Guide to Prevent game saves corruption
A lot off people post saying they have lost their towns and other game saves and data. It is a very unfortunate thing to happen. Luckily, I have thought up some ways to help minimise the effects of corruption, or aim to Prevent loss of game card data as a whole.>>What causes corruption?<<
Corruption can occur for multiple reasons. If your game card or SD card suffers impact, the shock can potentially damage the components inside causing some areas to cease functioning. Keeping the console in a protective case can prevent damage to the console and anything inserted.
If you place the console or game card SD card near any magnetic fields, these can damage the saved data on both the SD, game card and console.
Water obviously also can damage SD and game cards. Keep away from water.
>>If you have a download version<<
Game data is stored onto the SD card. SD cards as well as game cards have a certain lifetime which they can hold data for. Remember to back up the SD card often. I backup my SD every 2 weeks. If using an SD card for full game versions, back up the contents frequently to keep up to date data. Every couple of years, it would be good to copy over the contents to a new SD card. Details about copying over is below. With a download version game, all of the data for the game is stored to the SD card. Every time you load, save and play the game, the console reads and writes to from the SD card, SD cards only have a limited amount of read writes, about a few million but it soon adds up. Keep backing up your SD card!
If your save data becomes corrupted and you have read this guide, follow this link for a software repair tool guide from Nintendo.
Click for software repair tool guide
>>If you have a physical copy<<
Game cartridges use flash memory, similar to SD cards which means some of the above applies as well. Luckily, game cards store some data such as screenshots to the SD card and streetpass spotpass data. This can take a small amount of load of the game card and means game cards on the whole are less likely to corrupt as they only have the single game and its saves. Do not ping the game card from its slot. Save data which gets corrupted on the game cartridge is very difficult to repair. Nintendo may release a patch to prevent any further corruption as we saw in lumiose city in XY.
Try to keep the game cards in their boxes or in a pouch in a protective case or just keep it in the console. Remember to keep electrical items out of damp areas.
[Spoiler="Copying your SD data to another SD card]
Sometimes, the default size of the SD that comes with your 3DS console is not enough. Only a certain number of blocks are available for downloads and saves. I found that playing animal crossing taking screenshots filled my SD quite rapidly.
If you do find you run out of space, dont worry!
First, switch off the 3DS console's power supply
Then fire up your computer, open the location of the SD card and hit, ctrl-a..or select everything and click cut (ctrl-x Windows). Following this, paste it in a new location on your hard drive. Do not remove the SD until transfer is complete.
Remove the old SD and insert the new SD card which is preferable already new or blank. Copy over the contents of thread old SD in the location you saved it to.
Safely remove the SD using the eject button in my computer (Windows) or equivalent in Mac Linux and insert into 3DS and fire up and done
Thanks for reading. I hope some of this information was useful
