Homebrew [Release] 3DSBank - "Nintendo 3DS" folder selector

[zackarhino]

I have one more thing to mention that added a bit of confusion. I really haven't had time to dig into the codebase(s) yet, but I ended up moving those recovered 3DSBank folders onto my SD card, and it didn't do anything to fix it. Then I figured, well it must have deleted everything in the Nintendo 3DS folder, so I spent a while transferring that over from my old SD card, and weirdly enough, that didn't work at all either. It seems like all my 3DS content is just deleted. The only thing I haven't tried yet is formatting the new SD card, testing it (again), and then transferring all the content over again. The only thing I don't have a recent backup of is the sysNAND, which, per our earlier conversations, I don't think is relevant. Again, I'm still trying to figure out the architecture stuff, so I don't have the best understanding of what it's used for... the OS and the software installed on the system?

I think I remember that somewhere in this thread, you mentioned that the Nintendo 3DS folder itself is encrypted and has some sort of key that is unique to each 3DS, is that correct and/or relevant in any way? What's also weird is that 3DSBank doesn't even seem to be working at all anymore. I tried moving the eShop to a different spot, then switching to a new folder, and the eShop was in the new spot in the new folder. That is to say, the changes I make in 3DSBank are now applying to all folders. There are still some pieces of software that are exclusive to each folder though, like RetroArch is still installed in my RetroArch folder. Going off of my earlier post, it seems to be that way because Slot3 was one of the folders that wasn't corrupted, so the recovery process might not have worked.

The only thing I can think of that might have impacted something is that some point, I used gm9 to install software between installations, specifically to install Universal-Updater and stuff because it was faster than doing the Rosalina injection. This is also when I noticed that I couldn't access the title manager for the SD card from gm9... actually, I still can't. I'm in gm9 right now and it looks like the entire Nintendo 3DS folder is only 5MB, so it seems like 3DSBank must have just deleted the entire thing again when I switched folders. After trying to install CIAs through gm9 again, I get the following error:

Install error:
This system is missing one or more .db files.

Maybe the SD card is missing or uninitialized?

However, I can still install software. In the RetroArch folder, I still had all the basics installed, including FBI. I successfully installed a CIA from both FBI and gm9. So my best guess is that the data is actually just corrupted and unrecoverable. The only reason I mentioned that sysNAND thing before is that I had to unlock it when installing titles (and I forgot to relock it), and that's when all this corruption started happening, so it appears that it could be tangentially related. I would really appreciate your thoughts on this.

 

[RocketRobz]

I have one more thing to mention that added a bit of confusion. I really haven't had time to dig into the codebase(s) yet, but I ended up moving those recovered 3DSBank folders onto my SD card, and it didn't do anything to fix it. Then I figured, well it must have deleted everything in the Nintendo 3DS folder, so I spent a while transferring that over from my old SD card, and weirdly enough, that didn't work at all either. It seems like all my 3DS content is just deleted. The only thing I haven't tried yet is formatting the new SD card, testing it (again), and then transferring all the content over again. The only thing I don't have a recent backup of is the sysNAND, which, per our earlier conversations, I don't think is relevant. Again, I'm still trying to figure out the architecture stuff, so I don't have the best understanding of what it's used for... the OS and the software installed on the system?

I think I remember that somewhere in this thread, you mentioned that the Nintendo 3DS folder itself is encrypted and has some sort of key that is unique to each 3DS, is that correct and/or relevant in any way? What's also weird is that 3DSBank doesn't even seem to be working at all anymore. I tried moving the eShop to a different spot, then switching to a new folder, and the eShop was in the new spot in the new folder. That is to say, the changes I make in 3DSBank are now applying to all folders. There are still some pieces of software that are exclusive to each folder though, like RetroArch is still installed in my RetroArch folder. Going off of my earlier post, it seems to be that way because Slot3 was one of the folders that wasn't corrupted, so the recovery process might not have worked.

Yes, it is true that the "Nintendo 3DS" folders are specific to each 3DS console.
Also, what exactly happened when you tried launching 3DSBank to find that it wasn't working?

The only thing I can think of that might have impacted something is that some point, I used gm9 to install software between installations, specifically to install Universal-Updater and stuff because it was faster than doing the Rosalina injection. This is also when I noticed that I couldn't access the title manager for the SD card from gm9... actually, I still can't. I'm in gm9 right now and it looks like the entire Nintendo 3DS folder is only 5MB, so it seems like 3DSBank must have just deleted the entire thing again when I switched folders. After trying to install CIAs through gm9 again, I get the following error:



However, I can still install software. In the RetroArch folder, I still had all the basics installed, including FBI. I successfully installed a CIA from both FBI and gm9. So my best guess is that the data is actually just corrupted and unrecoverable. The only reason I mentioned that sysNAND thing before is that I had to unlock it when installing titles (and I forgot to relock it), and that's when all this corruption started happening, so it appears that it could be tangentially related. I would really appreciate your thoughts on this.

