Switch Owners - Don't make this mistake.

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Switch Owners - Don't make this mistake.

On 05/20/2019 at 01:18 PM by mothman

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Which should not have been a mistake at all.

I found that I was down to my last 35 GB on my 400 GB card.

So instead of springing for the 512 GB card which wouldn't have increased capacity much anyway I decided to go with my old 256 GB card and delete what was on it, giving me another 238 GB by swapping out the other card when needed.

So I put the card into my Switch and started deleting games from it one at a time. DO NOT DO THIS!!!

Aside for it taking a long time to remove as many games as I had on it I found that it doesn't just free up space from the card. It removes the game from the list of games you have downloaded.

Going back to my 400 GB I found I now had 209 GB free even though I deleted nothing from that card.

Luckily I gave up on that method and just reformatted the card.

Even still I now have 20 games to redownload to the 400 GB card. :(

Comments

Matt Snee Staff Writer

05/20/2019 at 07:41 PM

ah crap. I need to buy a new memory card myself. I havea 256 right now I think. Not enough.

mothman

05/20/2019 at 07:49 PM

512 GB are out there for a reasonable price. Name brands only. Do not fall for any of the cheap no name cards, they are fakes.

There are a couple of 1 TB cards out there but they are still ridiculously priced. There are also 1 TB fakes as well.

KnightDriver

05/20/2019 at 10:52 PM

As soon as I started reading I said to myself, "oh no." Trying to do anything out of the ordinary on a Nintendo device is scary. Penalties will accrue.

mothman

05/21/2019 at 06:42 PM

Yep they somehow keep a central "table of contents" so that a delete from one memory card is seen as a delete from all. i.e. the space is seen as free even though the data may still be there.

Formatting the old disk is a much better idea. Then the table of contents is not changed.

KnightDriver

05/21/2019 at 11:42 PM

That stuff freaks me out. I know my purchases are saved in their database, but it makes me nervous every time I erase a game from my Xbox hard drive.

Super Step Contributing Writer

05/21/2019 at 03:35 PM

This sounds like such a hassle compared to downloading on other systems, honestly.

mothman

05/21/2019 at 06:44 PM

It's just a dumb system they have of tracking what it on a memory card or not. If I'd have done what I should have done in the first place. (format the fucking card and erase everything) I would have been fine.

goaztecs

05/22/2019 at 04:27 PM

Ouch! Just the download for those games will take a while. I did something similar with the multiple cards awhile back with the Vita. I would have one card for the downloaded games, and another for the physical games. It was my funky "work around" to the expensive Sony cards.

SanAndreas

05/23/2019 at 03:19 AM

I need to buy a new memory card. I buy most of my games on cartridge, but every time Mortal Kombat 11 needs an update, I have to delete stuff because I don't have enough space.