Switch OLED modchip only boots with original SD card – “Failed to open payload.bin” with new SD

[tenebrispluvia]

(English is not my first language, I asked ChatGPT to help me write this post.)


Hi everyone,
I’m having a strange issue with my Nintendo Switch OLED (Mariko) with a modchip installed, and I’m trying to understand if this is a known modchip behavior or a firmware bug.


Setup:

• Nintendo Switch OLED (Mariko)
• Modchip installed (not sure if Picofly or HWFLY clone)
• FW 20.5
• Hekate 6.4.2

Situation:

• I have an old 256 GB SD card that works perfectly.
• Console boots fine into Hekate / Atmosphere with this card.
• emuMMC is SD File–based (~58 GB).

Problem:

• When I try to switch to a new 1 TB SD card, the console always fails to boot.
• I get: “Failed to open payload.bin”

What I already tried:

• FAT32 format (32 KB cluster)
• Fresh Hekate setup
• Correct payload.bin in root
• Correct hekate_ipl.ini
• Copied update.bin from the working SD card
• Recreated emuMMC from scratch
• Power drain / full shutdown

No matter what I do, the new SD card never boots.
If I put the old 256 GB SD card back in, everything works instantly.


Observation:
This makes me think the modchip firmware might be:

• bound to the original SD card’s CID, or
• dependent on the original sector layout / initialization data.

I’ve seen some people mention that sector-to-sector cloning of the old SD card works, but simple file copying does not.


My questions:

1. Is it known that some OLED modchips are effectively “locked” to the first SD card used?
2. Is sector-to-sector cloning really the only workaround?
3. Does a proper modchip firmware reset/reflash fix this permanently?

Any technical insight or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

 

[worm28]

Well most sd cards 512gb or above come formatted as GPT partition scheme the switch uses MBR you can change it with minitool partiton wizard with out losing your data and you can check if it MBR or GPT.

 

[tenebrispluvia]

Well most sd cards 512gb or above come formatted as GPT partition scheme the switch uses MBR you can change it with minitool partiton wizard with out losing your data and you can check if it MBR or GPT.

Yes, reformatting the SD card exactly the way you described solved the issue. Thank you — I had tried almost every possible method over the past two days.