Issue with 3DS SD Card

[Yuuuka]

Hello, lovely people.

Apologies in advance if this is the incorrect section to post in. It seemed to be the most appropriate category out of all, but I may be mistaken.

So, I have an issue with my Alpha Sapphire game.

I downloaded the game from the e-store. It's currently on a 2GB SD card. There is a rather large update required for online gameplay, but my card does not fit it. The only thing on the card is the game plus a 200 block Pokémon X update.

FYI, AS is taking up 14,000 blocks or so.

I tried transferring my data to a newly bought 32GB card, but I got an error message, which stated...

"This saved data is not compatible with this version, so it can't be used. Please see the digital manual for details."

I searched the error message online, and apparently, Pokémon doesn't allow the transfer of data to counter cheating.

Pretty inconvenient for me. Actually, I'm very frustrated. I can't delete my precious save state, yet I want to play online.

Any way around this? I'm a little desperate here.

 

[Vinny Vidi Vici]

That's very unfortunate, there might be a way of transferring the save data by copying a file to a computer, but it might be more trouble than it's worth (knowing Nintendo, they'll encrypt the data something fierce). My only advice would be to get Pokemon Bank to keep all of your pokemon and start again on the new SD card. It might take a lot of time to beat the game again, get all the items, etc. But you'll still have all of your pokemon and even be able to get extra legendaries, etc.

EDIT - Okay, brainfart on my end, you can't use Pokemon Bank to transfer pokemon between SD cards. The alternative is you'll need a friend to trade your pokemon to for safekeeping.

EDIT2 - Hang on a minute, you can use Pokemon Bank. You can use it to transfer your Pokemon to X/Y, then Re-download it to your new SD card to transfer them from X/Y back to the new file in ORAS. That should work.

 

[Yuuuka]

Hm, yeah. That's a potential solution, but I'd rather keep it as a last resort. (Thank you)

I found another potential solution on this post, but I didn't really understand what it is, or how it works exactly. All I know is that it...somehow worked. Could you perhaps explain this to me? You may understand it better than I did.

I can't link the post because I've yet to publish 15 posts on this forum (some spam precaution), so I'll just copy paste what the user wrote:

"Okay, so I was having the same issue as the OP. I bought a 2DS that came with Pokemon X as a digital download, and subsequently bought a 32GB SD card as an upgrade (after about 40 hours of progress). I was having trouble trying to copy the data over. After about half a dozen unsuccessful attempts, this is the exact procedure I used that was finally successful:

1. Format the SD card on your computer.

2. Insert the blank card into your 2(3)DS. (I did this when the unit was powered off, and also correctly powered it down before removing. Not sure if it makes a difference, but I did it anyway.) This allows the DS to put a basic file system and device info on the card.

3. Put your original SD card in your computer, and copy EVERYTHING into a temporary folder.

4. Now the tricky part (I think). DO NOT OVERWRITE ANYTHING. You need to open your temporary folder and your SD card and copy over everything that is not already on the card. This means you need to manually open each folder and copy over any missing files. A lot of the folders have many sub-folders, and you will need to open each and copy over files not already in the cooresponding folder on the memory card.

5. Insert the completed SD card into your DS and turn it on.

Once on the home screen my DS alerted me that new software was available. I unpacked Pokemon X, opened it, and my save data was waiting for me!

I'm not sure if every step is necessary, but this is what I did that worked for me. Also, this is post-version 1.2.

Hope this helps out!"

 

[Tsutarja]

Wow, this thread popped up from nowhere d:

Anyways, glad to see you have everything resolved, and thank you so much for posting a solution for others to look at should they encounter the same problem! :)