Nintendo has been the leader in handheld games for decades since the release of the original GameBoy. Despite this, it was their home consoles that made Nintendo the superstar of the gaming company that is adored all over the world.
So it was rather unexpected when both product lines were merged into a single hybrid console – the Nintendo Switch The Switch is a high-performance gaming tablet that smoothly moves from big screen to small screen, letting you take AAA games wherever you go.
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While this is pretty cool, there are some trade-offs. For starters, the Switch doesn’t quite compare to traditional consoles like PS4 and Xbox One when it comes to sheer performance. Another comparative disadvantage is the lack of a hard drive.
While the home console now has hundreds of gigabytes available for digital downloads, the Switch only has 32GB of internal storage, and most of that is taken up by the operating system.
Luckily, underneath the stand is a future-proof SD card slot that accepts a card up to 2TB – a product that currently costs about the same as the console itself. So many users are likely to end up buying an SD card at a more reasonable price for their console, upgrading to higher capacity at the time of sale or as the price of SD technology declines.
The question then becomes if you can migrate your existing SD content to a new, larger card without having to re-download all of your games. The answer is yes, and it’s not difficult at all.
Transferring SD Card Content for Nintendo Switch
Transfer SD Card Content to Nintendo Adapter
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Before we begin, you should know that you cannot switch SD cards between Switch consoles. Downloadable games are associated with a specific console. This guide explains how to use a new SD card to replace the old one.
However, you can use multiple SD cards for the same switch and swap them, although this can be quite tedious.
Here’s what you need to complete the transfer:
- Nintendo Switch – Obvious!
- Old SD card with your games.
- New SD card to update to.
- A Windows computer with an SD card reader.
Most laptops now have a built-in SD card reader, but if you’re using a desktop computer, you can buy a USB card reader for little money.
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When you’re done, here’s how to perform the transfer.
- First turn off the Switch completely while holding the power button. It is not enough to put the console to sleep. If you remove the SD card without turning it off, it will turn off anyway. This way, you won’t save time by skipping this step and risk corrupting your data.
- After turning off the power, lift the stand and remove the SD card.
- Now take both SD cards and go to your computer. Insert the old SD card into the card reader. It should appear as a removable drive in Windows Explorer. On the disc, you will find one folder with the simple name Nintendo.
- Copy the entire Nintendo folder to your computer. The desktop is a good place to be since it is just temporary storage. Don’t delete the folder from the old SD card yet. If something goes wrong, you may have to try again.
- Remove the old SD card from the PC. Then insert a new larger SD card.
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If the SD card is new, nothing needs to be done. However, if it is in use or belongs to a minor brand, you can first format it with the official SD card formatting utility We’ve never had to do this with any Nintendo console when transferring an SD, but it might be a solution if transfer isn’t working.
- Copy the Nintendo folder back to the new SD card.
- Wait for the transfer to complete and then remove the new SD card from the card reader.
- Insert the card back into the switch. After that, turn on your console and your games will be where you left them. Just with a lot of free space.
- After making sure everything works, you can delete the old SD content and temp folder on your computer.
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