@sugarfree THANK YOU!
this is solved

never would have thought updating the retro-pie set up script was how I lost the external drive loading.
i got busy for a few days, was wondering what to do, this am I was able to get on the forum, seen others having same issue after the update of set up script, then remembered "I did that too!" I seen it's been fixed and re did the update, now i have the drive loading again.

thanks for taking the time and adding this info!
also thanks to all others who commented advice

SOLVED!!

@Ashpool Thanks for the help.

Solved

Nevermind, figured it out. Sorry!

@mitu Thank you :)

@Clyde said in Video Snaps Screen Saver not working with USB service:

So it shouldn't have anything to do with usbromservice, but it's good to hear that you could solve your problem.

It doesn't, and without any hint on the actual configuration (Pi mode, RPI version, etc.), we're just speculating here.

@BuZz said in USBromservice questions:

@LLLLllllLLLlll if you're mounting the drive already you don't need to use usbromservice.

Are you saying that I should just manually set things to point to the drive folder if I'm mounting the drive elsewhere? Everything's currently at ~/RetroPie on the NUC's internal drive. I could manually move it all to the external and set configs to point there (assuming I don't miss anything), I just figured that was the point of usbromservice.

I was instructed in one of the threads on here to make an alias to the folder on the usb drive containing the roms and just replace the folder in the retropie roms folder with the same named alias. That also works. One thing that I like about that is I could at any time just delete the alias and replace with a folder to return it to reading off the sd card, or you could have part of a folder on the usb and part on the sd (if you don’t mind having two subfolders in ES).

@mitu perfect thank you

I formatted using the USB formatting guide here:

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/format-large-hard-drive-fat-fat32/

Using FAT32 Format

Plugged the stick in, clicked format and waited haha.

I think there's something wrong with the version you have, because the RetroPie 4.5.1 image doesn't support the PI4 model (!). So which RetroPie version do you have ?
As noted in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first, support for PI4 is still added to RetroPie so some things are not fully working - certainly not using the 4.5.1 version.

EDIT: you can see the exact version by looking in the RetroPie-Setup script title:

fe913f6a-f434-4f84-b9d3-30808b5412c4-image.png

It is Pi 3 b+ and RetroPie 4.5.3 (according to RetroPie Setup Script).

ExFat I can confirm it works.

So I finally figured it out. As usual it was a couple things, but none of them were as difficult as I was looking for. Everything was a little out of date, and because I was working on wifi, i figured id let it update everything over night. Turns out I hadnt done that since enabling usbrom service. After the update it (mostly) solved my problem, and after putting the pi on stretch instead of Jessie I'm good. Thanks @Efriim for going down the rabbit hole with me. I appreciated your help

Got it working, should have explored the set up more to see I needed to install the USB ROM service.

Thanks

@che_don_john Ahh..gotcha..I was just curious. I see alot of people transferring via usb and have problems. So much easier using ssh. I was one of them when I first got my pi as I watched a youtube vid with no knowledge of ssh, and I found it took forever to transfer games via usb..lol . Glad you got it sorted !

@djpj3000

Please do not post a support request without first reading and following the advice in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

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

ignore this now, managed to get it working

Just put a folder called retropie-mount and a Roms folder. As long as those are there, it won’t copy anything. If you don’t have a Roms folder it will copy the roms folder from the sd to the usb memory.

Made some progress. Formatted the drive to NTFS and that sped things up considerably. I assume the wiki uses FAT32 specifically for flash drives and windows compatibility, though I'm not sure why they don't suggest exFAT.

Right now I'm working on testing if exFAT is faster or slower than NTFS.

I wish I'd known the usbromservice was more accepting of different file systems from the get go.