So i'm in the same boat, using a legit .cia of alpha sapphire and saved the game, it worked perfectly the first time but now it jusy blew up in my face. Sadly my gateway has some micro sd issues where it'll say gamecard removed 10seconds into play eventhough it works fine when using devmenu.3ds to install whole .cias.
Do you guys happen to know of any other way to retrive my save without going through the .3dz route or am I SOL?
other option is following a protocol for editing as i do with the cia to avoid damage, but his advice is very very wise
And may I know what that protocol is?
EDIT:
So, FYI, after much trial and error, Let me share what i've found about ORAS .cia and the saves produced via sdf. I'm not sure if it applies to other games.
Firstly, when you backup your save, make sure you backup the secure data too. Otherwise when you restore it later it's going to say it's corrupt. This is because of save checks and whatnot.
Secondly, if you forgot to backup the secure data, all you need to do is "Revert to factory default" under your game title id under the "User" tab.
Once you've "reverted to factory default" i.e deleted the save under the "User" tab, all you have to do is boot the game, play until you can save, then save the game. Then open sdf, and navigate to your game id, then press R+X to delete the secure value. JUST the secure value.
Then, navigate to the backup you made under SD, and import that thang.
Tl;dr from this guy's issue from a year ago,
I import the save into the game and now I am getting an error (the save is not compatible error).
All he needed to do was
1) open sdf, under "User" tab press X to delete the save/revert to factory default
2) open the game, play until you can save then do so,
3) open sdf, under "User" tab navigate to the game id and press R+X to delete this secure value
4) Under "SD" tab, import the save.
5) Profit.