@wtstreetglow1 Just letting anyone in the future know that after my research. Final Burn Neo games still go in the fba rom folder and mame 078 go in the mame-libreto rom folder

I seem to have fixed this somehow, though I'm not sure what exactly solved the issue

@stumcbill
The only two things I can think of are

Drive is full File permissions issue

#1 is easy enough to check, #2 shouldn't be an issue as long as your USB drive is using the FAT32 file system.

When you say you manually save, if you mean through the game's normal save feature, you could try using a save state as an alternative. If a save state worked then it likely would mean that none of the above applies and it is something else.