How many nand dumps does it take to be sure you have a good dump?

[sixtynine]

I'm already on dump number 7, none of the first 6 are complete matches. I know because the md5 hash on every dump has at least a couple .bin files different from all the other dumps. Usually always boot0.bin, full.00.bin. Sometimes also those, plus full.01.bin.

So I'm curious how many times does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop. No, seriously though. How many dumps did it take for you to get two or more identical NAND dumps?

• My Switch firmware is 5.1.0
• I am using SX pro with sx os version 2.0.1
• I have two SD cards SanDisk 128GB microSDXC UHS-I card for Nintendo Switch - SDSQXAO-128G-GN6ZA, purchased from amazon
  
• To dump the NAND I am using SX OS options menu > NAND > dump full nand.
  

Both my cards are formatted to exfat and my console was updated when it was on 4.x.x to enable exfat support. That patch brought me to 5.1.0.

The process to format my cards is:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd1 bs=8M status=progress && sync

Once the card is zeroed I use fdisk to partition it and set the partition flag to exfat (number 7 is the partition type)
fdisk /dev/sdd1

After partition I format that exfat partition to a exfat file system with the following.
mkexfatfs /dev/sdd1

I must also add that I do not have file corruption issues on my SD cards. My games all work great.

So my problem is I cannot get multiple identical dumps. Any ideas?


EDIT:
Almost forgot to mention... When the SX OS finishes the NAND dump I am shown a screen that shows "successful" three times. Once for boot, once for full, and then another completed successfully. I don't recall off hand the exact words used in this part. But each time, they all show successful.

 

[slamride]

I wouldn't freak out too much over it. If you have a couple different dumps you should be fine. Hash matching is a little overkill (I do it myself) got mine in 3 dumps
Just check size matches and keep as many as you feel is right. You will make more after updates etc anyway. I keep no less than 2 but hardly ever delete any unless I need room for a new dump.

 

[sixtynine]

In the end I tried 9 times over two days(cuz each dump takes a while) to dump the NAND using SX OS options menu > NAND > dump full nand. Each attempt ended with not 3 successful's as I mention before, but four "successful's" shown on the scree when the NAND dump finished.
boot0 successful
boot01 successful
full nand successful
and than a fourth on the very bottom of the screen stated completed successfully.

I do not have the switch in front of me with a finished SX OS NAND dump to copy exactly what the successful's where stated for. So my description of the successfuls might not be be worded exactly as the screen shows. I am going by memory but I do know as a fact that all four stated successful. I also really don't care at this point what they were saying successful for in the exact words. But there was four "successful's".

So after spending two days trying to get a good dump and being completely unsuccessful, I decided to use hekate_ctcaer_4.2.bin with TegraRcmSmash.exe. I did 3 dumps and all three match exactly. Moral of the story.... Dump your NAND with Hekate on slow setting.

 

[optantic]

hekate has verfication when backing up nand, one dump should be enough if there is no error

 

[sixtynine]

hekate has verfication when backing up nand, one dump should be enough if there is no error

It appears that my file checksums are saying that same thing. But i needed at least two for the comparison to be certain it was safe. Because of my previous experience i figured while I was at it I would start with 3 dumps and see if I could get even just one match. So I dumped 3 first then did my file checks. Only to find out they all match exactly. So I was like, oh well. wasted an extra 71 minutes but at least I know I have a good backup.

Thanks for your input.