Unlocking SysNAND in GM9 would not cause the corruption/deletion of the "Nintendo 3DS" folder(s).
When you re-open GM9, you'd be asked to unlock SysNAND again when trying to write to it.

 

[zackarhino]

Also, what exactly happened when you tried launching 3DSBank to find that it wasn't working?

I can't recall exactly, but it was definitely some odd behavior. I know I launched it normally, but it ended up flickering or freezing for a bit or something like that, something that was noticable. I really don't think I force restarted or anything like that, it just launched normally, glitched, and then corrupted everything.

Unlocking SysNAND in GM9 would not cause the corruption/deletion of the "Nintendo 3DS" folder(s).
When you re-open GM9, you'd be asked to unlock SysNAND again when trying to write to it.

Yeah, this is consistent with what I found, I just wanted to double check. So what I assume then is that the reason that I couldn't open the title manager or install CIAs from gm9 on the broken folders is that 3DSBank corrupted the .db files (title database, I'm guessing?).

 

[RocketRobz]

Yeah, this is consistent with what I found, I just wanted to double check. So what I assume then is that the reason that I couldn't open the title manager or install CIAs from gm9 on the broken folders is that 3DSBank corrupted the .db files (title database, I'm guessing?).

Might be.

 

[zackarhino]

Good news! I managed to restore my 3DS titles. However, the mystery still continues. I was trying to restore my title database using save3ds when I noticed it gave me a strange error:

There are multiple id1 directories in E:Nintendo 3DS\d3d286917e2c4cbadcc6bdd82c17a504
Please remove the rest.

I was only vaguely familiar with the 3DS filesystem structure, but this made me remember from years back when I learned that there supposed to be one <id0> folder (system ID?), and one <id1> folder (titles?). Please correct me if I'm wrong, it's a little hard to find information about this. Anyway, this error helped my pinpoint my exact issue. There actually were 2 folders under there. One was significantly smaller (00cd01923686b7c1534e323500035344, the real one was 4e720117422236f24e44344700284245), so I backed it up and then just deleted it, and now I'm completely back to normal.

So it turns out it wasn't corruption after all, except for the 3DSBank folder that I posted earlier. Of course, I'm very glad, but I'm also very baffled to say the least. I could understand how something could get corrupted, especially with the oversized SD card, but do you have any idea as to how a completely new <id1> folder was created? I really have no idea what this could possibly be. When you create a new Nintendo 3DS folder with 3DSBank, does it also create a new id for it? I suppose that would make sense (sorry, I still haven't investigated the code yet). Maybe it incorrectly copied one of the other folders' IDs when swapping out the Nintendo 3DS folder?

There are still some oddities though. The issue I mentioned earlier before, where, if you move something in one folder it moves it in all the other folders, still applies. Do you know if this is the standard behavior for system titles and DSiWare as like with folders? Again, this would make a lot of sense. I didn't test this before the corruption issues started happening though.

I did think of one other potential cause though. When I first started to use 3DSBank, I decided it would be better to rethink my 3DS home folders since they would now be shared between all 3DSBank folders. As such, I figured it was convenient to just delete some of the folders, which saved me some hassle when it came to manually moving every title out of the folders. This just made the titles scatter everywhere, which did make me wonder how that would affect the system, since some titles had to be forcefully moved out of their location or even shared locations with other apps between the different 3DSBank folders. Maybe this doesn't make a difference, but it did make me consider that this could introduce bugs. Maybe not though, just food for thought.

Like I mentioned before, I still have quite a bit to learn still. I still would like to address this corruption issue in libfat/patch libslim but to be honest I think it might take a little while before I'm competent enough to understand the inner workings. I guess we'll have to see how it goes.

Thanks,
Zack

 

[impeeza]

Good news! I managed to restore my 3DS titles. However, the mystery still continues. I was trying to restore my title database using save3ds when I noticed it gave me a strange error:



I was only vaguely familiar with the 3DS filesystem structure, but this made me remember from years back when I learned that there supposed to be one <id0> folder (system ID?), and one <id1> folder (titles?). Please correct me if I'm wrong, it's a little hard to find information about this. Anyway, this error helped my pinpoint my exact issue. There actually were 2 folders under there. One was significantly smaller (00cd01923686b7c1534e323500035344, the real one was 4e720117422236f24e44344700284245), so I backed it up and then just deleted it, and now I'm completely back to normal.

