Making an emuNAND and using it with a region changed NAND

How to make an emuNAND for region changing

This tutorial is for users who are looking to region change their 3DS from one region to another (using 3ds.guide), but at the same time have quick and easy access to their original region (by utilizing an emuNAND)

First, an explanation

NAND is a type of flash storage. Whenever someone says the word "NAND", they are really referring to the 3DS's storage, the hard drive of the 3DS essentially. The NAND stores everything important for your 3DS, things like the operating system, the preinstalled applications, user settings, etc. etc.
Region changing involves changing region-specific files in your NAND, so that on boot, the operating system that is loaded is not a e.g. a JPN one, but e.g. a EU one or a US one. However, if you want to quickly and easily switch between regions, you can't just change these region specific files on the spot. You have to go through the region-changing guide again.
emuNAND means having a separate copy of the NAND on your SD card, in a special 1GB-1.3GB (depending on your 3DS) partition at the start of the partition table, and then having this special copy of the NAND being the region-changed one, rather than your 3DS's NAND (named sysNAND). Therefore, upon boot, you can choose which NAND to boot into; Either the one on your SD card, or the one on your 3DS, and you can have your emuNAND be the region-changed one, and the sysNAND to be the untampered one.

How to make the emuNAND partition

In order to get this special partition on your SD card, you have to format the SD card with GodMode9. Formatting, as you already know, deletes everything from your SD card. So, make sure you have backed up all of your files from your SD card before proceeding.
Assuming you have backed up everything from your SD card, we can now proceed with making an emuNAND.
  1. Boot into GodMode9 by holding (Start) on boot
  2. Press the HOME button
  3. Select "More.." --> "SD format menu"
  4. Select "EmuNAND size (full)" from the "Choose EmuNAND size:" menu
  5. Select 32KB clusters
  6. Leave the SD card label as it is, and press (A)
  7. Enter the button combination to format the SD card
  8. Select "GW EmuNAND type"
  9. Let it finish the formatting
The reason why it takes a while to format the SD card is because in the process of formatting it also makes a copy of your sysNAND into your emuNAND, so that the emuNAND partition is not completely empty.

Once you are done formatting the SD card, press the power button, and then power off your 3DS. Don't forget to copy back your backup from your PC to your SD card!

Doing the region change on your emuNAND

You will be following the normal region changing guide over at 3ds.guide, however, with some modifications:
  • At section II step 8, you will choose "transfer to emuNAND", not sysNAND
  • At section II step 19, you will not press the (Start) key. You will instead power off the 3DS, and then boot it up by holding (L). Luma by default boots into sysNAND, but by holding L on boot you can instead tell it to boot into emuNAND. There is an option that you can set in the config that makes it autoboot into emuNAND without holding down (L), and you can set this if you want. Note that once you set this option, holding (L) on boot will do the exact opposite effect; Booting normally will boot into emuNAND, and holding (L) will boot into sysNAND
  • At section V step 5, note that you are using an emuNAND instead of sysNAND
And you are done! Now you have a region changed emuNAND, and an untampered sysNAND!

A note on linked and unlinked NANDs

Right now, your emuNAND and your sysNAND are linked. What this means, is that both NANDs are accessing the same "Nintendo 3DS" folder on your SD card.
What you need to understand is that the 3DS encrypts the "Nintendo 3DS" folder contents, and makes them console unique with a key named "movable.sed"1 (which is stored on your NAND). This is so that if for example you were to buy a game on one 3DS, you couldn't simply move the SD card to another 3DS and share games for free between the 2 3DSes. This is anti-piracy 101. The "Nintendo 3DS" folder however contains more than just games. Saves, Themes, Home menu configuration, images, etc. Are all in that folder.
When you made an emuNAND earlier, you also copied your sysNAND into this emuNAND, and in the process, you also copied the "movable.sed". This made it so that the two NANDs, were sharing the same "Nintendo 3DS" folder, making them linked.
This creates a problem, where changes on one NAND carry over to the other. Ideally you'd want the two NANDs to be seperate entities from one another, they shouldn't be sharing the same "Nintendo 3DS" folder.
You can format one of the two NANDs (ideally using TinyFormat), so that one of the two NAND's "movable.sed" changes, because "movable.sed" changes upon a format. Therefore making them not able to share the same "Nintendo 3DS" folder 2. The reason why TinyFormat is recommended over a normal format through system settings, is because it addresses an issue that occurs when your NANDs have the same NNID in them, because formatting one of them with a normal format would break the other NAND's ability to access NNID settings through the system settings.

Apart from that, you should be fine! And now you have a region changed emuNAND!


