USB Drive Format

DougA

Hi, dumb question here. I want to put my roms etc on a USB drive following the instructions on

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

but it specifies that FAT32 should be used, however for drives larger than 32GB, FAT32 doesn't work, so which format should I use? exFAT? I read that exFAT doesn't mount on Raspbian automatically, so what do I have to do beyone what is described in that link?

TIA

mitu

@douga You can format it as FAT32, but not from the GUI - https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/format-large-hard-drive-fat-fat32/. TL;DR - use the command line.

DougA

That was exactly what I did, using the Windows command line

format /fs:fat32 e:

and after an hour or so, it said it was too big. I will try one of the tools listed below that, and see if they work

DougA

Yes, the FAT32 Format app worked. Interestingly, on my PC, the transfer rate for copying data to the drive is much lower on FAT32 than exFAT - it dropped from about 9mb/sec to below 5mb/sec on a big (>1GB) file. Assuming the same happens on a PI, I would still like to know I can use a exFAT formatted USB drive :-)

BuZz

ExFAT and NTFS should work fine.

DougA

@buzz Great! exFAT it is :-).

Has anyone else noticed such a big difference is transfer speed? I just did a more scientific test, and came out with 3.5 mb/sec writing a 4gb file to the stick when formatted as fat32, and 11.9 mb/sec with exactly the same file and drive, on the same pc when it is formatted as exfat.

steptoe

Try this for formatting FAT32 larger than 32GB

https://www.howtogeek.com/316977/how-to-format-usb-drives-larger-than-32gb-with-fat32-on-windows/

DougA

@buzz OK, over the weekend I finally got time to install my exFAT formatted USB drive. I had created the folder as per the instructions, but it didn't behave quite as I had expected. Instead of copying everything over from the SD card, only 3 games (out of about 60) copied over, and I lost the "Desktop" link, and my mame button assignments too. It wasn't a big issue, and only took a few minutes to copy everything else over manually, but I was wondering if this is a known bug? Had nothing copied over, I would have assumed it was an IBCK (Idiot Between Chair and Keyboard) error, but that fact that it did copy 3 games over made me think it might be a software issue.

Raspberry Pi 3B
Canakit 3000 mA power supply
RetroPie 4.4 installed from the image on Retropie.co.uk, last updated May 20th.
DragonRise zero lag interface
32 GB microSD card (Samsung Evo)
64 GB Sandisk Ultrafit USB 3.0 Flash drive
Logitech K400 keyboard/trackpad.

All games copied were MAME2003 and stored in roms/Mame-libretro. They were the first ones alphabetically (1941, 1942, 1944) in the drive.

KN4THX

@buzz Does one have an advantage over the other two ? I have mine formatted as FAT32 based on the documentation.

DougA

@steptoe Have a look at this link. exFAT is faster than FAT32.

https://www.flexense.com/fat32_exfat_ntfs_usb3_performance_comparison.html