So it turns out it wasn't corruption after all, except for the 3DSBank folder that I posted earlier. Of course, I'm very glad, but I'm also very baffled to say the least. I could understand how something could get corrupted, especially with the oversized SD card, but do you have any idea as to how a completely new <id1> folder was created? I really have no idea what this could possibly be. When you create a new Nintendo 3DS folder with 3DSBank, does it also create a new id for it? I suppose that would make sense (sorry, I still haven't investigated the code yet). Maybe it incorrectly copied one of the other folders' IDs when swapping out the Nintendo 3DS folder?

There are still some oddities though. The issue I mentioned earlier before, where, if you move something in one folder it moves it in all the other folders, still applies. Do you know if this is the standard behavior for system titles and DSiWare as like with folders? Again, this would make a lot of sense. I didn't test this before the corruption issues started happening though.

I did think of one other potential cause though. When I first started to use 3DSBank, I decided it would be better to rethink my 3DS home folders since they would now be shared between all 3DSBank folders. As such, I figured it was convenient to just delete some of the folders, which saved me some hassle when it came to manually moving every title out of the folders. This just made the titles scatter everywhere, which did make me wonder how that would affect the system, since some titles had to be forcefully moved out of their location or even shared locations with other apps between the different 3DSBank folders. Maybe this doesn't make a difference, but it did make me consider that this could introduce bugs. Maybe not though, just food for thought.

Like I mentioned before, I still have quite a bit to learn still. I still would like to address this corruption issue in libfat/patch libslim but to be honest I think it might take a little while before I'm competent enough to understand the inner workings. I guess we'll have to see how it goes.

Thanks,
Zack

and one of the «IDs» is the SD card ID.. so the same system and different SD Card will have different folder name for the same data.

 

[Sentai01]

All right, so I just discovered 3DS Bank. It was a little jarring when I created a folder and it rebooted there was nothing there.

So my question is I watched a video on 3DS bank and he says that in order to install to the new folder you can just install through FBI or H shop. However, on folder 1 Homebrew channel FBI and the h shop aren't present. So how do I install at least FBI To each new folder?


My 3DS is actually perfect the way it is but I just discovered. You can forward your DS games and inject your game boy and game boy advance games.
And I have some stupid delusion of having my Mario folder have every Mario handheld game.
Same with Zelda. Anything else like professor Layton.
I don't know. I think it'd be really cool to have all of the dragon quest games. Joker slime 4567 and 8 just all one folder. Same with pokémon etc

 

[RocketRobz]

So it turns out it wasn't corruption after all, except for the 3DSBank folder that I posted earlier. Of course, I'm very glad, but I'm also very baffled to say the least. I could understand how something could get corrupted, especially with the oversized SD card, but do you have any idea as to how a completely new <id1> folder was created? I really have no idea what this could possibly be. When you create a new Nintendo 3DS folder with 3DSBank, does it also create a new id for it? I suppose that would make sense (sorry, I still haven't investigated the code yet). Maybe it incorrectly copied one of the other folders' IDs when swapping out the Nintendo 3DS folder?

No, it does nothing more than move one of the "Nintendo 3DS" folders in or out of the 3DSBank folder.
Also, I'm pretty sure the ID is unique to the console. One ID would be for one console, and another ID would be for another console.

 

[zackarhino]

and one of the «IDs» is the SD card ID.. so the same system and different SD Card will have different folder name for the same data.

I see, gotcha.

No, it does nothing more than move one of the "Nintendo 3DS" folders in or out of the 3DSBank folder.
Also, I'm pretty sure the ID is unique to the console. One ID would be for one console, and another ID would be for another console.

Yeah, I think that's for <id0>. Per impeeza's message here it seems like <id1> is for the SD card. You might think that it was because I swapped over to another SD card, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. It was working totally fine for like the first day.

 

[IceBlueLugia]

I know it might seem weird but is there any way to hide 3DSBank from the activity log? I switch between home screens a lot and would prefer if this app didn’t end up showing up as my most launched game haha. I was able to use the CIA extract and rebuild feature in NSUI to do this for 3DS cias but it seems like that tool doesn’t work for DSi cias.

 

[smallmedicap]

Am I correct in that if you accidentally hit Power or Home while an existing folder is highlighted, it deletes/overwrites it? If so, is there a way to lock the current folders so you don't accidentally attempt to make a new one while an existing folder is highlighted instead of an empty spot?