Hacking SysNand online play + EmuNand offline play on 2 SD cards?

[Fl-ris82]

Hello. I was wondering if I could get some help configuring emunand for offline play and sysnand for online play. Currently, I am running sysnand with the Atmosphere CFW. Unfortunately, I have no nand backup from before using CFW, but I think I might be able to pull it off since I haven't gone online while running CFW.

I had found this thread, among others: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-setup-emunand-keep-sysnand-online.520471/

What I could not find, however, was a clear tutorial for how to do this with 2 SD cards (as opposed to 2 partitions on 1 SD card):
I'd like a Switch with autoRCM enabled, with
1. an SD card with the sysnand, updated to latest firmware, no CFW. Meant for online play (if not already banned).
2 an SD card with emunand, not neccesarily on latest firmware. Atmposphere. Meant for playing backups.

What I was thinking of doing, was the following:

1. Create an emunand partition on the original SD card (SD1)
2. Install CFW on the second SD card (SD2)
3. Use choidujourNX on SD2 to update it to the latest firmware, make sure it's a factory reset and enable autoRCM. Create new Nintendo accounts etc.

Now only use the emunand partition on SD1 (perhaps even delete the other partition?) And use SD2 to boot into sysnand for online play.

I think I got it right this way, but I might be missing something. Does anyone have any experience with doing this?
Thanks in advance

EDIT

Additional question. In the guide I linked above, OP instructs to update the 'new' sysnand via the internet, and the emunand using choidujourNX.
Wouldn't it be better to update the sysnand using choidujourNX as well? Just to be sure of not burning fuses? Or would Nintendo sense that you did not update using the official channel?

 

[Rasa39]

From my experience it at least feels safer with 2 different cards, if you try to use the same sd and forget to swap the partitions it will wipe all the game files off of it (it asks you on more recent firmwares, but on older ones it just wiped the files). So you kinda need 2 cards if you want expanded storage on ofw, or at least only one for cfw, since you can just run ofw with the nand storage alone which on a clean nand will be empty anyway.

I have a dirty SD on a dirty emunand, and restored my original clean nand before updating it the official way (use hombrew to update cfw emu). I use Hekate to boot both cfw and ofw but accidentally burnt my precious 3.0.x fuses when I used the volume minus button instead of volume plus because hakate told me to and I'm a dumbass. (which saving fuses was the only reason to use hekate to boot ofw)

There's no need to install ofw onto an SD partition, if it's clean and you're gonna go online then there's no point using a second SD just to make a clean emunand, just run your ofw from the internal nand chip without your dirty SD card in. I guess it's the same for your dirty ofw, but it's just a risk, there are ways you can "clean up" your dirty stock nand though which might help prevent bans before you do this and take it online, So I'd suggest doing that process first. There's the one in that post you linked, but there are some other methods iirc so I guess go with whatever you feel is safest.

You can use 90dns and/or Incognito on your cfw emunand to prevent any accidental connection to ninty servers, whilst keeping all your legit info available for online connectivity on the clean ofw. I don't play much on ofw cos I don't pay for online, but I can still access eshop and everything on my ofw despite having a dirty emuand on another SD card with a blank serial and 90dns.

And updating ofw using homebrew could risk a ban, you can always use a jig or modded joycon to boot to rcm and re-enable autorcm after an official update (since it counts down to when it will restart so you know when to expect to hit the combo). Just make sure you do the nand cleanup steps first before any connecting.

Oh and ignore the confilcting information for autorcm if you use hekate, which at some point says to hold volume minus which is NOT the right button. That said, I've had a 4 fuses burn count for years and now cos of one confused mistake I have 12 burnt fuses. It's annoying but not a big issue really, fuses are only for dowgrade/softboot potential but by the time softboot becomes a reality there might be some clever dev that gets higher fw to softboot. You can still downgrade with a custom bootloader even with more burnt fuses, the panic only happens with the oficial bootloader iirc (correct if wrong, don't wanna spread misinformation here).

So in summary, one SD for cfw dirty emunand, use clean/cleaned ofw on internal nand chip.
Re-enable auto rcm with hekate after official update if you wanna preserve fuse count (but if you bugger that up it's not the end of the world)
Always remove dirty SD card and use your clean one with only hekate files before booting to ofw.

One think I did was edit my configs on each SD, so in hekate my dirty SD card can only boot to emunand cfw, and my ofw card can only boot to stock ofw nand even with autoboot enabled (instead of both cards having the default config that can boot both cfw and stock ofw). This isn't needed but is an extra bit of safety, and lets me know which SD card is actually in the console. Just make sure you have autoRCM on to do this, whether you burnt your fuses or not, it's just safer.

Oh and sorry for the text wall.

 

[Fl-ris82]

Thank you, this helps a lot!

There's no need to install ofw onto an SD partition, if it's clean and you're gonna go online then there's no point using a second SD just to make a clean emunand, just run your ofw from the internal nand chip without your dirty SD card in. I guess it's the same for your dirty ofw, but it's just a risk, there are ways you can "clean up" your dirty stock nand though which might help prevent bans before you do this and take it online, So I'd suggest doing that process first. There's the one in that post you linked, but there are some other methods iirc so I guess go with whatever you feel is safest.

So in summary, one SD for cfw dirty emunand, use clean/cleaned ofw on internal nand chip.
Re-enable auto rcm with hekate after official update if you wanna preserve fuse count (but if you bugger that up it's not the end of the world)
Always remove dirty SD card and use your clean one with only hekate files before booting to ofw.

With a cleaned nand, do you simply mean a nand that has undergone a factory reset (and official update)? Or is there some other way of cleaning a nand?

 

[Rasa39]

Thank you, this helps a lot!
With a cleaned nand, do you simply mean a nand that has undergone a factory reset (and official update)? Or is there some other way of cleaning a nand?

I don't think factory reset alone is enough to clean your nand. Certainly do not update officially if you've used any kind of hombrew or had an nsp installed, that will just flag your cfw system to nintendo for a certain ban.

A clean nand is one that has never had any homebrew or nsp installs (never been hacked/cfw'd), I mean it's argued if homebrew is safe or not, but plenty of ppl have reported getting banned from "just using hombrew" so in this case you have a dirty nand if you ever did anything not official with your cfw.

In the thread you linked there is a section that details how to clean up your nand (under "CLEAN UP SYSNAND").
I've never tried it myself because I already have a clean nand backup but I'd suggest taking all the extra steps in that guide for extra safety.

There's no guarantee that cleaning the nand makes it safe to go online because we still don't know what info ninty is using/collecting in order to issue bans, but it's at least a step to help prevent it (assuming you aren't banned already).