Restoring Corrupted Save Files

[TheFlippedSides]

So this spiraled into a project at this point just to see if this is even possible at this point. I had several save files corrupt on a 1019 block memory card, happened in both a Gamecube and a Wii. Some of those files got deleted, but fortunately I could recover them from a raw dump of the mem card. I'm particularly interested in restoring a Paper Mario TTYD save file since I had all 4 save slots filled and 2 of them managed to get corrupted. I used GCN MemCard Recover to recover the save, and wrote it back to a non-1019 block memory card, but it's still corrupted. Is it possible to recover these two save slots? I thought it might be possible to force them to be readable again through some hex code editing, maybe some lines within the 2 functioning slots could be transplanted into the corrupted ones, but I'm not well versed in coding enough to know where to look and what to look for. Any help with this?

[Andross89]

So this spiraled into a project at this point just to see if this is even possible at this point. I had several save files corrupt on a 1019 block memory card, happened in both a Gamecube and a Wii. Some of those files got deleted, but fortunately I could recover them from a raw dump of the mem card. I'm particularly interested in restoring a Paper Mario TTYD save file since I had all 4 save slots filled and 2 of them managed to get corrupted. I used GCN MemCard Recover to recover the save, and wrote it back to a non-1019 block memory card, but it's still corrupted. Is it possible to recover these two save slots? I thought it might be possible to force them to be readable again through some hex code editing, maybe some lines within the 2 functioning slots could be transplanted into the corrupted ones, but I'm not well versed in coding enough to know where to look and what to look for. Any help with this?

Depending on the structure of the save, you can download someone else's save and try to replace it with the corrupted save data by comparing them in the Hex editor.

I recommend using Dolphin for this. Depending on your experience level, you will have to repeat the process several times until you create a valid file.

I don't think it's worth turning the GameCube on and off for that. And without a guarantee that it will work. Good luck.

[TheFlippedSides]

Depending on the structure of the save, you can download someone else's save and try to replace it with the corrupted save data by comparing them in the Hex editor.

I recommend using Dolphin for this. Depending on your experience level, you will have to repeat the process several times until you create a valid file.

I don't think it's worth turning the GameCube on and off for that. And without a guarantee that it will work. Good luck.

Thank you for your reply. I've hit a wall due to my limited knowledge. Comparing my save with one off of GameFAQs didn't really yield much other than where each save slot is located. I tried seeing if I could transplant the GameFAQs save into my file byte for byte, overwriting one of the corrupted files. Importing the new file into Dolphin's memory card manager gave me a corrupted/unsupported file error. Not sure what to do from here.

[Andross89]

Thank you for your reply. I've hit a wall due to my limited knowledge. Comparing my save with one off of GameFAQs didn't really yield much other than where each save slot is located. I tried seeing if I could transplant the GameFAQs save into my file byte for byte, overwriting one of the corrupted files. Importing the new file into Dolphin's memory card manager gave me a corrupted/unsupported file error. Not sure what to do from here.

I already suspected. Most games are like that.

The only game I managed to do something like this was Shinseiki GPX Cyber Formula - Road to the Evolution.

[TheFlippedSides]

I can always upload the save if someone else wants to take a stab at this. Otherwise I have no idea what I'm doing here. Figured my saves might be salvageable since the data is there when looking at the hex code.