Hello everyone.
I have a R4 Dual Core White card and have been having some particularly frustrating issues with save files.
http://www.r4i-gold.org/r4i-sdhc-dual-core-v1-4-3-r4i-sdhc-white-update-revolution-card.html this is the card, though I purchased mine from an Amazon seller in the US before they pulled the listing a few months back)
Anyway, onto the problems.
Issue number one:
I have a few different MicroSD cards that I use with the R4 and for some reason I find that when I copy ROMs and save files over to different MicroSD's, the save files will not be read when I load up the game. This happens even if I keep the names/file structures identical between cards. I even tried copying over the entire R4 kernel from the card along with the games/saves, but to no avail. Why won't my saves read?
Issue number two:
I find frequently that my saves become corrupted even WITHOUT moving them between MicroSDs. At first it seemed like there was no rhyme or reason to this, but I notice that it seems to happen with some games and not others. Games like Pokemon HeartGold, Clubhouse Games and several others are big contenders for having their saves randomly become corrupted. Other games seem to hold saves just fine as long as I don't try to take them off the card and put them onto another. It's really making me crazy over here. What could be causing this?
Things I've already tried:
-Moving the games and save files to the root directory. Didn't work. Saves still wouldn't read.
-Removing all of the spaces in the ROM/save filenames. Used in conjunction with placing them in the root directory. Didn't work.
-Tried using a fresh ROM with old save file. Didn't work.
Anyone have any other ideas I could try?
Short of just buying another R4 card. Because this one seems to hold saves sometimes, I'm thinking it's just a technical error somewhere along the line that can be fixed. My thought at this point is that it might be an issue with some of the games needing to be patched or something, but I don't even know where to begin with that. Thoughts?
EDIT:
GUYS! GUYS! I think I'm figuring out the problem!
Ok, so, I wasn't aware of this before, but after poking around in my R4;s kernel a bit I discovered that you could set the size of the save files anywhere from a few hundred kb, to 4 MB, to all the way up to 64MB. I thought that was curious, so I erased my old saves, changed the save file size limit on and started new save files at the beginning of "problem" games, then looked at the size of the save files for the games that kept getting corrupted (IE, Sonic Classic Collection, Pokemon HeartGold and other Pokemon games, etc). and noticed that the new save states were far larger than what they'd been set as in the kernel's original settings (Pokemon HG was set to a 4 MB save type, but the save itself was a whopping 8 MB right at the beginning of the game!).
The problem appears to be that the saves get corrupted when they inevitably grow to a size larger than what the kernel is set to allow them to expand to. If you have your ROM set to only 4mb or whatever, then when the save tries to expand to 8 MB or over, it gets cropped, and the save gets ruined.
From all the searching I've done, this seems to be an extremely common issue people have with the white R4 SDHC, so I hope this info will help someone. If I encounter more save issues I'll add it to the topic.
EDIT:
Hmm, still having trouble with Pokemon: HG saves getting corrupted for no apparent reason. I think the save size change fixed the other games though. I just learned how to patch using the Max Crass method so I'm going to experiment a bit to see if that changes anything.
I have a R4 Dual Core White card and have been having some particularly frustrating issues with save files.
http://www.r4i-gold.org/r4i-sdhc-dual-core-v1-4-3-r4i-sdhc-white-update-revolution-card.html this is the card, though I purchased mine from an Amazon seller in the US before they pulled the listing a few months back)
Anyway, onto the problems.
Issue number one:
I have a few different MicroSD cards that I use with the R4 and for some reason I find that when I copy ROMs and save files over to different MicroSD's, the save files will not be read when I load up the game. This happens even if I keep the names/file structures identical between cards. I even tried copying over the entire R4 kernel from the card along with the games/saves, but to no avail. Why won't my saves read?
Issue number two:
I find frequently that my saves become corrupted even WITHOUT moving them between MicroSDs. At first it seemed like there was no rhyme or reason to this, but I notice that it seems to happen with some games and not others. Games like Pokemon HeartGold, Clubhouse Games and several others are big contenders for having their saves randomly become corrupted. Other games seem to hold saves just fine as long as I don't try to take them off the card and put them onto another. It's really making me crazy over here. What could be causing this?
Things I've already tried:
-Moving the games and save files to the root directory. Didn't work. Saves still wouldn't read.
-Removing all of the spaces in the ROM/save filenames. Used in conjunction with placing them in the root directory. Didn't work.
-Tried using a fresh ROM with old save file. Didn't work.
Anyone have any other ideas I could try?
Short of just buying another R4 card. Because this one seems to hold saves sometimes, I'm thinking it's just a technical error somewhere along the line that can be fixed. My thought at this point is that it might be an issue with some of the games needing to be patched or something, but I don't even know where to begin with that. Thoughts?EDIT:
GUYS! GUYS! I think I'm figuring out the problem!
Ok, so, I wasn't aware of this before, but after poking around in my R4;s kernel a bit I discovered that you could set the size of the save files anywhere from a few hundred kb, to 4 MB, to all the way up to 64MB. I thought that was curious, so I erased my old saves, changed the save file size limit on and started new save files at the beginning of "problem" games, then looked at the size of the save files for the games that kept getting corrupted (IE, Sonic Classic Collection, Pokemon HeartGold and other Pokemon games, etc). and noticed that the new save states were far larger than what they'd been set as in the kernel's original settings (Pokemon HG was set to a 4 MB save type, but the save itself was a whopping 8 MB right at the beginning of the game!).
The problem appears to be that the saves get corrupted when they inevitably grow to a size larger than what the kernel is set to allow them to expand to. If you have your ROM set to only 4mb or whatever, then when the save tries to expand to 8 MB or over, it gets cropped, and the save gets ruined.
From all the searching I've done, this seems to be an extremely common issue people have with the white R4 SDHC, so I hope this info will help someone. If I encounter more save issues I'll add it to the topic.
EDIT:
Hmm, still having trouble with Pokemon: HG saves getting corrupted for no apparent reason. I think the save size change fixed the other games though. I just learned how to patch using the Max Crass method so I'm going to experiment a bit to see if that changes anything.
