HELP Needed - New SD Card

[FunkyCrunky81]

Hi all,

I'm in desperate need of some urgent help. Basically, I have a AC limited edition 3DS XL that came preinstalled with AC:NL. I've bought one of those wi-fi cards so I can wirelessly transfer photos taken on my DS to the computer. And I've already transferred all information from the DS card that came with the DS to the new wifi card.

However, when I put the wifi card in the DS, animal crossing is missing but all my photos, etc. aren't. So I re-downloaded AC:NL in the hope that my save info is on the wifi card so when I started it my info would be there, but it's not!!!! It's just giving the option for a new save file or move in.

If I replace the old SD card back in the DS, my town info, etc. is still there so I know that the info is still safe on my old SD card, but I don't see any way of transferring my data from the old SD card to the new as I've already put both cards in a card reader and physically copied over all data from the old to new, but it makes no difference.

How in the world do I transfer my town across? Is there anyway to contact Nintendo about this (if no-one knows how to resolve this) since I've followed their steps.

Argghh.

 

[Hermit]

I would contact Nintendo. I've always had really good support when I called but they are normally quick to respond to emails too.

http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform/index.jsp
1-800-255-3700

 

[Dizzi Paradise]

So long as you transferred EVERYTHING from the old card to the new one, it's all still there. Put your new card into the SD slot of your computer and open it up. Make a back up onto your computer, and to be extra safe onto a thumb drive as well. There will be two folders on the card, DCIM (where all your photos etc are stored) and Nintendo 3DS (where all your game data and downloaded games etc are stored). Open up Nintendo 3DS. In here there are two (or more) folders, one is a string of alpha-numeric gibberish and the other is called Private. If you have two folders with alpha-numeric gibberish names, you need to merge the largest one (the one holding the most data) into the latest one (the one with the latest/most recent date/time). You can skip any files that have the same name.

I had to do this fairly recently for hubby, who got a new (bigger) SD card for his 3DS. I transferred everything from the old one to the new one using the computer, but it looked as though all his downloaded game saves were gone. Nearly a year's worth of Layton, Mario Kart etc, all gone. Except they weren't. What happened was that, instead of accessing the data I'd so painstakingly transferred over, the 3DS created a new folder and accessed that instead. It was as though all that data had just disappeared. When I redownloaded all the games that were no longer there (but the E-Shop still knew he'd paid for them) I realised something was odd about the number of blocks remaining on the card. I'd doubled the size of the card, but after re-downloading all his exisiting games there was still not much space left. Conclusion - the card had the same data on it twice.

ETA - once you've verified that everything works as it should, you can remove that extra folder. It's only taking up blocks on your card. Back it all up again first though, in case you delete the wrong folder.

Edited again to add - when you do the folder merge, you need to make sure you are merging INTO the folder with the most recent date, as this is the folder your 3DS now looks in for data. The other folder is the one it used to use, before you changed cards. Also, if you have been playing much since you made the initial change-over and you skip all the same-name files in the merge you may lose your most recent save data. I checked each file date before deciding whether to skip it or keep it.

 

[FunkyCrunky81]

UPDATE: After doing some intensive Googling it appears that you cannot backup or transfer any AC:NL data from one SD card to another. The reason being is as before on other games, Wii, etc. where duplicating data can mean cheating. In my case I'm not cheating, I just want to get the data from my 4GB regular SD card to a bigger 8GB wifi enabled card.

But alas, it's not possible therefore I am going to have to stick to the 4GB card. That sucks a lot.

Dizzi - I've done all you mentioned, and it does not transfer the game nor the save. I did already do the trasnfer of all the data from the old SD card to the new before and as you mentioned, the game disappeared so I re-downloaded it from the eStore (as it was re-downloadable for free since it remembered the digital download on my account.) Once I re-downloaded it and started it up the save info was not available on the new card despite transferring everything across. It only allows me to restart from a new game which is obviously not what I want.

[EDIT:] The new card had nothing on it anyway so everything that was transferred was all the new info from the old card as it hadn't even been placed in the DS when I bought it therefore no new folders were created or duplicated anyway.

Hermit - I'm in the UK and after Googling other peoples responses, Nintendo have just said that it's not possible to trasnfer info from NL because of the above. I'm going to see if it's possible at all to send them both the SD cards so they can do the transfer themselves. That way they know I'm not cheating if they do it themselves and delete the info off the old card. But in reality, I'm probably thinking they won't offer this service anyway.

All in all, le sigh.

 

[Dizzi Paradise]

That sucks :-( Especially as I'm still using the original 4 gig card that came with my Pikachu 3DS XL and my AC:NL is a download. I was going to get the new Pokemon as a download, but at 16k blocks I'd need a bigger SD card. If I can't transfer my AC:NL save file to a new card, no more download games for me :-(

Sorry I couldn't help.

Edit - just read your edit. Was the same with hubby's, there was no data on the new card originally, but the 3DS still automatically created a new folder for save data (extra data) and used the new folder, completely ignoring the old one. If you compare the two SD cards, does the new one have an extra alpha-numeric-gibberish folder in the Nintendo 3DS folder?

I should have mentioned - the games on the old card HAD transferred to the new one, but the DS was ignoring the folder they were in. So it looked as though they hadn't transferred. The save files were in the same folder, so it looked like they hadn't transferred either. But when I checked the remaining space on the new card after downloading all the games again there wasn't much more than there had been on the old card. As we'd gone from a 4 gig card to an 8 gig, that seemed odd. What had happened was we now had two copies of each game - the original one from the old card, and the newly re-downloaded one. Have you checked the space remaining on your new card?