OMG, I used the wrong HDMI port - that‘s why the screen was black ;(

Anyhow, thanks a lot for your support and sorry for wasting your time!

@Dr-Klein it is the difference between running roms from a USB drive vs. transferring roms using a USB drive.

When you run roms from the USB drive they remain on the drive, and are only accessible while it is attached.

You want to transfer the roms from the USB stick onto the SD storage. Name the folder retropie, instead of retropie-mount.

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

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Transferring-Roms/#usb-stick

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

@IsabelleXL SOLVED my using my keyboard as a USB hub

@windg Thanks, that did it. The old thumbdrive is showing read only even on my windows pc. Think that one is good as gone.

@mitu Case is closed. Everything is working perfectly. Thanks for your time and help!

Boot without the stick inserted, then after the boot put it back. Exit EmulationStattion, then check if the usbmount service starts correctly with

systemctl status usbmount@dev-sda1.service

Post the output of the command here in the topic.

Okay,

I think I found the solution. There were a couple of roms without "[!]" in the name. Because I was trying anything I could think of, I deleted those files and now everything is fine. Emulation shows every N64 rom now.
Sorry for asking your help. Thank you for thinking with me for finding a solution.

Best regard to all of you!

@George-Spiggott said in Script to Mirror SD Card to USB Stick?:

Currently RetroPie automatically copies files (roms and configs) from a USB stick to the Pi. Is it possible to disable this process so that it happens on command rather than automatically?

Yes, disable the usbmount service and the synchronization will not happen automatically.

Also is it possible to reverse the process so that the USB stick can be used to mirror the contents of the Pi, or at least select folders from it, either automatically or ideally on command?

Yes, it's possible, but there's no provision in the RetroPie scripts for this kind of scenario.

When you want to keep your ROMs on an external drive, you create a retropie-mount folder on it and RetroPie would sync the ROMs from the SDCard to the disc, then it will mount the disc so you can use it.

If dont' want to use the external disc for the ROMs, but just synch to it, then you'll have to create a script to do it. Both synchronization methods (USB to card and vice-versa) use the rsync command, you can easily create 2 scripts to do this synchronization and add them under the retropiemenu system so you can call them directly from Emulationstation.

Thank you all for the help :)

@mitu Umm... Nevermind... I finally managed to install it. Thanks for help bro :D !

Do you happen to have a laptop? Even an old one?

EDIT: Doh! Necrothread!

@leefy said in External drive clarification question.:

@dankcushions.
the webbles and the googlings.

I'm stealing those technical terms;))

@pjft

Actually, they don't.

When I transfer via USB, the autocopy feature doesn't duplicate them. They only exist on the stick.

And when I do manual transfers in file manager (of bios or themes), I ignore them, so no sweat.

@NastyButtler322 Speaking of water cooling, I like how this costs 4-5 times as much as the Pi itself:

https://modmymods.com/modmymods-raspberry-pi-mini-water-cooling-kit-mod-0171.html

My guess is that the best way to do this is to install Linux (e.g. Ubuntu 16.04) to a USB drive and make it bootable.
Then boot into Linux from that USB stick, and install Retropie following the instructions on the RetroPie website for x86/64 Ubuntu.

When you want to enter the world of RetroPie, simply boot the USB stick from the computer UEFI/BIOS boot menu.

I imagine that you'll want to use a fairly large USB stick to hold all the ROMs you wish to use.
64GB or even 128GB would almost certainly get you the bulk of the decent emulators.

Thx

@Allanbuzzy i run them off the hard drive just fine. No issues for me.