Copy scrape data from one RetroPie to another

JDubbedN · 20 Dec 2016, 06:04

I have a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B v1.1 with RetroPie 4.1 installed. I have several roms installed and spent time scraping the games. I just purchased a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. I want to give my friend my Raspberry Pi 2 and I'll upgrade to the 3. I installed RetroPie 4.1 on the Raspberry Pi 3 and have copied all visible folders which consist of the bios, configs, roms and splashscreens folders via Samba from the Raspberry Pi 2 to the Raspberry Pi 3. All the games show up on the Raspberry Pi 3 however the games are not scraped. I would simply clone the Raspberry Pi 2 SD card to the Raspberry Pi 3 SD card but their max capacity's are different (One is a 16gb and one is a 32bg) and I don't want to move the SD card from the Raspberry Pi 2 to the Raspberry Pi 3 because I want to keep all the data how it is and give it to my friend.

So my question is what files/folders do I need to copy over from the Raspberry Pi 2 SD card to the Raspberry Pi 3 SD card so that the scrap data carries over so I don't have to scrap everything again?

Thanks for the help!

lostless · 20 Dec 2016, 06:26

You need to copy 2 folders. In the config/all/emulationstation folder there is a folder called downloaded_images and game lists. Copy both those to the same location on the other pi amd restart emulation station

synack · 20 Dec 2016, 14:10

You can make an image of your 16gig card using win32 disk imager, then write it to your 32gig SD card, boot it up, and go to raspi-config and select the option to expand the file system, reboot, and your should be good to go without worrying about the individual files necessary to copy.

JDubbedN · 20 Dec 2016, 16:08

Thank you for your reply @lostless. This had already been done when I copied all the folders bios, configs, roms and splashscreens which consists of the those files/folders you mentioned but the games weren't scraped when I rebooted the pi. I even located and copied over the downloaded_images folder and the game list files and still doesn't work. Maybe there is another file hidden that I cannot see via Samba that has to be copied over for this to work?

@synack I will definitely try this. I actually tried this with a 32gb to a 32gb micro SD card using win32 disk imager and it said the destination sd card was too small by a couple bytes even though both were 32gb cards. Not sure why that happened. However, I could, like you said, clone the 16gb card which is the card from my Raspberry pi 2 and copy it to the 32gb Raspberry pi 3 card and then expand the file system to utilize the rest of the space. When I have time today I will give this idea a go and report back.

Thank you both!

lostless · 20 Dec 2016, 16:34

@JDubbedN
Maybe try it with emulation station shut down by pressing f4. Emulation station may be rewriting the game list files when you restart it.

JDubbedN · 20 Dec 2016, 20:20

@lostless said in Copy scrape data from one RetroPie to another:

@JDubbedN
Maybe try it with emulation station shut down by pressing f4. Emulation station may be rewriting the game list files when you restart it.

@lostless That was exactly it! I even remember reading about this very same thing in the RetroPie wiki but had completely forgotten about it. Pressing F4 to close down Emulation Station and then transferring the respective files/folders over works perfectly. Thank you!