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    Is a usb hard drive better than SD? Also shall I upgrade from Pi 3-4 And a setup question

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    helpquery
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    • S
      suikodentir
      last edited by

      Ok right now I have a Pi3 in living room, bedroom and guest room (which is more aimed at a mancave but haven't mounted the tv to wall so its a little cramped right now) all with 256gb usb cards and in nice cases I like.

      I also have 3x RPi4's (1x1gb 1x2gb and 1x4gb) one of which I have in bedroom to stream Youtube and as a media center. Also now I am writing this I almost forgot to add something, I used to have Raspbian on the 4 in bedroom but couldn't get retropie to work on it, it wouldn't show any rom folders retropie just setup/menu screen even when resetting rom dir's, enabling/disabling usb service etc.

      Had to install retropie manually, but how do I get into pixel (after I installed it from optional)

      Back to main thing, I have about 4 unused 1tb hard drives I used originally for things like PS3 and PS4 and my rom dir comes to about 420 gigabytes so even a 512gb card will be near full and expensive and transferring roms to it would be overnight.

      Is it worth doing it on a pi3? Or just a pi4?

      Maybe I would just say a pi4 but theres only that good, but expensive case right now that has a built in hub, I want my Sega style case.

      dankcushionsD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • dankcushionsD
        dankcushions Global Moderator @suikodentir
        last edited by

        @suikodentir said in Is a usb hard drive better than SD? Also shall I upgrade from Pi 3-4 And a setup question:

        Had to install retropie manually, but how do I get into pixel (after I installed it from optional)

        https://retropie.org.uk/docs/FAQ/#where-did-the-desktop-go

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        • M
          Muffy
          last edited by

          Frankly, I don't like the current Pi4 due to its heat problems.
          For me, it's also an overkill for RetroPie. Everything runs smoothly on an overclocked Pi3. Even PS1 runs perfectly!
          And on the other hand, the PI4 does not fix the problems with the N64 emulator.

          The Pi3 is the perfect solution for me.

          To your 2nd question:
          I had running RetroPie on a normal 128GB SD-card and also a version with a mounted external HDD.
          Both versions ran well. As far as i know, the covers for the UI were saved on the sd-card, the games itself on the HDD. I think it's a good combination.
          Overall I would say it depends on the size of your game DB.

          Z N 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Z
            Zering @Muffy
            last edited by

            @Muffy You can easily solve the Pi 4's heat problems with a fan and heat sinks.

            Not everything runs perfectly on Pi 3, Dreamcast and N64 were hit and miss, Jaguar, 3DO were garbage.

            N64 compatibility on the Pi 4 is excellent, the emulator has come a long way.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • N
              Nick Mous @Muffy
              last edited by

              @Muffy The overheating problem is solved by updating the raspberry pi kernel, which you have to update manually in the terminal.

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