Deleted saves

Every few days, I turn on my DS to find that one of my games lost all their save data. It seems to happen completely at random. About 7 or 8 of them have fallen prey so far. I'm using an acekard 2i on my ds lite with akaio 1.7.

I don't get it, it nothing seems to prompt this. I can be playing it for days and days, and then poof one day it's gone without anything to spark it. It makes me not even want to play, why bother when it may or may not be erased in the next few days? Sometimes it tells me the save file is corrupt, and others it doesn't, instead just leaving me with New save slots without warning. Thankfully, this time it was just the new super mario bros, and who cares about save files in that game anyway.

Still, I have some long RPGs on here that I'd rather not lose my save file for. I've already lost soulsilver which was about 50 hours in.

Any idea on what I can do?

 

Keep an up to date backup of your saved games?

Other than that, backup, format, reinstall. Or try a different MicroSD.

 

I'm supposed to take out the card, pop it into the reader, and back up the save file every time I want to turn the game off? That sounds like a whole lot of work just to save my game.

I don't have the money for another microSD.

 

No, you are supposed to backup your saved game files every day or two so that if a corruption does happen you can revert to a recent save file and minimize your losses.

And you didn't say if you have tried the suggestion to Backup your files, Format your MicroSD http://www.sdcard.org/consumers/formatter/ and reinstall your firmware.

 

I've formatted the card and reinstalled the firmware several times in fact.

Is it NORMAL to have to back up your files all the time? Does everyone who owns an acekard 2i back up their save files onto their computer every few days? If not, then this is not a soluton, it's a short-term workaround, which I will start doing, but it doesn't solve the problem... I need it fixed, not swept under the rug.

 

Well, the next step is to try a different MicroSD (but you can't do that).

Or look at how you are turning off your games, making sure that you are not turning them off while it's accessing memory, and causing the corruption.

 

Of course not, that would ruin the save files of legit retail games too, let alone flashcart games ahah.

I'm wondering if there's some leftover corruption from the soft resetting from before. A lot of the games stopped working and the firmware too. I reinstalled those, but backed up the saves and reloaded those. Maybe the saves themselves have some corruption just like the games and firmware did. I think I'm just going to back up my saves, and wipe them completely off the flash cart and start everything over from the beginning.

It's weird, cause a lot of the times, the game save that gets deleted belongs to a game I hadn't played in like a week.

**edit**

By the way, the acekard itself is really flimsy, it doesn't feel solid, it feels really cheap and it makes a loud clicking sound if I press on the bottom of it. I bought it from shoptemp, is there a chance it's fake?

 

Have you tried reverting back to an older firmware (ya, I know, patches and what not) and seeing if you still get the corruption?

 

I don't understand how an older firmware can help...elaborate?

 

Just to test it out and see if you have the same problems as you do now.

 

This is why I use EDGE... -_-

 

Eliminating potential sources of the corruption. Basic steps in troubleshooting.

 

So I just get an older version of akaio, and play my games as I normally would? (after copying the save files to my pc of course), until I lose a save again? What version do you recommend?

And I'm starting to agree about Edge, not specifically for that card, but I'm regretting letting people talk me into an acekard2i. It's been nothing but trouble. This isn't even close to the first problem I've had with it, I can't seem to have 2 days of happy gaming in peace without SOMETHING coming up to ruin it.

 

I'd go to the last version prior to 1.7, I think it was 1.6 RC2 or with the latest official firmware. Play a bit, and see if you still get corrupted saves. If you do, then the firmware is not the source of the corruption, if you don't get corrupted saves anymore, then there is an issue with 1.7 and your card (Which would have to be fixed by Normmatt's next release).

Obviously these older firmwares won't be as good, but for trying out older games and seeing if they save/load correctly, it works well enough.

 

I don't play a lot of terribly new games anyway, mostly games that are at least a year old. I think soulsilver is the newest one and I won't be playing that anymore after what I lost.

I'll try the official firmware.

 

The Acekard 2i is hands-down one of the best cards that I have used.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with AKAIO or the Acekard 2is that I and my brothers own.
Just keep working with it until it works.
That's what you have to do at times.

On a side note, It took me about 20 minutes of working with my Wii until I could figure out what was wrong with it.

 

Okay, this is where I got my new firmware:

http://www.acekard.com/download.php#ak2

It's the Official Version 4.21. Fixed 4527, 4543 and so on.

The website is really messy and poorly designed so I thought I'd point it out so you knew EXACTLY what I had. The firmware screen says acekard RPG although the website didn't say anything about RPG. It's the one with the nice black skin.

ANYWAY, games are booting up, and games are saving properly, so now all I have to do is wait until I lose a save file I suppose. I'll bump this topic up when/if that happens.

On a side note: why do people say akaio is better? I mean, everyone says it, but WHY? What advantage does akaio have over this firmware? This has a slightly longer initial boot time by about a second, no big deal. Is it game compatibility? or what?

 

Game Compatibility. Pretty much the main reason.

 

Just thought I'd update, I've been using the official firmware for a few days now, and there hasn't been any sign of deleted saves whatsoever. Everything is working smoothly.

Sadly though, I think the official firmware has a problem with Tales of Innocence, as it freezes randomly, sometimes after 10 minutes, sometimes after 3 hours. Unpredictable.

 

Well, it seems as though AKAIO 1.7 was the problem, as I've not had any of my saves deleted in some time. Usually before I start gaming, I check a few of the games that regularly get deleted (Soulsilver, mario 64 ds, nostalgia), and they aren't losing their saves.

Usually something would have happened by now.

Anyways, assuming that my saves are now safe, what could cause the problem? I mean, obviously other people use the acekard 2i along with akaio 1.7 and they don't have this issue. The missing save files were occuring before AND after re-downloading akaio, so simply downloading it yet again won't help. I'd really like to switch back to akaio because of it's compatibility, as from what I can tell, akaio does not freeze tales of innocence like the official firmware does (though it's only once every few hours, so it's still very playable).

If nothing else, I'd like to know the answer out of curiosity. If akaio didn't work, other people would have issues. If my cartridge were defective, the official firmware would not work either. If acekard2i and AKAIO 1.7 were incompatible, other people wouldn't be able to use them together. It doesn't make any logical sense that this would happen to me.