Is there no way to backup your saves before attempting the transfer? Like just copy the save file?
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
31 points (100.0% liked)
datahoarder
8102 readers
43 users here now
Who are we?
We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
We are one. We are legion. And we're trying really hard not to forget.
-- 5-4-3-2-1-bang from this thread
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Nope, the switch only keeps saves on the internal storage or synced to their cloud if you pay for it. When doing transfers between devices like this there is no copy option only a move and delete.
There are some legitimate reasons they want to prevent this like preventing users from duplicating items in multiplayer games, etc. Even if you got access to the files they are encrypted so that only your user can use them.
I think the bigger reason they do this is there are occasionally exploits that are done through corrupted saves. So preventing the user from importing their own saves helps protect the switch from getting soft modded.
If you mod your switch you can get access to the save files and since it has full access it can also decrypt them, so that you can back them up. One of several legitimate reasons to mod your switch.
TIL you can transfer pokemons between generation..
I wonder if they could mod the OG switch, backup the nand, then run software to find files without inodes on the backup. One of these should be the save file, right? It'd be a lot of work but possible.
Basically...
Pokemon from Gens 3~7 (2000s to early 2019) can only be brought forward using a system that will no longer be officially supported at some point.
Pokemon in Gens 8 and 9 (the Switch games) are mostly considered "current", and can be swapped around between any current game and Pokemon Home.
Pokemon Home costs money to store Pokemon.
Generally, moving Pokemon between generations involves transferring them using some special tool. The final destination (unless you want to pay money) is usually a game, because that's where you can actually use them. The games also have plenty of storage that's "free" (at least, not subscription-based).
Pokemon in the games had been stored inside cartridges from Gen 1 to Gen 7 (90s to early 2019). It was only with the Switch that game saves (and thus Pokemon) stopped being saved to the cartridges, and instead were saved to the console's internal storage (not even an SD card).
Until 2019, getting a new console for your Pokemon games meant nothing -- you'd be able to use your old Pokemon and saves on the new console by plugging in your old game.
This is the first time you had to do anything special to get your saves onto your new console.
For added context, Nintendo offers a cloud saves for players to back up their Switch game saves.
Pokemon is the one of the only Nintendo franchises to not support cloud saves.
This is sad. Happened to me years ago when I bricked my Wii and lost the mons in Ranch, but that was my own fault; it doesn't seem like this person did anything wrong.
Things like this is why I'm working on local backups of my mons, but still things like this annoy me.
Can you explain how you play the same game for 20 years? Like a basic description of how the game works and what keeps you in it..
It's not that you play one game exactly. The Pokemon games are about collecting and raising monsters. Each of those monsters have some unique stats and metadata.
Each time a sequel comes out, those games usually give you a way to transfer creatures from the old game to the new game (it used to be by linking games directly, now I think they have a side app).
Even though each generation brings kind of a totally new game, in same ways they have aspects of expansion packs. You can keep using the monsters you had before and building a bigger collection.
It isn’t necessarily the same game just the same franchise/series. You can catch new generations of pokemon every release and most of the time you can transfer your old pokemon to your newest game. You can catch, train, battle and trade with other players around the world.
That really hurts. I lost so many save files back then from cartridges where battery dies (or cart was sold) and from memory card corruption or other problems on the Playstation. Even today I lost save files because of HD problems (Steam games without Cloud Save or Emulator saves which I did not backup).
But nothing compares to a save file with thousand of hours and 20 years of managing it. Man, reading this I feel so sorry and sad for this person. Thanks Nintendo. That happens if you don't let people access save files directly and let them backup at least offline.
Problem is that they would still need to have some kind of authentication to avoid offline backups becoming clone factories. I used to give away Mews and Celebis by trading them and then restoring my cart's SRAM with a portable backup device.
Turns out the problem loading the link was on my end.