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    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

    Help formatting SD card.

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    • R
      rogerde
      last edited by

      Hi all,

      Hope this hasn't been covered before.

      I've been using retropie on a raspberry pi 3 for a few months now and I absolutely love.

      My son is getting his raspberry pi set up but when inserting 32g micro SD card in computer it comes up with 2 drive letters, f and g. Is there a way of making the card just have one drive letter. Both drive letters have different memory sizes.
      I'm not really computer savvy but can follow instructions quite well.

      Hope someone can help me out and any help much appreciated.

      herb_fargusH 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • P
        Pussyfoot
        last edited by

        If you put the microsd card in your computer, what happens? Does it show all 32GB as a single drive letter?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • herb_fargusH
          herb_fargus administrators @rogerde
          last edited by herb_fargus

          @rogerde said in Help formatting SD card.:

          My son is getting his raspberry pi set up but when inserting 32g micro SD card in computer it comes up with 2 drive letters, f and g. Is there a way of making the card just have one drive letter. Both drive letters have different memory sizes.

          That's correct. To simplify, there's a boot partition and a storage partition. The boot partition contains much of the underlying OS and kernel stuff and the storage partition contains all the dependencies, emulators, where your ROMs are stored etc. It's a pretty common format for bootable images. Its probably possible to put it all on one partition but it requires a pretty technical know how.

          The real question is what is he trying to accomplish by plugging the SD into the computer? If it's just to write the retropie image, software like etcher will still recognise the SD as one device even if it's partitioned and will overwrite the whole SD with a fresh retropie image and will have two partitions.

          If you just want to format first as a formality anyways, sdformatter is a useful software for that but I also think etcher might have a simple format option too.

          If you're just looking to transfer ROMs, the standard method of ROM transfer/interaction is done via the network or USB as described in the documentation:

          https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/#transferring-roms

          If you read the documentation it will answer 99% of your questions: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/

          Also if you want a solution to your problems read this first: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

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