@mppsan If the system you're copying to has also RetroPie, chances are the system is loading you USB pendrive in the ROMs folder and you're just re-copying the files on the usb. Disable the USB mount service from the RetroPie-Setup script and then mount the USB pendrive manually from the command line.

@mitu Thank you! I can't believe I didn't stumble upon those in my search.

@mitu Thanks a lot.

This saves me a lot of time, preparing an rsync just for those folders and ignoring entirely /usr, /bin, etc.

I also noticed the existence of /home/pi/.emulationstation that includes stuff like the "scraped" game images, but I found it to be a link to /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation .

I also noticed that the .state files are stored inside the "roms" folders, in the same subfolder than the rom itself.

Thanks and best regards.

@mitu Okay ,thanks for your help :)

Thankyou sir!

@webz0r I'm not sure how you would do this, but you don't need to worry about keeping the gamelist.xml in alphabetical order.

@Dalrint said in So I'm trying to back up my retropie SD Card...:

One is a drive in a format windows keeps asking to reformat ( G: )

Windows can't read the Linux file system on the second partition, because of Microsoft's worldview of "there are no other systems next to ours". That said, asking to format an unknown partition goes beyond bad manners in my opinion, as it can cause serious data loss for the user.

@Dalrint said in So I'm trying to back up my retropie SD Card...:

So I tried it without worrying about it, yeah. And it did indeed do that! Awesome.

Did you expand the filesystem to the bigger SD card after the migration? If not, see these instructions how to do it.

@bobharris Hi, I am upgrading because I figured there will have been performance improvements that would perhaps help with various emulators.

Have decided to make a full img backup, then will try doing the upgrade within Retropie and see how I get on - if it messes up for any reason I will just write my original image back and use that version, spending ages trying to get it all up and running again seems like a lot of work.

I also have to build a zero from scratch for a handheld project so I have plenty to do at the moment - thanks for the replies guys!

@thedatacereal perfect! Thank you.

I only have pics scraped. I used the default scraper, so I will backup my roms folder and the mentioned paths, I hope they are accesible in windows over the network . :)

Name it mysetup.img

If that fails, put it on a filepath with no spaces.

@papinist DL21 only works for DL, but on http://www.dragons-lair-project.com/tech/ you can find enhanced versions of DL2 and SA as well. Look under "ROM Updates".

I think a separate thread would be better for your Daphne issues.

@mediamogul said in Restore retropie-Kodi manually backup?:

userdata

I'll give it a try and see what happens. But right now i'm having trouble with virtual box for using linux doesnt want to see my sd card to micro sd, I tried micro sd to usb. Virtualbox is very picky, it wants extra payment license for usb 2 n 3.0. very awkward situation.

Update, everything is mostly good. Dam its hard for me to setup ps3 controllers on retropie, it was easier on Jessie. I hope I don't mess up the controller pairing. Now I can backup one last time for safety, feels great. Last thing to do Mame delete some roms, and figure out roms sets editior, I know its documented here. I haven't done the games, but that should be really easy to do next.

@meynti The backup image contains 2 partitions, one for boot and one for the system itself. The 2nd partition is formatted with the Linux ext4 filesystem and cannot be read by Windows. You'll need a Linux system to be able to read it - either try a live linux distro (that you can run from an USB drive on your Windows PC) or find a Linux installed pc to read the image.

OMG, for some reason I never received a notification concerning the two replies ... I'm so sorry! Really do not want to come across as a snob hahah ... and here my replies 2+ years later ... (I'm blaming Covid)

@mitu - So yes, APB was developed in Free Pascal using the Lazarus IDE 😊

@hiulit - Thanks 😊

@hansolo77 said in Differential Backup Utility?:

Is there any "for dummies" documentation somewhere or some simple instructions?

https://www.ixquick.com/do/search?q=rsync+for+dummies ;)

OK. Thank you for your fast response.

thank you so much. i searched for like 2 hours for a solution before posting and that was super easy fix. again thanks a million

@blonqe apologies if I sounded accusatory with my link - thanks for the info. Most posts that mention 128gb images are downloaded etc. Cheers