@mitu

Okay I understand now, thank you mitu 👍🏻.

@kinget
i would recommend these folders:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms
/home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS
/home/pi/.emulationstation/downloaded_images
/home/pi/RetroPie/splashscreens

All your save-files and highscores are included in the "rom"-folders.

Optional: Arcade-samples and -artwork-files, if saved in a different location, and the "gamelist.xml".

All these files are independent of the used OS/Retropie-Version and worth backuping ;)

@mitu geez that was quite a fast reply/clarification, no sooner had I walked away from my comp/posting then I realized I'd been remiss in not asking another even more pertinent question:

Have you all had any/many MicroSDs you were using on your Pis FAIL? (I'm guessing there are some informatively depressing threads here that can share some stories about as much...?).

At the end of the day, perhaps whatever larger MSD I get for these CDROM games (granted, I guess we'll see how many of them have stood the test of time to be worth keeping), ideally I may even have enough space on it to also fit what's on my current 128gb, who knows (and in turn, likely another 512gb/whatever to back THAT one up).

Ultimately, memory is never quite as pricy as the time spent collecting it...

@leanne No problem. The unallocated space will actually be expanded on first boot of Retropie and brought into use. The image you download is compressed you see, so that there is not wasted empty space in it.

@sibsonian said in Migrating a build from RPi3 to Rpi4?:

I know the configs dir will migrate the artwork and ES settings. Common sense would lead me to believe that I would also need to reinstall any optional packages and themes, yes?

Correct.
You will need to install the optional packages that don't come standard on the image.

@george-spiggott it depends what we're comparing, but realistically I wouldn't see why there would be much of an improvement between the 2 on the Pi performance wise, because the architecture just isn't there to take full advantage of the SSD's max speeds unless you use USB 3.0 external ones.

also high endurance SD cards exist which were intended for dashcam and security camera systems, life expectancy on a Raspberry Pi using these SD cards shouldn't be a problem for many years if all you're doing is emulating old games on them which will result in fewer rewrites per day.

The only big tangible improvement that would come from using an SSD is capacity. Geekworm sells a case that lets you install an internal one using expansion boards, there isn't anything wrong with trying it, but it's probably a waste of time if all you're using it for is emulating retro games.

thanks sd imager did not work i still get an error when reading the card, i am using a belkin usb micro hub , micro sd card inserted , i used this before when i setup the RP image. really annoying

i would remove the pi from the case and run it caseless whilst you’re debugging. fans and cases are additional points of failure.

i would also ask these kind of general pi support questions on the raspberry pi forums as you’ll probably get better answers. you’re not at the retropie stage (and we don’t support pi4 officially yet)

@steptoe 1TB SD-Cards are available from SanDisk for about 450 Euro.
Of course this is much more than a HDD would cost!, but there are Freaks like me and the Threadstarter, that dont want external Hardware connected to the Pi.
Concerning the loading times: i dont care about that. Imo its fast anyway compared to loading times of a C64 😊
I does not matter to me if a game loads in 2.5 or 2.2 seconds ☺

But of course thats my cup of tea, everyone should do as he like!

@ThisGuyEveryTime said in Cannot boot Image, Can boot Noobs:

I tried on another sd to unpack with 7-zip and then burning using win32image and that still does not work

How did you format the card? Did you use this application? before using win32 disk imager?

Is the card compatible? See this list

When you extract the image, it should be a Disc Image File which is 2.4GB in size. Write this to the card. The zip file is about 600MB before extraction. Try unzipping with something else.

I just tried my MicroSD card into a USB 2.0 MicroSD card reader and booted into Retropie.
It's giving me faster speeds on 4K random read and write.
WTF?! LOL

@collcroc123 That's normal. Once you start the system, the 2nd partition will be expanded to fill up the free space (that shows up as Unallocated). The 1st partition is the boot partition, only holding the necessary files to start the system and then the actual OS and its files will be on the 2nd partition.

Are you using an USB microSD card reader? Either way, the mounts on RetroPie are managed by usbmount, not by Kodi itself.

@guybrush said in New TV: Black frame | Undervoltage | Upgrade to Nespi + and 3B+ | Micro SD card:

Will I have problems with smooth gaming when storing the games on the NAS and would the Pi 3+ make a difference in that department?

I'd say the difference you'll see is negligible, since once the game/rom is loaded in the emulator, there's little network activity or file transfers over the network. One exception would be - maybe - CD based games where the game is loaded from the CD images (.iso/.bin/.chd). The network speed would help the loading times. But if you are already content with the Pi 3 and the current setup (ROMs on the NAS), it wouldn't make a noticeable upgrade.

@Winklepicker Now at some time had passed, how has having that space unlocked been working out for you? Noticed any ill effects?

@isrnick I second this method. I don't know what started causing it but after a certain point every card I re-write I have to delete partitions/volumes.

This is all explained here:

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/

@mitu Legend! Seems so simple I feel dumb for not even considering that

@bytethis the biggest problem is samsungs are the best and they are faked soo much more than any others. I actually had gotten a 128gb bootleg version off of amazon. I am willing to pay the local price to guarantee its legit. Sucks you had a bad card.