32Gb SD + 256Gb USB Stick Howto Retropie Attract mode

[RealFraggy]

Hi all,
Can anybody point me to a tutorial or some links for the installation and configuration of retropie attract mode on the above mentioned media? I got an SD with 32Gb and will get an USB Stick of 256Gb.
I've seen some info saying its possible to get all stuff on the usb stick including booting from it, but I'm searching for the most easy solution. I'm not a real noob but I prefer quick and easy.

I'd like to use an image that has artwork already (snapshots/video) that fits on a 256USB Stick and be able to remove / add roms and artwork later.

I'm a bit confused: the roms are stored on the usb stick but where's the artwork stored, on the SD? I know artwork can be scraped, but can this also be done with video and stuff?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[mitu]

@realfraggy We don't offer support or encourage the usage of 3rd party images, so there's no advice for which 'image' to use - just use the one from retropie.org.uk/download.
Running ROMs from an USB drive is covered in the docs https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive/.
You can also use the USB only for running the system - though you'll need at least a Raspberry PI model 3 - and the install still needs a SD card (but you can borrow one temporarily if you don't have it) - see https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md for how to set it up. Note that is you use the USB for both the system and the ROMs (and don't have a SD card) following the advice in the previous link, you won't be able to read it from a Windows/macOS system, since its filesystem will not be read by those operating systems.

Scraping will store the artwork (and videos) in /home/pi/.emulationstation/ by default - which is normally on the SD Card - , but Emulationstation surely supports storing it alongside the ROMs. Use Steven Selph's scraper (https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Scraper/#steven-selphs-scraper) and you have the option to store it in the ROM folder (i.e. on the USB drive). External scrapers (like Skraper or Universal XML scraper) support this also. All the aforementioned scrapers can download video snapshots for the scraped games.

[RealFraggy]

@mitu

Thanks for the useful info! That's more than enough to get me on the way!

I've got ample general experience with Linux, I've even used some tools in the past that allowed my windoze to read (don't remember if also write) linux formatted media, but again I'm lazy nowadays so ...

I thought maybe Attract Mode would be fundamentally different from the normal retropie, but if it's fundamentally the same, then I already got my ROMS running from USB, and now that you told me that all artwork for Attract Mode can be scraped and stored on usb stick, I'll google around for the best scraping databases.

Got a Raspberry Pi 3B, but I'll soon buy a second one and that'll be a B+

Again thanks a lot!!!