Backup / Restore RetroPie observations

[Pyjamarama]

I was fed up witht the SD cards capacity. Even the same brand, the same model SD cards have different actual sizes!!
Lots of friends ask for an image of my RetroPie setups.
I have set up a VirtualBox Centos7 with the PiShrink.sh to do the shrinkings for that purpose

Now that I have moved to 64GB, I need 150+GB of VirtualBox .vdi size (my SSD is limited in size) and plenty of time (put aside all the functional problems I come across - not a Linux user myself).

Instead of killing my SSD and my time, I took a different approach:
a) I copied all the folders that RetroPie exposes as Samba shares (roms,bios,config)
b)I installed a vanilla RetroPie
c)I copied the roms, bios, configs folders over

Once I loaded the RetroPie, I get lots of issues
a)Ports are not visible
b)AdvaMame (I had custome theme inside Carbon for that) does not show up also
c)Some emulators (like capricerpi Amstrad) were not loading the roms
d)I had to install xbox_drv myself
e)Custom controller confis (eg Mame2003) were not retained

I will add to the list while messing more.

Any clues?

Any idea of how can we take our RetroPie setups and transfer it tomvanilla RetroPies without cloning?

Thank you

[Pyjamarama]

Well I was dissapointed by the outcome.

Every emulator that was not in the core package had to be downloaded again
Ports had be downloaded as well with all configs missing of course
Drivers had be downloaded also
Lots of configuration missing

So copying the Samba exposed folders is almost of no use in order to restore to a vanilla RetroPie :(

[flop]

It´s not the same to copy the folfers and files from the SD than make an image of the SD, look for "Win32DiskImager" if you use windows or https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/linux/filesystem/backup.md if you use Linux.

[Pyjamarama]

Yeap I know that. Done tens of times. But e.g when the 32GB image does not fit in a 32GB SD card (because the manufactures are bloody b@@@@@@@) plus the shrink is not possible due to certain facts (eg not enough space in the SSD), I thought this as an alternative...but unfortunately this is not the case.

I will have a look at your link definetely!

[dankcushions]

@Pyjamarama said in Backup / Restore RetroPie observations:

e)Custom controller confis (eg Mame2003) were not retained

this, at least, should have been retained. depending on how you achieved this, they should be in /opt/retropie/configs/mame-libretro/MAME 2003/ or the roms folder itself. i can only assume you're running an earlier version of this core (or retropie itself) as these folders have been moved about.

a)Ports are not visible
b)AdvaMame (I had custome theme inside Carbon for that) does not show up also
d)I had to install xbox_drv myself

these are all optional software that you have added to your installation so i wouldn't expect these to kept in the configs folder. i think it's appropriate you had to re-download them, and is only a tiny action, no?

[flop]

ufff, what about to use a 64 gbs SD card?

Anyway maybe you could try to copy and paste files with putty or WinSCP, care, you will need to be root, you will see all files that samba doesnt show up