USBromservice questions

LLLLllllLLLlll

Hi, I'm running retropie on an NUC running Ubuntu, and I'd like to store and run my ROMs off of an external drive that I also use to store other media (for Plex and whatnot).

The drive is formatted as ext4, but the "Running ROMs from a USB drive" document recommends formatting to FAT32 to use USBromservice (seemingly for portability). Is this just a recommendation, or is FAT32 actually a requirement?

Also just want to make sure that there's not any chance that drive contents outside of the retropie-mount folder could get messed with from the usbromservice script.

Thanks!!

windg

I think FAT32 recommendation is for compatibility reasons, between Linux and Windows OS, so you can easily transfer the roms to storage.

I am running my roms from external drive and i have test FAT32 ,NTFS, EXT4, EXT2 and all formats are working fine.

I have also a storage with various files except retropie-mount folder and no problem with them.

LLLLllllLLLlll

Thanks!!

LLLLllllLLLlll

One more question! Looking at the docs, I see this line...

Once the folder structure is copied over the USB will be mounted over the RetroPie folder so any ROMs you add to your Pi will be run off of the USB.

Does this mean that it would set the drive mount location to ~/RetroPie, or does it just use soft links for that folder to the new external:/retropie-mount folder? I'd like to use the same drive that I use to store media for services like Plex, Volumio, Calibre, smb, etc., so I def don't want to change the mount location.

mitu

@LLLLllllLLLlll You can use the drive for other programs, only the retropie-mount folder is used by RetroPie, so you can use other folders for other applications. The drive is mounted as /media/usb0, then a bind-mount is created for retropie-mount onto $HOME/RetroPie.

LLLLllllLLLlll

Yeah, I'm just wondering if it would override the mount location I have already set for the drive in /etc/fstab, as I'd need to change a number of docker files and scripts if it remounts the entire drive. If it just soft links the retropie-mount folder that's cool, ofc.

BuZz

@LLLLllllLLLlll if you're mounting the drive already you don't need to use usbromservice.

LLLLllllLLLlll

@BuZz said in USBromservice questions:

@LLLLllllLLLlll if you're mounting the drive already you don't need to use usbromservice.

Are you saying that I should just manually set things to point to the drive folder if I'm mounting the drive elsewhere? Everything's currently at ~/RetroPie on the NUC's internal drive. I could manually move it all to the external and set configs to point there (assuming I don't miss anything), I just figured that was the point of usbromservice.