@JackTaylor said in Retropie saving images in /boot:

However, I have found there is another roms folder on the boot directory, where the images are being sent to when the pi boots.

Not sure why that happens, but it's not from RetroPie. EmulationStation, which is the only RetroPie program started at boot that stays resident, doesn't move images around.

@mitu I found out I had themes and videos saved there, thanks for the help!

@brandflake11 Wooden. I agree plastic bins ruin the vibe I'm trying to make when these are out.

@mitu I thought I did exactly that, but I nuked everything and started fresh.

Seems to be working now! I don’t know what I did wrong initially.

Thank you so much.

By the way, Linux doesn't have any drive letters, but only one big directory tree where you "mount" any additional drives to any of its branches.

If you're interested, see here for more about that. 🤓

@XEntombmentX Ah shucks that happened to me the first time too.
For future reference, when done transferring files, right click the disk in the manager and select "Flush Cache to Disk" and then it's ok to remove the drive.
I should have mentioned that.

Glad it solved your initial problem.

@Crush said in SD Card running out of space.:

One last question if i may, is there a way to do the opposite of expanding the SD card? IE: strip the unused space.

Yes - see pi-shrink, it's not included in RetroPie.

@RetroSavior If your free space is below 5% of partition capacity, you'll not be able to save anything - the OS reserves 5% for the root user, so it's unusable for regular users.

@KN4THX Exactly. I wouldn't buy a ssd drive just for a Pi, but when I upgrade the ssd on my main pc, then I could use the older one.

@simpleethat Well, my suggestion is to compress all of your roms into zip or 7z format (as the emulators support) for use on your Pi and to just store them in that format on your NAS. This way they are maximally usable on your Pi should you need to copy them back over.

The amount of extra compression you can get by compressing everything into giant 7z files is fairly small in most cases. There are some roms that can't really be compressed for use by emulators, mostly bin and ISOs. However, most of the emulators also support a compressed format for these types of file (chd, pbp, etc). All the time, effort, and electricity you spend compressing files to eek out a few GB of storage space just isn't worth it.

I've saw a method to make a Linux Virtual Machine and try to reduce the filesysystem as shown in this video:

I'm going to give it a try today, couldn't get any luck with 7Zip as I'm trying to write it onto a new card.

@mitu That could work... I still want to know if there is a way to use a dvd-rom. Obviously one double sided 9GB dvd won't hold all of my games, so I'll have multiple. Besides, it wouldn't matter if I can't add more because I'll use the other ones. If this doesn't work, I'll go to your idea. Thanks!

where do the gamelists go?

After a leading a hard but virtuous life, I hope they go to heaven.

@Xenos I'm using an USB SSD for my roms. It makes it very easy to just unplug it and plug it into my desktop pc to manage roms or images/videos, especially if moving many or big files around, which tends to be very slow over my WLAN connection to the Pi in my DIY upright arcade cabinet.

@classicgmr So the stick has been 100% RELIABLE.

it does get pretty warm but nothing crazy, I can grab it with my hand( my right hand not my left hand) and say " ooohh that's warm", but it never heats up enough to cook my imaginary girlfriend pancakes. It's a solid drive for a Low Profile drive which is perfect for this portable gaming system. No worries in the heat department unles every degree counts, and then maybe ou should do some research.

What I did dislike was while it was PERFECT for my setup profile-wise, the transfer speeds are poor. I have a Kingston HyperX from two or more years back that performs the same as a modern 3.0 hard drive. 100MB/s either way. Not mbs, MB/s. So this drive wasn't great n the transferring category.

If I had everything set, and didn't use it as an experimenting USB drive, it would have been fine. Basically, It's awesome for the look, and I am keeping it as my travel drive, as I am replacing it with a higher performace PC compatible drive but it does perfect for only needing rare updates.

Just my 2 cents and I wanted to update the thread.

Thanks for the recommendations guys. I have decided to go with the 128gb Samsung.

@herb_fargus

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive/

Would I be able to edit things in folders that are currently denied because of permissions using this method?

I'm still not very happy that I can't edit the NstDatabase.xml file for Nestopia or all of the hoops you have to jump through to change control configurations. Would be nice if this method was a workaround for that.