@mitu My note about continuing to use related to my original post. So... Am I able to run the backup from the same pi that I'm using retropie on, whilst for example playing games at the same time?

What I'm wanting to avoid is having to use my windows laptop for the process as it's used for other things by the family and robocopy is so slow.

Ideally, I'd want to back up the ROMs on the usb directly to a network drive but all from within the pi (so that this can happen in the background and other life can carry on!)

I've managed to find some helpful tips for using rsync so will investigate those as well

@10vorne said in Samba and /opt/retropie/configs:

@sleve_mcdichael Just to be sure, the config folder shared by Samba by default is the config folder under /opt/retropie/configs?

That's correct. You can look inside it and verify.

@navi87 It's working for me but i don't have google drive installed. i have the latest version (January 10, 2023): https://win32diskimager.org/ . Try to reinstall the latest version.

@sleve_mcdichael though most games seem to work without vfsroot available, I'm not sure it's not internally used somewhere.

If preview.bmp does not already exist in $romdir/ports/cgenius/games/[game], one will be created in ~/.CommanderGenius/games/[game] (since these are no longer linked to the same place.) If it does exist in $romdir, nothing is created in ~/.CommanderGenius.

Is this broken or legit?

I don't think it's broken.

@mitu said in Which files/folders to backup?:

@retrodaniel said in Which files/folders to backup?:

know that I changed the configuration of some games specifically during emulation, but I have no idea where those are stored. Could anyone point me to where they are, please?

The overrides for cores/games should be stored in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/configs, each core has its own folder for overrides. If you're backing up /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch, it should be enough - you can restore them afterwards.

Other than that, the backed up folders you mentioned should be enough.

Amazing! Thank you for the help :)

@retropieuser555 I don't care about save game files because this is a project for kids from a friend of mine. I worked on it for some time and then I'd left it because of other priorities. When I touched it again, it started to mess up....

You can install the desktop on the RetroPie image and other packages (including a browser) so you can operate directly from the Pi. See here.

Does the RAW backup then also occupy as much space as there is data on the SD card or is it then a 1:1 image of the entire SD card and its capacity?

If you look in the topic for the utility I pointed, there's an explanation on how much space does it take - it will initially create a full block copy of your sdcard, then shrink it to the actual size of used blocks. So you need to have enough space on your USB disc for a full sdcard copy.

Looks like the upstream libretro assets repository renamed them and the upgrade script just adds the new files, without removing the older ones. Maybe we should clear up the folder before the upgrade, to avoid this issue.

@hellothere You may also consider using rsync in conjunction with crontab.

@valabrax said in Which files/directories should I restore after doing a fresh image install?:

Looking at the backup methods on https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Updating-RetroPie/ I think the best one for me in this situation is to backup the bios, configs, and roms directories via the samba shares. However, assuming the update works perfectly, which of these directories should I copy back over to preserve my roms, save states/files, and configurations (like controller configs and core-level configs). I'm assuming just the roms and configs directory and that I should not copy bios back over to the new image, but I wanted to check and be sure.

as the docs says, you'll want to backup all 3 https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Updating-RetroPie/#backup-option-2

By installing from source and now doing a new image install, am I nuking my micro-sd card with writes? I have no idea how many writes an install from source does, but it took hours to finish.

it's not ideal but during development i do many days worth of rebuilds and my SD cards tend to last years before crapping out.

Looks like a good use case for git on LAN? You can tag or branch your config sets rolled out for other machines than yours. Later merge all your latest and greatest changes from your machine into the friends' branches from time to time. If something breaks you can easily go back in time.

@erbright said in Unable To Backup RetroPie Image:

Win32DiskImager - Doesn’t work. I create the image and try to mount it to make sure it works and Windows tells me it's corrupted. This happens over and over again.

This is all you needed to do, it did work, you just can't mount it under Windows.

@mitu found a way to acces the SD card with "Linux Reader" actualy copying fies and it takes ages but better than nothing.

You could use something like FSArchiver to backup the individual /boot and / partitions (excluding ROMS). dd could be used for individual partitions, from a separate Linux system (/ shouldn't be active when dd is run). FSArchiver is included in the live boot System Rescue image, you can use it to restore/backup from a separate PC, without installing Linux on your PC.

The main folders you want to back up are:

/home/pi/RetroPie (ROMs, BIOS files, splash screens) /opt/retropie/configs (configs for RetroArch, EmulationStation, also your scraped game library) /etc/emulationstation(custom themes as well as the systems ES has access to)

The RetroPie documentation has info on how to copy files. WinSCP or Filezilla are probably the easiest programs to use.

Copy those over from the 3B to the 4, and you should be fine. Note: after you flash the image onto your RPi4, you'll need to boot up with it for RetroPie to finish installing, then you can turn it off and start copying.

@LiquidDivide thanks for the awesome scripts!

I made some local changes and hacks to get it working on my own system, not pretty enough to contribute. I hope I get some time to clean it up and contribute it back.

@Clyde Wasn't aware of that tool. Cheers.

Thanks for your reply. I´ll give it a whirl :)