Hacking Retrieving 3DS CIA savedata

[kippuu]

Hi there!

I have a situation here helping a friend restoring his savedata from CIA titles. It's been a long while since we touched the 3DS homebrew scene so we're a little unfamiliar with some things, bear in mind.

He was originally using A9LH CFW (I believe) and we tried to upgrade to B9S. During the process of doing so, we copy-pasted the SD card contents on his PC as a backup. We were a bit lost in the guide to upgrade to B9S so we decided it was best to install B9S CFW as a clean-slate and did reformat the SD card.

Now the N3DS is now running B9S and boots to the home menu but it is blank without any of the old games or savedata as we expected. We want to at least be able to restore the savedata from CIA titles and unsure how to approach this. I know there is the Nintendo 3DS we have but not sure how to transfer this. Is it even possible to restore the savedatas or there is no way to restore the savedatas?

He also has an old emunand.bin back in the early Luma3DS days, but unsure if it can even be decrypted at this point to get it working on his B9S CFW. Is it workable in any way? It's coming from the same N3DS.

Appreciate on any advice here!

 

[godreborn]

I think you can with a backup and the movable.sed, but I don't know the process. @TurdPooCharger should.

 

[User154]

I'm a bit a newbie so expect someone to come along with a way better answer lol but have you tried using faketik to generate tickets for the missing titles?

 

[KleinesSinchen]

[…] we decided it was best to install B9S CFW as a clean-slate and did reformat the SD card.

Why?? Why do so many people think blindly deleting stuff will help with anything?

• Did you copy the the "Nintendo 3DS" folder back to the SD?
• If so do the titles appear in "System Settings" → "Data Management" maybe with a grey x? → This would be a case for faketik

It is possible to rebuild the title database (if really needed) and it is possible to decrypt the save data with movable.sed only (which you should have access to with GodMode9).

Whatever you do: Please do not delete anything (or even uninstall CFW). It won't help.

 

[Kwyjor]

We were a bit lost in the guide to upgrade to B9S so we decided it was best to install B9S CFW as a clean-slate and did reformat the SD card.

It is never a good idea to format anything or try to do anything "clean slate". The instructions you needed are at https://3ds.hacks.guide/a9lh-to-b9s .

Now the N3DS is now running B9S and boots to the home menu but it is blank without any of the old games or savedata as we expected.

Do you have multiple ID1 folders on the SD card? If so, you will need to merge them as in https://gbatemp.net/threads/merging-4-sd-cards-to-1.557132/#post-8931968 .

Did you do a complete System Format from 3DS System Settings? Because that changes the encryption key. Fortunately it is possible to recover the KeyY using Godmode9, as in https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-godmode9-scripts-megathread.482150/page-9#KEY_Y .

If all else fails, you can use ninfs on a PC to manually decrypt the save data from your SD card backup and restore it using Checkpoint, but only if you have the movable.sed from before the system was formatted.

 

[kippuu]

Thanks so much to everyone for the quick responses!

We'll make an attempt to see if it's recoverable. Much appreciated for everyone's time to respond to our help!