ROMs from exfat USB drive, drive not automatically mounting on startup

[A-pi]

Pi Model or other hardware: RPi3 Model B
Power Supply used: 2.5A
RetroPie Version Used: 4.4
Built From: Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website (retropie-4.4-rpi2_rpi3.img.gz)
USB Devices connected: 4TB WD My Book External HDD (exfat), Buffalo USB Gamepad, and Rii USB keyboard
Controller used: Buffalo iBuffalo Classic USB Gamepad for PC (2145487)
Error messages received: None
Guide used: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive

I am still fairly new to Retropie and have been trying to set it up so that I can put all of my ROMs onto my external USB HDD (I eventually want to add the Kodi port and put all of my movies and music files on there as well, so have chosen the exfat format). I burned a new Retropie image to my SD card (4.4), formatted the HDD to exfat, and then followed the guide (https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive) and used the auto-mount method. The file structure did copy over to my HDD, but then after I copied some test ROMs to the USB HDD and restarted the Pi, the drive is not automatically mounting/the ROMs are not being seen and therefore no emulators are populating.

I wasn't sure if you use the auto-mount option in the guide if you still need to edit the fstab file or not, but have tried to do so by adding:

UUID=5BD5-384E        /home/pi/RetroPie       exfat   nofail,uid=pi,gid=pi     0      0

which, quite honestly, I'm not sure if necessary/correct. Either way, I think the drive is being recognized by the Pi:

sudo blkid
/dev/mmcblk0p1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL="boot" UUID="B13D-E1E5" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="f2d3cb4f-01"
/dev/mmcblk0p2: LABEL="retropie" UUID="c50e928e-5669-44d0-8e3c-a59d21ad3da2" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="f2d3cb4f-02"
/dev/mmcblk0: PTUUID="f2d3cb4f" PTTYPE="dos"
/dev/sda1: LABEL="EFI" UUID="5F66-17ED" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="c7cce15a-8d40-4354-bda8-e197d4755538"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="MEDIA" UUID="5BD5-384E" TYPE="exfat" PARTLABEL="MYBOOK" PARTUUID="d3b80b87-092c-49ce-b2e1-214e91d1e342"

and when I check for one of the ROMs that I added from ssh, it appears to be there:

pi@retropie:~ $ ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari7800
Centipede (1987) (Atari).a78

So I guess I just need to know how to make RetroPie automatically mount the drive for me each time? I did add both exfat-utils and expat-fuse from an ssh command line.

I have a Mac, by the way, and originally was using extFS Paragon software to format the external HDD as ext4, but then couldn't get the created RetroPie/roms folders to show up properly in my Finder windows to actually transfer the ROMs, so have decided to just go with exfat format (as I will eventually be copying over movie files larger than 4GB).

Any advice or help anyone could provide would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

[mitu]

My guess is that the automatic method works, but the mounting takes some time for a large drive and the folders don't appear before Emulationstation starts. If you see the game on the drive while connected, then you just need to restart Emulationstation to re-read the folders. Same thing for the manual method.

[A-pi]

That does seem to have done the trick--thank you very much. I will try to copy over some more ROMs and then just re-start Emulationstation after boot again and make sure they are all recognized and populated.

Thanks so much again for your quick reply and help @mitu!

[A-pi]

So I actually had a game just now hang up, and had to do a reboot from an ssh terminal. The system came back on, but wasn't finding any of the game files. I restarted Emulationstation and now none of the emulators are populating.

The

ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari7800

command now returns nothing at all, so I guess the drive or mount/link is not being seen.

@mitu Did you mean that with the automatic method, I should not have to add that line with UUID to my fstab file? Or should it actually be in there? Thanks.

Incidentally, blkid still shows the drive (/dev/sda2)...?

pi@retropie:~ $ sudo blkid
/dev/mmcblk0p1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL="boot" UUID="B13D-E1E5" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="f2d3cb4f-01"
/dev/mmcblk0p2: LABEL="retropie" UUID="c50e928e-5669-44d0-8e3c-a59d21ad3da2" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="f2d3cb4f-02"
/dev/sda1: LABEL="EFI" UUID="5F66-17ED" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="c7cce15a-8d40-4354-bda8-e197d4755538"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="MEDIA" UUID="5BD5-384E" TYPE="exfat" PARTLABEL="MYBOOK" PARTUUID="d3b80b87-092c-49ce-b2e1-214e91d1e342"
/dev/mmcblk0: PTUUID="f2d3cb4f" PTTYPE="dos"

[mitu]

@A-pi said in ROMs from exfat USB drive, drive not automatically mounting on startup:

Incidentally, blkid still shows the drive (/dev/sda2)...?

blkid shows you the block devices detected by the system, but that doesn't mean they're mounted and available. The mount command should give you the list of mounted (and available) drives. I guess your drive is not automatically mounted at start or there's an error mounting the drive - check you by manually mounting it and see if any errors show up.