UBS Save States

[Dominus]

Running RetroPie 4.0.3 on a RP3.

I noticed when I try to save state in RetroArch when the rom I am playing is on my USB drive, it takes 10-20 seconds to do so. I never had this problem before when the roms were on the SD card. I don't have the USB mounted, I just did a symbolic link and it has worked no problem (PSX and GBA). Is this normal for it to take that long? Will probably have to go about moving the saves somewhere on the SD card if I can, because saving has become a burden waiting for it.

[cyperghost]

@Dominus
Are the 10-20 secs in generell? Happens this only in one emulator?
I got a Pi0 with roms on SD and a Pi3 with USB and symbolic link and both are doing fine in saving gamedata (SNES, Genesis, PSX) within 1 second.

[Nightfire]

Hi @Dominus, I haven't played roms from USB drives, so I can't really comment on that. If you're thinking of just using the SD card for saves, you may be interested in the approach I took.

I enabled and used the Samba shares to transfer roms to RetroPie, that creates 4 or 5 SMB shares. So I decided to just create some more SMB shares for Save States, Save Files

First, you'll have to edit the /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg file and what you want is the first 2 options and you'll uncomment savefile_directory & savestate_directory and after the " = " put the filepath where you want them to be (I put them in the same folder as the other SMB shares /home/pi/RetroPie/

Here's my retroarch.cfg:

# Save all save files (*.srm) to this directory. This includes related files like .bsv, .rtc, .psrm, etc ...
# This will be overridden by explicit command line options.
savefile_directory = /home/pi/RetroPie/savefiles

# Save all save states (*.state) to this directory.
# This will be overridden by explicit command line options.
savestate_directory =/home/pi/RetroPie/savestates

Then, after that is done you just have to edit the samba configuration file /etc/samba/smb.conf and if you go to the very bottom you'll see the shares it already created. So you can just copy use those as a reference to create your new shares.

Here's mine (you can just copy and paste these to the bottom of your /etc/samba/smb.conf file if you want, as long as the names are the same):

[savefiles]
comment = savefiles
path = "/home/pi/RetroPie/savefiles"
writeable = yes
guest ok = yes
create mask = 0644
directory mask = 0755
force user = pi
[savestates]
comment = savestates
path = "/home/pi/RetroPie/savestates"
writeable = yes
guest ok = yes
create mask = 0644
directory mask = 0755
force user = pi

Then you'll also be able to easily get to your save files and save states to back them up

[Dominus]

@cyperghost Sorry I haven't replied in a few weeks, having lots of problems with setting up a couple Pi's that were supposed to be B-day presents, that have now turned to Xmas presents lol, and I just needed to take a break from it.

I just tried my GBA roms and they are a bit faster, but still 3-5 seconds. I might try what @Nightfire explained above, but I don't get why you have to enable Samba shares, or what Samba shares even is?? lol

[Nightfire]

Samba shares just use Microsoft's network sharing protocol 'SMB'. Enabling Samba shares makes you able to find shared folders from your raspberry pi when you're on a Windows machine. And since most people use Windows it makes it easy to be able to access your Pi's files when you're at a friends house or something.

You don't HAVE to enable samba shares for it, but it makes it much easier to be able backup your save game files and save states..that's the reason I did it

[Dominus]

@Nightfire Oh I think I know what you mean. Doesn't that automatically turn on anyhow? I used to use it all the time, but found it easier to just use WinSCP since I could view all the files and roms.