Verifying with *.SFV Files] https://www.newsgroupreviews.com/quicksfv-how-to.html
Files can go corrupt from things like drive failure, transfer errors, network issues during download/upload, etc.
It's important that we can make sure our backup files aren't corrupt when we need them.
BACKUP COMPRESSION
Last step (which suggest doing to save a lot of storage space) is compressing the files you backed up AND the SFV file you made earlier to a zip (quickest), rar (safest, moderately fast, good compression) or 7zip archive (highest compression/smallest archive size, but slowest compression/decompression speed).
- I suggest compressing to a zip file (use 7zip or your system's built in file manager) if your computer is slow or you just don't want to spend much time.
- 7zip (LZMA2) is the best making the absolute smallest size archives, but the difference isn't that large, and the performance costs for compressing/decompressing is much larger. I only recommend this if you have a high end computer with a good amount of RAM and a decent CPU or if you have a lot of time to spare.
https://www.7-zip.org/
- I like RAR (use WinRAR for this) best for making "safe" backups because you can add a recovery record which is useful for recovering/repairing your data in the event something bad happens (e.a. corrupt data from transfer), I suggest using at least a 3% record which should only take up to around 10-15mb of extra storage space.
https://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
If you don't know what to pick I suggest just compressing with WinRAR to a RAR (fast setting) with a recovery record between 2% to 5%.
I was able to easily compress my 32gb backup to just over 400mb WITH a 3% recovery record using the fast compression setting (solid, 1gb dictionary, use a smaller dictionary if you don't have much ram).
- 7zip (LZMA2) is the best making the absolute smallest size archives, but the difference isn't that large, and the performance costs for compressing/decompressing is much larger. I only recommend this if you have a high end computer with a good amount of RAM and a decent CPU or if you have a lot of time to spare.
https://www.7-zip.org/
- I like RAR (use WinRAR for this) best for making "safe" backups because you can add a recovery record which is useful for recovering/repairing your data in the event something bad happens (e.a. corrupt data from transfer), I suggest using at least a 3% record which should only take up to around 10-15mb of extra storage space.
https://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
If you don't know what to pick I suggest just compressing with WinRAR to a RAR (fast setting) with a recovery record between 2% to 5%.
I was able to easily compress my 32gb backup to just over 400mb WITH a 3% recovery record using the fast compression setting (solid, 1gb dictionary, use a smaller dictionary if you don't have much ram).
Extract the archive you made somewhere to test and verify the files with the extracted *.SFV file if you want to be extra careful and see if the archive is good.
Once that's done you can deleted everything but the archive you've made, you only need the archive you've made now and just need to extract the archive if you ever do need your NAND backup files.
You can also create a *.SFV file for the archive you've made to validate the archive itself before extracting since the archive can also get corrupted when downloading/uploading/transferring data.
Keep and copy your archive to multiple places for safe keeping, it will relatively be a much smaller file now and can easily be stored to a USB drive, or uploaded online to somewhere like Dropbox, Google Drive, pCloud, Mediafire, MEGA, OneDrive, Zippyshare, Box etc.
Hopefully by now you have something like this (Google Drive)
or this (OneDrive)
Once that's done you can deleted everything but the archive you've made, you only need the archive you've made now and just need to extract the archive if you ever do need your NAND backup files.
You can also create a *.SFV file for the archive you've made to validate the archive itself before extracting since the archive can also get corrupted when downloading/uploading/transferring data.
Keep and copy your archive to multiple places for safe keeping, it will relatively be a much smaller file now and can easily be stored to a USB drive, or uploaded online to somewhere like Dropbox, Google Drive, pCloud, Mediafire, MEGA, OneDrive, Zippyshare, Box etc.
Hopefully by now you have something like this (Google Drive)
or this (OneDrive)
If you followed all these steps, you'll have your NAND backed up safely and easily to a lot of places with a lot of methods to verify integrity while taking up minimal storage space.
Too hard or too many steps for you?
WINDOWS
1. Right-click the folder containing your backup files.
2. Mouse over "Send to" then click "Compressed (zipped) folder"
3. I lied, it was just 2 steps. That's it, your backup files are now stored to a zipped folder and will take up much less space.
1. Right-click the folder containing your backup files.
2. Mouse over "Send to" then click "Compressed (zipped) folder"
3. I lied, it was just 2 steps. That's it, your backup files are now stored to a zipped folder and will take up much less space.
Last edited by lemon07r,
