Hacking Suggestion PSA: Backup Your NAND In More Than One Place

[TehCheez]

Friendly reminder to backup your NAND in more than one place. My timing was damn near perfect; I had both my NAND backups on an external hard drive. It's a pretty old and today I got the dreaded click-of-death. Just a few days ago I compressed my NAND backups so they would fit on a spare 64gb flash drive that I have. Yes, you could just make another NAND backup, but for people that have a clean NAND backup that's never had homebrew loaded it would suck to loose that backup.

I highly suggest keeping one backup on a flash drive and another backup on a hard disk as flash media can degrade over time. In a perfect world keep both your backups on hard disk media or optical media.

* Here is a guide to backup your NAND and keys: https://gbatemp.net/threads/backup-...-your-biskeys-tseckeys-keys-txt-guide.513386/

* Here is a guide on compressing your NAND: https://gbatemp.net/threads/quick-n...-your-backups-and-make-them-fail-safe.523678/

* Here is a 2-pack of some cheap but reliable 64gb USB 3.0 flash drives ($16.99 USD): https://www.amazon.com/Center-SuperSpeed-Memory-Storage-2-Pack/dp/B07K84CT17

 

[Draxzelex]

For a PSA, doesn't seem like it got much attention (probably because those who actually backup their NAND already do this).

Anyway, you don't even need to dump the whole 29.1 GB worth to have a NAND backup. Just backing up boot0/boot1 along with the eMMC SYS is enough to be able to recover from 99% of all bricks (the exceptions being fuse burners, fried batteries, and hardware damage). The entire NAND is mostly comprised of eMMC USER which is filled with replaceable data such as saves and installed content. And eMMC SYS is very small, around 2.6 GB.

 

[annson24]

Anyway, you don't even need to dump the whole 29.1 GB worth to have a NAND backup. Just backing up boot0/boot1 along with the eMMC SYS is enough to be able to recover from 99% of all bricks (the exceptions being fuse burners, fried batteries, and hardware damage). The entire NAND is mostly comprised of eMMC USER which is filled with replaceable data such as saves and installed content. And eMMC SYS is very small, around 2.6 GB.

I've been backing up wrong the entire time then with all my 3 backups copied over 3 different places. Well not technically wrong but with all the time it took to backup and all the spaces the backup used...well...you know what I mean.

One thing I want to ask, what if, for example, I bricked while on v7.0.1 then I restored a backup of my v6.0.2 boot0/1 and eMMC SYS. Will the console still boot up even though the eMMC USER is from V7.x while boot0/1 and eMMC SYS is v6.x?

Edit: Answering my own question, I think if it won't boot we can just do a factory reset using recovery mode.

 

[starburst]

Just a few days ago I compressed my NAND backups so they would fit on a spare 64gb flash drive that I have.

I agree with you in stressing the importance of multiple NAND backups.
In my case, a raw (clean) NAND takes 31,3 GB, but when compressed as a 7z or tar.xz file it only takes 340 MB, which is infinitely easier to store.

Anyway, you don't even need to dump the whole 29.1 GB worth to have a NAND backup. Just backing up boot0/boot1 along with the eMMC SYS is enough to be able to recover from 99% of all bricks

One question, mate: I made my NAND backup with the original 4.0.1 firmware. I then used ChoiDujourNX to update to 6.2.0.
I however did not backup my eMMC SYS at the very beginning (the NH guide does not suggest doing it.) Can it be “extracted” from the raw NAND dump or have I lost my chances of making a backup of it?

 

[Kafluke]

This is stupid. Anyone who completely relies on local backups doesn't comprehend the frailty of such. Everything that is important to me gets uploaded to a cloud backup source. Gdrive, onedrive or in my case carbonite. Pick your poison. It doesnt matter. Never rely on local backups. Common sense.

If it's not common to you then you should even be messing with hacking. Mic dropped!

 

[Draxzelex]

One question, mate: I made my NAND backup with the original 4.0.1 firmware. I then used ChoiDujourNX to update to 6.2.0.
I however did not backup my eMMC SYS at the very beginning (the NH guide does not suggest doing it.) Can it be “extracted” from the raw NAND dump or have I lost my chances of making a backup of it?

The point of this post is that you should backup the entire NAND and keep it in multiple places but zip it since the entire NAND is 29.1 GB. My post was highlighting that there are other ways of making a small NAND backup whilst saving space such as only backing up eMMC SYS. You should also know that the entire NAND is made up of both eMMC SYS and eMMC USER.

 

[starburst]

You should also know that the entire NAND is made up of both eMMC SYS and eMMC USER.

I know. But had I been told that eMMC SYS would be enough for the immense majority of the cases, I would have only made a backup of it, specially when my console was empty.
You see, I want a backup to fix the console in case of a brick, but I could not care less about the games or saves.

 

[Draxzelex]

I know. But had I been told that eMMC SYS would be enough for the immense majority of the cases, I would have only made a backup of it, specially when my console was empty.
You see, I want a backup to fix the console in case of a brick, but I could not care less about the games or saves.

You already have the eMMC raw GPP which will recover you from bricks anyway.

