Adding USB drive to Pi3 prevents any ROMS from showing up

Sam Lowry

Newbie here. My goal is to install and play ROMs on a 64GB USB.

I've watched videos and looked at https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive/ but without success.

I have a PI3 with RP4.3 installed. Everything works great, and I can play the games I installed on the SD card... until I plugin the USB drive formatted FAT32, with a retropie-mount folder. (Following the Automatic Mount install)

First Update the RetroPie Setup Script - DONE
Re-Enable the USB ROM Transfer Service - This is not in the list of setup Retropie settings.

I've tried, rebooting, shutdown, restarting. I'm unable to do anything but access Retropie and ES settings. From what I understand, the files should just automatically copy to the USB drive, but nothing has copied.

Any suggestions?
Thanks!

jonnykesh

@sam-lowry Are you trying to run your ROMs from a USB drive? If you are why are you talking about the usb transfer? You seem to have become confused and confuddled.

If you explain what you did, exactly, then someone will surely see the mistake you made.

EDIT: I think your problem may be you expect the ROMs to somehow transfer to your USB drive from your SD card. That doesn't happen. If you set RetroPie up to run ROMs from a USB drive you need to put them on there. The USB transfer works one way only, USB > SD card, for convenience.

Sam Lowry

Hi @jonnykesh -
Thanks for your quick reply. It does seem I was somewhat confused.

I was following the link above and it says files are automatically copied over to the USB drive. But I saw no sign any files were copied. So, do I ignore this and just create a retropie/ROMS folder on the USB drive and off I go (to copy ROMS into that folder)?

jonnykesh

@sam-lowry Just ignore any BS videos you have watched and follow this guide from the official docs https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive

rbaker

@sam-lowry said in Adding USB drive to Pi3 prevents any ROMS from showing up:

and it says files are automatically copied over to the USB drive.

from usb not to usb.

Clyde

@sam-lowry said in Adding USB drive to Pi3 prevents any ROMS from showing up:

Re-Enable the USB ROM Transfer Service - This is not in the list of setup Retropie settings.

I have such a setting in the Retropie Settings > Configuration / tools > 837 usbromservice. Don't you?

jonnykesh

I'm just going to leave this here. https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

If you need help @Sam-Lowry I suggest you read it and then provide the information requested.

Clyde

@rbaker said in Adding USB drive to Pi3 prevents any ROMS from showing up:

@sam-lowry said in Adding USB drive to Pi3 prevents any ROMS from showing up:

and it says files are automatically copied over to the USB drive.

from usb not to usb.

Could it be that you confuse this with Transferring Roms?

jonnykesh

@clyde Like I said 14 hours ago? Yeah, I think you cracked the case wide open.

Clyde

@jonnykesh I meant @rbaker. The TO got it right IMO, talking about transferring ROMs to the USB drive and linking to the right docs for that.