CardUnlock for Vita released – Access memory cards meant for FW 3.61+
As some may know; if you have a Vita card that’s been in a higher firmware PSVita, you can’t use it on a lower firmware one. That is unless you format the card. Thanks to CardUnlock, memory card swapping with higher FW Vitas won’t be a pain anymore.
What’s CardUnlock?
It’s a homebrew utility that requires taiHEN or (thankfully, as you’ll see) HENkaku. This homebrew works by mouting the card used with a higher FW to another mount point and killing off id.dat on it; that way you can use the card on a 3.60 Vita! That’s great but how are you going to access the card? If you have a Vita Slim or a PSTV, it’s easy; simply remove your existing memory card, run taiHEN without a memory card installed, install the homebrew and viola! You can unlock any card you wish (you don’t have to reboot to do it).
On a Vita 1k, the procedure is a tad more complicated and requries you to have a memory card in your Vita before unlocking another card since Sony didn’t make the internal storage of the Vita 1k accessible for whatever reason. You must install CardUnlock and then move it via Application Storage Manager to ur0 (internal storage); after that you can only use HENkaku R6 to run the homebrew since taiHEN doesn’t activate on Vita FAT (1k) models if you don’t have a card installed. You’ll probably see an error message but ignore it, HENkaku is activated. This method may be slightly dangerous but I doubt it should do any harm; a user on Reddit confirms it works and the developer of this homebrew utility mentions it in the readme for this utility.
SwitchKaku may be used to easily switch between taiHEN and HENkaku R6
How do I get it?
You need to install the VPK and read the instructions in the section above to determine what you need to do. Follow the links below and make sure to get this VPK from a trusted source as it needs unsafe permissions! Look for Application Storage Manager yourself as it’s suggested you know what you’re doing before using it. Report any issues to developer ‘cnsldv’ in a civil way on GitHub or elsewhere.
GitHub link (source code+ full instructions): https://github.com/cnsldv/CardUnlock
Download link: https://github.com/cnsldv/CardUnlock/releases/tag/v1.0
works like a charm, at least I can use my 32gb memory card from my 3.65 to my 3.60. The downside is you have to repeat the step if you’re returning the memory card back
and still thinking of other ways to make use of this other than an extra memory card
Wouldn’t this let you (if you had two Vitas or access to a friend’s) get stuff off PSN and then put it on your 3.60 system?
Sorry to bother, but did Henkaku and taiHen merge since R7 ? So why specify Henkaku/taiHen ?
Also, first.
I’m wondering this too.
taiHen is the hack the kernel hack that lets you run plugins, homebrew and some other complex stuff to your vita. Henkaku is the exploit for you to be able to do anything on your vita.
And when you install from the Henkaku site via the browser, aren’t you installing them both?
Alternatively, you could just boot into IDU mode and delete the id.dat yourself…lol
Because booting your system into IDU everytime is more convinient than just running a homebrew right…
You only have to do it once, after that just set the id.dat to read only with memcardswap and you’ll never have to bother again.
Could you elaborate your answer? Seems a pretty good one and I wanna know about this please
The id.dat isn’t checked when you boot into IDU mode, so you just do that, run Henkaku, delete it, reboot into normal mode and then the memory card will work and generate a new id.dat file.
After that, you download and install memcardswap from Smoke, which allows you to set the id.dat file to read only. Doing so prevents the Vita from changing the system version line in the id.dat file when you put it in a higher firmware Vita, so you can swap it between any higher firmware no problem. Only have to do it once, no need to install any other homebrew you have to keep launching when you swap, and takes all of 2 minutes at the most. We’ve literally known about this since Smoke added that option in like…September.
At best I’d say this homebrew would eliminate the need to boot into IDU mode on Slims/Vita TVs which is ok, but their “workaround” for the fat Vita is totally unnecessary. The dev should add setting the id.dat to read only in the homebrew itself, so at least you don’t have to constantly keep launching their app.
Thanks a lot!
hey man, can you set the id.dat to read only using a ftp client? I see you can modify the files permissions via filezilla (as example), do you thing this thing works too?
Hello Wololo, it has been a while since last update.
Thank you for the article, lately I have been playing Japanese games on my 3ds while learning Japanese, I am around JLPT N3 Level.
Also looking forward to Digimon games. I love Digimon.
This article is by Aurora, not Wololo :p
No I am referring to the website as a whole, why do you care anyway.
you don’t know japanese stop lieing to yourself and don’t put yes i did learn because you and i know you didn’t.
Japanese is cool, 3DS has tons of furigana games, try Youkai Watch series.
I also recommend a book called Tobira, but it requires you to already know about 300 Kanji.
t h e e d g e
weeaboo
seriously well now I know I will Practice japanese with you geeheee
Ohh yeah it’s a party now!
Does this mean that these newer games can be ripped and stored on vita memory or usb and still playable without the game card?
yes. 3.65 games can be played on 3.60 if dumped using maidump
means what?may it show the possibilty of running hacked game based on official 3.61+ byhenkaku? my english so poor forgive about that““““
Picture checks out..
Hey guys,
After I choose No when asked to reboot and I push X to mount I get the message “Unable to mount card err
=0x80010058”. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?
Cheers,
That error means “function not implemented”. Are you using an old version of HENkaku or VitaShell? It’s only tested with HENkaku R6/R8 and latest VitaShell. If you are on those you can pm me (cnsldv) so we can debug.
Thanks for replying. I RE-installed it on USB and it worked fine.
Can this be the key to dump 3.61 games? Well, we can’t run them tho….
so can i play DANGANRONPA V3? yes or not?
is possible fix with cardunlock the format error code C4-10278-8?
how are you supposed to get henkaku r6?