 

[DarknessPlay3r]

This is stupid. Anyone who completely relies on local backups doesn't comprehend the frailty of such. Everything that is important to me gets uploaded to a cloud backup source. Gdrive, onedrive or in my case carbonite. Pick your poison. It doesnt matter. Never rely on local backups. Common sense.

If it's not common to you then you should even be messing with hacking. Mic dropped!

This right here.

Backing up is so easy in today's world. There is ZERO reason not to have critical things backed up locally and offsite. Most decent guides mention to properly store your nand backups. A drive with a failed motor doesn't really warrant a whole PSA.

BTW that clicking doesn't mean the drive is dead. Very good chance the motor just went which isn't a terribly hard fix compared to some drives I've brought back to life. Good chance your data is still intact, hell you can even be brave and open it up and see if the arm is just stuck.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

This is stupid. Anyone who completely relies on local backups doesn't comprehend the frailty of such. Everything that is important to me gets uploaded to a cloud backup source. Gdrive, onedrive or in my case carbonite. Pick your poison. It doesnt matter. Never rely on local backups. Common sense.

If it's not common to you then you should even be messing with hacking. Mic dropped!

Honestly, unless there is a fire local backups are fine. And if there is a fire then I think you have bigger problems than not having a clean backup to restore your Switch to stock, that is assuming your Switch didn't go down in the fire.

 

[Devin]

Every time I mod a console I upload the keys/NAND backup to MEGA/Mediafire. (Except for the Wii U. Haven't backed up the NAND for it since I can't be bothered to get a 64GB SD card for the 32GB NAND file.)

Just seems a lot easier to upload and forget about it. I reset my Windows installation every few months and prefer not to have to worry about files like that.

 

[Kafluke]

Honestly, unless there is a fire local backups are fine. And if there is a fire then I think you have bigger problems than not having a clean backup to restore your Switch to stock, that is assuming your Switch didn't go down in the fire.

Okay. 20 years of experience qualifies your opinion as more than valid than mine. I relent. You can look to an external hard drive and have it fail. But what do I know? We'll have a beer when you've suffered through what I have. Until then... keep praying you'll be safe. I truly hope you will be!

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Okay. 20 years of experience qualifies your opinion as more than valid than mine. I relent. You can look to an external hard drive and have it fail. But what do I know? We'll have a beer when you've suffered through what I have. Until then... keep praying you'll be safe. I truly hope you will be!

I'm not suggesting to store it on a HDD, that would be a bad idea. You should have at least one backup on less volatile media, such as a flash drive or a SSD (best if it's not connected to a system), and at least one other backup on another drive. A DVD or a Bluray disc is probably fine too, those do decay (disc rot) eventually but by then it probably doesn't matter anymore.
The thing is that if you want to use a rawnand backup those are a bit too big to fit on the free cloud storage options available. Keeping a copy of the sys partition and boot0/boot1 on cloud storage is still a good idea though, but not required if you have a backup already stored in a relatively safe manner such as a flash drive stored in a place you can find it.

 

[DarknessPlay3r]

I'm not suggesting to store it on a HDD, that would be a bad idea. You should have at least one backup on less volatile media, such as a flash drive or a SSD (best if it's not connected to a system), and at least one other backup on another drive. A DVD or a Bluray disc is probably fine too, those do decay (disc rot) eventually but by then it probably doesn't matter anymore.
The thing is that if you want to use a rawnand backup those are a bit too big to fit on the free cloud storage options available. Keeping a copy of the sys partition and boot0/boot1 on cloud storage is still a good idea though, but not required if you have a backup already stored in a relatively safe manner such as a flash drive stored in a place you can find it.

I've had two SSD's die before my much older mechanical drive, which is still going. Go by the 3-2-1 backup rule. (3 Backups, 2 different types of storage HDD & CD/DVD, 1 off site of either type)

Also as far as size goes, the entirety of my switch's original NAND backup takes up 853 MB (895,238,684 bytes) Just use 7zip to compress the hell out of it, problem solved. Beyond that other backups are just there to save time re-installing games. Saves, it's a good idea to manually pull those from games you want to finish/play later just because. We have ton's of excellent options for that purpose.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I've had two SSD's die before my much older mechanical drive, which is still going. Go by the 3-2-1 backup rule. (3 Backups, 2 different types of storage HDD & CD/DVD, 1 off site of either type)

Also as far as size goes, the entirety of my switch's original NAND backup takes up 853 MB (895,238,684 bytes) Just use 7zip to compress the hell out of it, problem solved. Beyond that other backups are just there to save time re-installing games. Saves, it's a good idea to manually pull those from games you want to finish/play later just because. We have ton's of excellent options for that purpose.

In theory when a SSD gets worn out it should just go read only, there shouldn't be any data loss. But the drive controller can always fail, I guess.
The 3-2-1 rule seems like a good one. I'm not terribly good at backing up stuff myself, I have just one backup of most of my data, and yet I have data from 20 years back from my first PC that has survived until now. But I do make sure anything that's actually important is in the cloud or on my NAS. Usually not both.