1: Technically it is not a key, it contains some other information as well. But in the context of this guide, we are only interested in the key part of this file.
2: I should mention that in practice, you don't have multiple "Nintendo 3DS" folders on your SD card, but rather you have multiple folders inside of the "Nintendo 3DS" folder (Having multiple "Nintendo 3DS" folders would be impossible to due overlapping file names).
 

senkunmusashi

@!#?@!?
Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2017
Messages
108
Trophies
0
XP
108
Country
Netherlands Antilles
SecureInfo_C is used in place of SecureInfo_A when using Luma3ds, if it detects the file on boot.

When is SecureInfo_C created? During the region changing process using CTRTransfer?
 

EQQ

Active Member
Newcomer
Joined
Jan 6, 2018
Messages
38
Trophies
0
XP
57
Country
Vietnam
I bough a n3ds LL, changed to us then eu. Somehow broke eshop, now i get error 005-5602. I wonder if eshop would work using us or even a j regionchange via emunand. Would this guide help me? :cry:


 
Last edited by EQQ,

MrJason005

√2
OP
Member
Joined
Nov 26, 2014
Messages
2,521
Trophies
0
Location
Κάπου
XP
1,607
Country
Greece
I bough a n3ds LL, changed to us then eu. Somehow broke eshop, now i get error 005-5602. I wonder if eshop would work using us or even a j regionchange via emunand. Would this guide help me? :cry:
eshop breaks when you do a region transfer, and this is a server-side issue
not something that can be circumvented
 

SirByte

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2012
Messages
524
Trophies
1
XP
1,059
Country
Canada
I should receive an n3DS LL (Japanese) pretty soon, not sure if it has ever been online, and I sure do not know a way to tell. It's on 9.9.0 AFAIK.

Will this method work with 11.6 as well even though the CTRNANDs are 11.5? Wouldn't you get a frankenfirmware by flashing 10.5 to 10.6?

Is there a different/better way to do this on 9.9.0, so you can go "first online" from your EmuNAND and have full eShop capabilities for that region (USA) instead of the SysNAND region (JPN)? If you need to update first, your system has been online which means you can forget about it.
 

godreborn

Welcome to the Machine
Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2009
Messages
38,471
Trophies
3
XP
29,105
Country
United States
if you mean downgrading that low on sysnand after building an emunand of the latest, there may be major issues with that. I think n3ds came with 9.x.x firmware when it was released, and I remember something about not closing the lid to put the system into sleep mode on 2.1 or something when installing a9lh. that would make it brick. o3ds and n3ds use different firmware iirc, so downgrading that low on a n3ds could be dangerous.
 

AmandaRose

Do what I do. Hold tight and pretend it’s a plan
Member
Joined
Aug 19, 2015
Messages
10,171
Trophies
1
Location
Glasgow
Website
www.rockstarnorth.com
XP
16,080
Country
United Kingdom
if you mean downgrading that low on sysnand after building an emunand of the latest, there may be major issues with that. I think n3ds came with 9.x.x firmware when it was released, and I remember something about not closing the lid to put the system into sleep mode on 2.1 or something when installing a9lh. that would make it brick. o3ds and n3ds use different firmware iirc, so downgrading that low on a n3ds could be dangerous.
Yep like I said it doesn't work with Luma CFW I did this a few years ago in my original 3ds just for the sheer hell of it. Downgraded the sysnand to 1.0 rebooted the console and got a message saying Luma does not work with firmware below 4.5. Had to use my nand backup to fix it so obviously it's not gonna work on a N3DS especially line you have said there wasn't even a 1.0 firmware for the N3DS
 
Last edited by AmandaRose,

godreborn

Welcome to the Machine
Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2009
Messages
38,471
Trophies
3
XP
29,105
Country
United States
Yep like I said it doesn't work with Luma CFW I did this a few years ago in my original 3ds just for the sheer hell of it. Downgraded the sysnand to 1.0 rebooted the console and got a message saying Luma does not work with firmware below 4.5. Had to use my nand backup to fix it so obviously it's not gonna work on a N3DS especially line you have said there wasn't even a 1.0 firmware for the N3DS
off topic, but my purple cover payment for the ps5 was taken out of my account. I should have it Friday. not sure how, but all other cover colors aside from red and black, which have been around since January, are sold out. I also got to act 2 of dragon quest xi. I hate wondering around not knowing what to do, retalking to everyone in the initial town, to find people to help. I don't like not having some direction as to what to do.
 

Ondrashek06

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Dec 27, 2019
Messages
1,097
Trophies
0
XP
3,059
Country
Czech Republic
if you mean downgrading that low on sysnand after building an emunand of the latest, there may be major issues with that. I think n3ds came with 9.x.x firmware when it was released, and I remember something about not closing the lid to put the system into sleep mode on 2.1 or something when installing a9lh. that would make it brick. o3ds and n3ds use different firmware iirc, so downgrading that low on a n3ds could be dangerous.
What about if I build an emuNAND & flash firmware 1 on it? I have an o3DSXL, not n3DS.
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
    The Real Jdbye @ The Real Jdbye: i always pee in the water