SD Card running out of space.

Crush

Hi, i have a 8GB SD-card with retropie installed, the ROM and Bios folders are on a external network drive.
I can't browse the Ext3 partition of the SD card on my pc despite having ext2fsd installed on Windows, which is a bit odd, so i figure i'd ask here.
I understand a clean Retropie installation is about 5GB which leaves 3GB of free space, what in retropie could be using this space?
In addition Kodi is also installed, again video files are on an external network drive, but could it perhaps be that when using the youtube plugin, temp files are being accumulated on the SD card?

Pi Model: RPI 4B 4GB
Power Supply used: Official power supply
RetroPie Version Used: 4.6.1
Built From: Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website
USB Devices connected: Rii i8
Controller used: Playstation 3 (Bluetooth)
File: (File with issue - with FULL path)

lostless

If you are using KODIs library ability, it permanently caches movie artwork, actor pictures, ect onto the SD card. Also emulation station game artwork is stored on the SD card. My suggestion, make a backup image of your build, so you dont have to reconfigure everything. Get a larger SD card. They are cheap now. Restore that image to the new card. Now the new card will still show only 8GB. Somewhere in raspiconfig (I think, i'm not near my pi now) There's an option to expand the storage to use the full card. Now you wont have to worry about space.

Crush

@lostless said in SD Card running out of space.:

If you are using KODIs library ability, it permanently caches movie artwork, actor pictures, ect onto the SD card. Also emulation station game artwork is stored on the SD card. My suggestion, make a backup image of your build, so you dont have to reconfigure everything. Get a larger SD card. They are cheap now. Restore that image to the new card. Now the new card will still show only 8GB. Somewhere in raspiconfig (I think, i'm not near my pi now) There's an option to expand the storage to use the full card. Now you wont have to worry about space.

Thank you for your reply, and yes i did specifically go with my 8GB for the Pi4 so that periodic backup size wouldn't be unnecessarily high.
I use screenscraper on windows to scrape directly on the NAS so all the rom artwork is on the network drive as well.
I didn't even think about all the artwork in Kodi, it probably adds up allot. especially with all the "artwork"
I'll have to figure out where Kodi stores all that and just change that over to the network drive as well.

I wasn't aware you could expand the SD card after the initial setup, thats really handy, think i'll upgrade the SD card regardless whether redirecting Kodi solves my issue or not

lostless

@Crush Over all its better for the SD card as well. Retropie (or any os for that matter) is constantly writing and deleting cache file like virtual/page out memory. Temp files the run command generates to open roms. ECT ECT. Over time that will wear down that SD card with only 3GB or less of using the same areas over and over. A larger card will spread that out over time and may make things even run a little better giving the OS "room to breath" so to say.

Crush

Turns out Kodi temp files only accounted for some 200MB so i don't know for sure what it was, i reckon allot of small files throughout the system.
Anyways i cloned the SD to a 16GB and expanded it, without any issue, if this card ever gets full it is simply time for a clean install.
I keep step by step notes of any changes i've done to retropie for just such an event anyway, so i can recreate my personalized copy.

One last question if i may, is there a way to do the opposite of expanding the SD card? IE: strip the unused space.

mitu

@Crush said in SD Card running out of space.:

One last question if i may, is there a way to do the opposite of expanding the SD card? IE: strip the unused space.

Yes - see pi-shrink, it's not included in RetroPie.