Cannot get 32gb SD card to expand from 56mb

[Shanknasty]

I am setting up a raspberry Pi 3 model B with Retropie for a friend. Once I install Retropie, it shows I only have 56mb of space left. I know that once you boot it up it is supposed to automatically restore your storage space, but it is not doing so. I have also went into the rasp-config settings and done this manually. It states that once I reboot, the storage will be restored.

However, when I take my SD card and put it into my laptop to download my roms, it is saying insufficient space (56mb). I have tried using SDformatter to start over but i get the same result.....reformats back to 32gb of space (28.6gb technically) but once Retropie is installed it goes back to showing 56mb, and I am unable to get that space to come back.

I also tried a second SD card (also 32gb) to no avail. They are both class 10...one is PNY and other is Sandisk. Do i need to do some updates to retropie once I boot it up to fix this? Is there some way to manually force the storage to be visible again so I can put my roms on the SD card? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[obsidianspider]

@Shanknasty Unless you have a Linux PC, your computer probably isn't seeing the other partition on the card because it's a file system it can't interpret.

I'm betting things worked properly. To check, when you boot up the Pi, get to the terminal and run df -h and see what shows up.

[Shanknasty]

@obsidianspider Thanks for the info. I did read that it doesn't recognize the partition, however when I try to put roms onto the card it's saying insufficient space. Windows 10 is still treating the card as if it only has 56mb of space left. I have put together one other raspberry pi 3 with retropie and did not have this issue. So in other words, I need Windows to read the card as having it's full space, and not just 56mb.

[obsidianspider]

@Shanknasty What does the Pi say when you do a df -h?

[Shanknasty]

@obsidianspider at work currently. I will test out when I get home and let you know.

[simonster]

Hi @Shanknasty

The 56mb of space Windows is seeing is the boot partition, this is not the retropie data. Windows cannot see that. If you open disk manager (run diskmgmt.msc) in Windows, you will see something like this against the SD card (this is an 8GB card with RetroPie on it):

This shows the 57Mb boot/config partition that windows can see and the other partition where Retropie is stored isn't even assigned a drive letter (as windows cannot read it).

To transfer Roms, I would suggest either using the USB method, or transfer over the network if you are comfortable with doing that. See https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Transferring-Roms/ for details.

[Shanknasty]

@simonster I had totally forgotten that I used a USB to transfer the last time and not the SD card. This should fix the problem. Thank you!