Using an external Hard Drive stops working after adding roms

Moco

In a previous post (about a year ago) 'How Do I use an External Hard Drive?" someone posted " use the retropie toolkit

" well although I didn't use it, I ended up giving up and just settling on a usb thumb drive which worked great but wasn't that big. But (again) much less of a hassle to use.

Now, I bought an external 2.5 Hard Drive, 1 TB to be exact, am using the retropie toolkit which uses ssh scripts to point the pi at a 'piroms' folder on the external, and it seems to work just fine.

Now, I add roms to it, a test run if you will. And it works great, I then get cocky and put everything on it and that's where my problems start. All of a sudden I get sda mounting errors, when booting it up before would cause no such error.

Note #1 - Try shutting off usbmount before adding ANY roms.

The curious thing is, when I add roms and the error begins it doesn't boot emustation anymore instead the ascii controller appears and all keyboard access is cut off. At one point I had a specific rom error going so I figured I'd just leave the whole entire rom folder out the next 'reformat/reboot' to see if that solves anything. nope.

I heard that retropie has issues when you have more than 40 folders on the drive, ( due to one folder having each individual rom in it's own folder I have 200+ )

My next course of action is to reformat, shut down usb mount, remove daemon mount, add one rom folder, boot to pi, if it works add back to PC, add another rom folder, repeat.

TLDR: - I'm using RetroPie Toolkit SSH Script to use an external 2.5 HD, I add one rom folder and it works, i go back and add the entire rom collection and it doesn't boot emulationstation anymore it boots the ascii retropie joystick with no keyboard access, I also get sda usb errors.

Thanks a lot for helping me, you guys are great!

For future people reference:

12:34pm

Reformated Micro SD Card, ntfs, loaded RP 4.2
Booted Up, configured controller, updated RP Scripts
Shut down usbromservice, daeomon tool, enabled SSH
Plugged in 2.5 External to pc, reformated to ntfs per instructions, created piroms folder, ran add drive to pi script
error, script does not work, I guess it can't see the 2.5 external
enabled usbromservice, re-ran script and it worked

12:44pm
7. plugged back into pc, individual rom folders are now on 2.5
8. getting cocky adding 5 entire rom folders to 2.5 external
9. plugging it back into pi, rebooting

1:08pm - don't think times are important but wth, its fun
10. rebooted, got usb mounting error, figured it was reformat time again
11. controller no longer paired, re paired, games are showed up. bullet dodged. unplugged, plugged into pc.
12. adding 6 more rom folders, unplugged, plugged in RP

-- Mind you, I am shutting RP via menu, unplugging from power, plugging in external, then plugging in power after each addition, no mistakes this time --

1:16pm
13. 6 more rom folders detected, everything is working now so far. adding 7 more rom folders, bringing total folders to 40.
14. plugging into pi, fingers crossed xx. WORKED. Plugging it back into the PC.
15. Throwing in remaining 3 folders, with one more large folder to be placed in a little bit.

1:31pm

So, it looks like I fixed my own problem? Was it me not shutting down the Pi that was somehow corrupting something? Was it some other stupid thing I was doing. I'm just glad I got the damn thing working, I am so happy right now. Thank you all!

1:35pm

I did it.... I spoke too soon. I got an error with the keyboard non functioning and the ascii picture of a joystick again. I don't know what happened, I really dont. This time a file name with text came up. I have 47 folders. What the hell.... I was on the brink of everything going great and bam now I'm back to square one and another hour or so has been sunk into it. Any suggestions?

1:51pm

More info, I can boot the RP back to normal if I unplug the external. I tried to go back to the external and delete the last 3 folders that caused the mess and windows is unresponsive, I'm going to reboot the PC now to see what the problem is.
UPDATE
after a reboot I am able to delete individual files in the rom folder (rom folder that I believe made my RP stop working, also it is always the last rom folder I put on the RP), I cannot however delete a whole folder. It says the file folder is unreadable or may be corrupt. I was also only able to do this after disconnecting power from my RP. I still have the external connected to my pc mind you. I'm thinking that it maintains a connection via ssh somehow but I may be wrong as hell.

Final Piece of info that I can give

I was unable to delete the folder, windows says its corrupt. I plug the external back into the PI and boot it up.

It goes into the emulationstation boot up screen then boots up command line, an ascii picture of a joystick (similar to atari) with the error message =

TERMINATE CALLED AFTER THROWING AN INSTANCE OF 'boost::filesystem::filesystem_error'

Thanks guys. My next try is to reboot/reformat the pi again and throw on what I think is the corrupt rom folder, hope that weeds it out. Although I'm pretty sure I've had this happen before during a different folder.

Moco

I am back, well rested and ready to go on what could be my final attempt before I give up.

9:52pm
-What I did different, formatted RP Micro SD card to FAT32 (32gb card) previously was ntfs, I don't even know if it matters. I'm unplugging my ethernet wire. I'm transferring the rom folders that screwed it up in the first place, first.

Transferring over 3 'problem' folders first, plugging external into pi.
works, transferring over every rom folder but about 4 now.

10:26pm
3. mostly all rom folders are transferred, about to test it now.
4. boost file system error as seen above..... i dont know what to do.