@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 ;)

@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.

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.

Everything seems okay now. I had a Linux system I needed to set up. (Others were in use and I couldn't easily use them for this.) I got it up, added GPartEd (which, interestingly, did not include GPart as a dependency) and read the card from there. GPartEd could not find anything wrong with the partitions on the card, but after I used it to read and very, the card worked when I put it in the Pi!

I didn't write anything to this device, in Mac or Linux, so my guess is that GPart or GPartEd did something while just reading. Maybe it had trouble with a few bytes or when it wrote a date, it updated something else. I don't know, but just reading it and having GPart look at it was enough that the card started working when I tested it.

It's worth noting that when I booted it with my Pi, the system did have issues with partitions and scanned them, but found no errors.

I'll be taking it down and testing it in the arcade setup this evening.

I have now successfully ported to an RPI4.
Some more directories had to be copied.
/etc/emulationstation (All belongs to root)
/home/pi (All owner Pi)
/opt/retropie (Pi is the owner of configs, the rest belongs to root)
Additionally Dosbox had to be updated and the hotkeys had to be redefined.
Furthermore, the HDMI scan line generator had to be supplied externally with 5V (the RPI3 managed the power supply itself).

Try resetting the retroarch.cfg - the global configuration file - in \\retropie\configs\all. Replace it with the retroarch.cfg.rp-dist from the same folder.
However, if you used a remap/input override, this won't help.

@mitu
That's aces, thanks Mitu. I was just worried that there might be some jiggery-pokery going on behind the scenes, and if I kept doing this it could cause a problem I hadn't thought of.

Cheers :-D
Thank you!

Thanks for the replies folks. Turns out the whole black screen thing on reboot is me being impatient while it restores the space on the new SD card.

I tried it all again from scratch with Pishrink, only this time left it for about 20 minutes after the splash screen then black screen thing. It went to the black screen as before but I decided to be patient this time and after about 20 mins or so it rebooted itself into Emulationstation as it should. Everything seems to be running absolutely fine. Thrilled to bits! Really wanted to keep this image as I'd put a lot of weekends into it!

Thanks again. :-)

I'll give it a shot. Thank you.

Okay. That's got it solved. Thanks again. :)

@DarkWolf I use a bash GUI. It has options for Kodi, RetroPie, PIXEL desktop, MC File Manager, RP SetUp Script, System info, reboot & shutdown. Just pick the option and it launches. Any script could be launched from it, including the type proposed by the OP.

Another, option is for him to create the script and just set up a bash alias. So a special codeword or password could just be entered in the shell and the script would run.

So handy for people not familiar with the system. The Pi is basically the living room home entertainment system. In a computer not much bigger than a credit card. What a time to be alive!

@msilveira85 your welcome, we are all here to help each other and make this project even better than it all ready is

I'd wipe it, for good measure.

ufff, what about to use a 64 gbs SD card?

Anyway maybe you could try to copy and paste files with putty or WinSCP, care, you will need to be root, you will see all files that samba doesnt show up