Are you having problems running Roms from SSD Pi4???? + Question

wiuenright

IF you cannot get roms to work off SSD/USB read this.

First of all let me say thank you to all the participants on here, the knowledge is so very helpful. I just received the stuff for my first Pi build today and have been at it for about 10 hours off and on (It has been a nightmare). I wanted to share my experience so that hopefully it helps someone else that runs into this issue.

Raspberry Pi 4
RetroPie on Samsung Evo plus 32GB MicroSSD
Flicr Case
Samsung 830 256GB SSD
Orico 2.5 USB 3 External HD Enclosure https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LY97QE8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I loaded Retropie on the SD card just fine. I want to run ROMS off the SSD, I am completely new to Pi and didn't want to get to complicated with booting off of it just yet. This is where my issue started. I followed the videos on youtube instructing you to formatting he SSD to Fat32, enable the USB Rom service on RetroPi and then plug in your SSD. I have tried restarting the whole process over and over, reimaging RetroPi and everything else under the sun. Only once or twice did I get the folders to copy from the SD card to the SSD, and even after that loading roms would not work. I would get a variety of problems and never see any of the Roms.

After formatting the SSD and plugging it into the Pi, the SSD would blink as if it were writing for a very long time. It would stop after about 10 minutes sometimes. Other times it would start again. I was beyond frustrated and was ready to give up. After starting all over yet again, I accidentally plugged the SSD into one of the USB 2.0 ports and it only was writing for 10 seconds. I plugged it in the PC and it had the folders. I put roms on and put it back in the Pi and it is working FINALLY.

Whenever I plug into the USB 3.0 it just writes non stop. I don't know what the problem is. Could it be the enclosure??? Is the lack of USB speed going to make a noticeable difference in gaming? Any ideas why this could be happening?

Hopefully this helps someone out there.

mitu

@wiuenright said in Are you having problems running Roms from SSD Pi4???? + Question:

Whenever I plug into the USB 3.0 it just writes non stop. I don't know what the problem is. Could it be the enclosure??? Is the lack of USB speed going to make a noticeable difference in gaming? Any ideas why this could be happening?

Try looking at the system's messages when you plug in the drive, by running dmesg -w (CTRL+C to interrupt) on the console and see if any errors are displayed.

Make sure you've updated your system (sudo apt update && sudo full-upgrade) to get the latest stable USB firmware and kernel/firmware release.

There's a sticky topic in the RPI forums here for troubleshooting problematic USB3 SSDs, you might want to take a look and see if your enclosure's USB SSD adapter could be one of the models reported with issues.

A Former User

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