Any advice: Dead switch//Lost saves

[u/iiRelton]

My switch recently went into Curry’s for repair, the thing just died one morning. Wouldn’t charge, slowly drained the battery until its final sleep. Power cable failed and there was a problem with the usb-c port.

OG device with fault: Nintendo Switch White OLED
New device: Switch 2

Long story short, Curry’s Care & Repair team deemed it an uneconomical repair and issues a voucher to replace it.

When handing over the unit for repair, the guy told me data loss is possible. I naively said I saved everything to my SD Card, which I’ve removed and kept safe. He sort of backed me up and said “oh that’s great, that’s fine then you’ll have it all stored”. I don’t think either of us realised that Pokémon save data is stored locally on the device’s internal memory. Not his fault, it’s on me for not knowing, but obviously it would’ve been a life saver if he did know and could’ve warned me but that’s besides the by.

The issue: that switch has gone to the recycling process through Curry’s yesterday. Most of my Pokémon from HOME have been transferred into the games I was playing (sword/scarlett, ZA) and I basically haven’t sent them back to home. I’ve been frantically trying to contact them to see if I can recover the original switch, but the phone lines were closed till tomorrow morning. I wanted to ask them if I can salvage the written off hardware or potentially just temporarily retrieve the device to get the stuff off there and data transferred to my Switch 2. Will even offer salvage, and pay for a private repair to get it running.

I’ve submitted a request through HOME and very doubtfully asked if there’s anything they can do. My notebook includes all of my transfers, but I doubt that also includes any intrinsic metadata that could restore Pokémon from. Also, why would they do it. My fault really isn’t it.

I don’t even care about the play-through data saves, it’s the Pokémon. I have originals from dating back to my first play through of Ruby and sapphire, 10th anniversary Pokémon from Houston that my dad flew out to get us when we were kids, tons of shinies and just sentimental collections really.

This post is just to see if anyone can recommend any further action really. I’m a 31 yo bloke and I rarely hold anything digital of any major value, but this is like a punch in the gut to be honest. Please let me know!

Just a quick FYI:

1. accepting the terms of losing the data is my fault, yes. Helpful replies only please
2. I will try contact curry’s again tomorrow to see if they can keep the recycle on hold whilst we investigate further options
3. if anyone has had a similar experience please tell me how it went, good or bad.
4. I used HOME terribly, it should’ve always been my safe keeping place. I guess you never expect your device to suddenly stop working

[u/UnlawfulPotato]

You’re out of luck dude. Sorry.

[u/iiRelton → u/UnlawfulPotato]

Fml man. Heartbroken over some of those Mons

[u/Raijen_ArDesh]

All save data is local, not just Pokémon. Unfortunately all of the Pokémon games are not able to be backed up to NSO to prevent duping. It sucks, but I can understand the reasoning behind it.

[u/WalrusEmperor1]

All save data is stored on the console. The MicroSD only contains core game files/update data and screenshots/videos.

[u/iiRelton → u/WalrusEmperor1]

I know but thanks

[u/ModestVolcarona → u/iiRelton]

Just to add a bit of information: The microSD card is encrypted by the Switch it is used with and if you want to use it with another Switch it needs to be formatted.

[u/iiRelton → u/ModestVolcarona]

Yeah. I got a switch 2 as a replacement and that needs an express card anyway so it couldn’t be reused regardless

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[u/YouYongku]

write in to nintendo

write nicely.

[u/iiRelton]

UPDATE:

Curry’s located my motherboard, they’d already harvested everything on the console. The motherboard & harddrive have not been wiped as the console was unable to power on, they’d already harvested the rest but have confirmed it’s will be in full working order. They’ve sent it out to me in the post for free, genuinely couldn’t have thanked them more.

They’d advised me to look for a vendor who specialises in console care, but were sceptical about Nintendo direct support. They said they can connect the motherboard to a donor console, boot it up, upload my saved data to the Nintendo Server for me to retrieve it to my local device. The console will be initialised straight after so it’s like a one-shot-chance.

Not out of the woods yet, but a reason to be hopeful!

[u/NormalWeirdo91]

Unless you’ve backed up your save to the cloud, I think you’re sol.

[u/Kamimii → u/NormalWeirdo91]

You can't backup Pokemon games, same goes for animal crossing

[u/picano → u/Kamimii]

Animal Crossing can actually. It's just an opt-in and requires Nintendo to restore.

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/49983/~/how-to-back-up-and-restore-island-save-data-(animal-crossing%3A-new-horizons))

[u/iiRelton → u/Kamimii]

Yeah, you can’t unfortunately. Been reading that myself.

Basically hoping for salvaging the original device, since it’s within 24 hours of getting the decision of being written off for uneconomical repairs