@bc320 I'm with you on this. With such a versatile machine like the Pi (any model) you don't know what you'll be using it some years into the future. Furthermore, Retropie runs on Linux which uses free memory to buffer I/O operations to speed up file access etc. You can see the memory allocation with the command free -h.

@bc320 you can, it will require you manually change those paths in your es_systems.cfg file though.

@KnightZ87 Have a look at this article about hdparm! There are many settings you can tweak! Tune Your Hard Disk with hdparm: http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Features/Tune-Your-Hard-Disk-with-hdparm You could also set the sleep/standby timer to a longer time! Change hard drive's sleep/standby mode timer to reduce power consumption: https://linuxconfig.org/change-hard-drive-s-sleep-standby-mode-timer-to-reduce-power-consumption Spin Down and Manage Hard Drive Power on Raspberry Pi https://www.htpcguides.com/spin-down-and-manage-hard-drive-power-on-raspberry-pi/

@Clyde said in External Boot in my image: @MPlay Thank you for sharing your solution. you are welcome, my next step is set retropie to stream my game play (if possible in net play mode) in my youtube channel. thank you and other friends for support.

@mitu said in Slow writing to external HDD: copying ROMs over the network Yes and no. The copy over the network is quite slow (roughly 200KBps), but not as slow. But if it's a power issue, it might still make kind of sense, since when I copy stuff over usually I'm not playing. Still, the difference in speed even here is really drastic (a snes savestate is just a couple of megs, and it still takes 20ish seconds). does it draw power from the Pi or has it's own power source From the PI, I assumed since I was using the original Pi charger the board would be able to provide enough juice, I'll try with an external powered one and let you know.

@urko948 Use the official Raspberry Pi power adapter or whatever the Raspberry guys recommend.

@steptoe Precisely! I have been setting up my Pi2 for almost a year now and it's been quite a bumpy but rewarding ride. Bumpy because I'm not remotely tech-savy and know diddly-squat about Linux, but rewarding for the experience in itself: building the romsets, configuring emulators, choosing ES themes and now scraping roms... seeing it all come together as something that I could only dream of as a teenager is truly heartwarming. Very soon it will be finally ready to simply plug and play! :)

@lordkramgb please fill out https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

@mitu Ok, so i will bought a 3.0 External HD to at least transfer the games as fast as possible from my PC to the HD. But i won't have any gain when RPI is readind the data on the HD, since RPI's port is 2.0 right? btw, there is no compatibility problem if the HD is 3.0 and the RPI is 2.0, right?

@retrocraze The manual method of using USB as ROM source should work.

Reload the image and do what @lostless said.

I fixed my problem with the Y cable. The savestate are more faster, but it long.... So I have mounted my external hard drive manually by editing the fstab. All works but with Y cable only.

Thanks for your assistance. From the link you gave I used FAT32formatter, it appears to have worked. I got some error messages from the program, but it seems to be working ok.

@herb_fargus Thanks for all your work. Everything was working before I update the script and everything. Maybe you could look into it some times? the USB feature is so great, especially with all the ISOs for the systems. Maybe something must have broken the feature. It was working with the plain 4.2 image. (though, I had some issues at the boot up which said that it could not mount my hdd but it still showed all roms and mounted it properly).

@darkbibble here's the module code. https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/supplementary/samba.sh#L31

@DigitalMonkey Oh, that is sweet! Thanks. Sorry, I thought it would just be more complicated!

@steptoe I use a Seagate 1TB backup drive (was available in Argos for a steal of £50), run through the on-board USB ports and it works perfectly. Thanks, I forgot to preface that external hard drives with Laptop sized 2.5" hard drives in them will probably work with the RPi USB ports but Desktop sized 3.5" hard drives will typically not work.

@infernusamongus hey did u fix the problem did u expand ur external hdd