ROMs from USB Drive - What Happens To SD Card?

obsidianspider

I'm looking at adding a USB drive to one of my Pi builds for some extra storage, and from what I read on the documentation for the Automatic Mount the process will

It will proceed to automatically copy the RetroPie folder AND all of its contents (you may need to reboot to start the copying)

NOTE if you have a large ROM collection already on the SD card it will copy all of the ROMs too so make sure your USB is large enough. It is easiest if you haven't added any roms yet.

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.

So, I plug in the USB drive, the ROMs are copied to the USB drive, then linux is "seeing" the USB drive as ~/RetroPie, but what happened to the space on the Micro SD disk that used to be taken up by the RetroPie? Are those files deleted?

Also, what happens if I boot up without the USB drive plugged in?

herb_fargus

@obsidianspider said in ROMs from USB Drive - What Happens To SD Card?:

So, I plug in the USB drive, the ROMs are copied to the USB drive, then linux is "seeing" the USB drive as ~/RetroPie, but what happened to the space on the Micro SD disk that used to be taken up by the RetroPie? Are those files deleted?

They stay exactly where they are.

Also, what happens if I boot up without the USB drive plugged in?

Then it loads whatever is on your SD card.

obsidianspider

@herb_fargus Thanks. I wasn't sure how that worked. So it's essentially a smart redirect that says if the drive is installed to ignore that directory on the SD card, but if the USB drive isn't there, then fall back and use the directory SD card.