In this case, I think the last option (newer RaspiOS) is the one to try out.

I have been using a Seagate 8tb external hard drive for about a year now formatted to exfat and I'm constantly pounding on that thing and I have yet to have any files corrupt or any issues. Everyone's mileage may be different but I've at least had very good luck using exfat.

@Recordspinner Didn't work, renamed files and I had to reinstall Retropie

@sleve_mcdichael said in USB FILE STRUCTURE:

nto the

Awesome again dudes thankyou very much

RetroPie uses the Raspberry Pi OS Lite image - if that will support GPT for the root drive (boot + root), then RetroPie will have no issues with it.

Since the current RPI OS images are using MBR, you'd have to re-partition your disc and copy over the files to the new partitions if you want to use GPT.

@tango Thanks for this comprehensive writeup. That's the spirit of a community. :)

For all coming accross this post: This guide works only for Rpi 3B+ (Note the +).

For other models suppporting USB mass storage boot see prerequites here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md

I got it all working and wrote up notes on what I had to do in this post.

@zenoxio if you rebooted the copying will stop. It only copies if the retropie-mount folder is empty.

@tango said in SDCard Unreliable - Move all RP to USB card? Or fix SD?:

Or does it do that because I have no boot sector or boot programs on my USB stick?

If you haven't programmed the OTP bit for USB boot, the Pi will always boot from sdcard.

The rom folders are copied verbatim and there's no filtering done, so it will copy anything there, including any artwork scraped.

There's a topic in the Raspberry Pi forums for USB SSDs - https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=245931 - pinned at the top of the troubleshooting section.

Check this RaspberryPi forum post for issues when using the Pi4 with USB3 SSD disk - https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=245931.

@Krakatoa I figured out the issue. One of the files got corrupted when it crashed. Running chkdsk in windows fixed the issue and i can now read/write.

Also, I decided to switch from FAT32 to NTFS to hopefully avoid this situation going forward. Maybe its placebo, but it somehow seems faster now.....

@BuZz said in USB: Unrecognized mount option "uid=1000" or missing value:

/etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf

Thank youBuZz for your prompt reply: it solved the problem!
Regards,
Lionel

@mitu said in retropie vs. retropie-mount directory in USB drivers:

The copying part takes place only the first time you insert the USB stick, just to set-up the folder structure.

I had figured that, but had not explicitly stated it. Thank you for clarifying it!

I got some controls working with AdvMame. I need to go through and get a few pages on the AdvMame configuration settings, since I wasn't sure what to use to specify controls for the trackball or spinner. I also had a problem because my "Coin One" button pauses the game no matter what. This leads to funky issues. For instance, on one game, I kept trying to put in a coin by pressing that button and it just paused the game. On another game, it would add a coin to the count, but also pause the game until I pressed it again.

I also found that AdvMame can read a keyboard as if it's two controllers. Since I can change my controller from "B Input Mode" to "Keyboard Mode" (I'm guessing "B" means "Button," but I don't know.) From what I can see, just reading the TAB menu on AdvMame, I might have success using Keyboard mode and letting the keyboard act like two controllers.

That also raises another question I'm going to have to spend time searching for: Mame-Libretro(2003) vs. AdvMame. Do I keep both on the system? I'm not sure if they'll both work consistently with the controller in one mode. AdvMame seems to work better, including using sound sample files easily, and the ROM set that works with AdvMame has more games in it. But that's a whole other issue to explore. Ideally I'd like to get my controller working in Keyboard and B Mode in both AdvMame and Mame-Libretro, but if I can get it to do everything in one form, I'll call it a day.

Just strange though. For something that is not officially supported it runs fine after the installation. Just can't figure how to direct it to the usb drive to start playing it.

Sorry for being vague.

The games go through the usual runcommand launch menu, then black screen, then back to games list.

The runcommand log for a nes game look like this:

Parameters: Executing: /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-fceumm/fceumm_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/nes/retroarch.cfg "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nes/Metroid (USA).zip" --appendconfig /dev/shm/retroarch.cfg

And for a PSX game look like this:

Parameters: Executing: /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-pcsx-rearmed/pcsx_rearmed_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/psx/retroarch.cfg "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/psx/Alundra.PBP" --appendconfig /dev/shm/retroarch.cfg Memcard 2: disabled Starting PCSX-ReARMed Running PCSX Version 1.9 (May 28 2019). psxMap: warning: wanted to map @80000000, got 0x6f50a000 Init new dynarec testing if we can run recompiled code.. test passed. warning: RAM is not directly mapped, performance will suffer Mapped (RAM/scrp/ROM/LUTs/TC): 77000000/1f800000/1fc00000/08000000/7018f000 found BIOS file: SCPH101.bin RGB565 supported, using it plugin: plugins/builtin_gpu plugin: plugins/builtin_spu plugin: plugins/builtin_pad plugin: plugins/builtin_pad Plugins loaded. Loaded CD Image: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/psx/Alundra.PBPbad psar_sig: . selected sound output driver: libretro

Both these games work on a fresh mount, but not on my current library.

Thanks.

@cyperghost It is finally working now. I just scrapped running it off the flash drive for now, and just copied the pak files to the microsd, and unpacked it off there. If anything, I could just copy the unpacked stuff back to the flash drive later on, if I really want to run it off the flash drive later. Thanks so much for your help on this, and for bearing with a complete noob like me. Sorry to bother you a whole year after this was last posted, and thank you for the working script!

I hope the controller mapping and config isn't too painful, requiring another script to configure....

cheers for the info. i'll go with the easy option for now.