@mitu Alas, that wouldn’t solve my issue. I’d still be unable to symlink under FAT32. :/

I know this isn't an answer and doesn't advance you anywhere but I needed to ask, what advantage do you get from having noobs on the card? I thought the point of noobs was a lightweight first time installation tool. Given Retropie is already installed in the image, I'm not sure what you gain from converting it.

@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.