Hacking What exactly is a sysNAND and what happens if i back it up?

[RocksRule21]

If I backup a sysNAND trough gm9, update, then restore to that same sysNAND, what happens? I know ill be on that version again but what happens to all my cias, cfw, saves, etc.


Sorry if this is a dumb question but I couldn't find the answer anywhere online.

 

[Ryccardo]

Sysnand is the internal storage of your console, which is made of a NCSD partition table (comparably to physical 3DS game cards) and of some partitions (normally, these are: twlnand, twlphoto, gba save, two kernel partitions, ctrnand)

It's called that way because it is the system's builtin storage (as opposed to an emunand, which is physically on the SD if you have one), and that chip uses NAND technology (as opposed to its main alternative, NOR; NAND is preferred for filesystem use)

in fact you may also hear it being called an "eMMC" - embedded MMC - effectively a nonremovable (and with some differences in performance and feature set) SD card, which is in turn a form of "managed nand" (a nand chip plus a controller implementing that variant of the SD command set, and taking care of sector remapping and things like that; usb flash drives and sata ssds are other examples of managed nand)

If I backup a sysNAND trough gm9, update, then restore to that same sysNAND, what happens?

You restore the internal storage to the state it had when you created a backup: primarily this means a downgrade, but also reverting any other changes stored in internal storage that happened after you created the backup (such as installing DSiWare or 3DS-mode nand applications, changes in DSiWares' or 3DS-mode nand applications' saves, changes in system settings, photos stored to internal memory, installation of tickets, ...)

 

[Deleted User]

If I backup a sysNAND trough gm9, update, then restore to that same sysNAND, what happens? I know ill be on that version again but what happens to all my cias, cfw, saves, etc.


Sorry if this is a dumb question but I couldn't find the answer anywhere online.

sysnand is the information that the console itself contains on the mainboard. if you back it up you can recover from a brick if such a thing happens

 

[wormdood]

As others have it's a way of restoring your system after a brick ... it used to be the only way to recover from a brick (although there are more ways nowadays it's still) a recommended to create and keep your own nand backup