Trying to spread files across two different hard drives
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I just finished setting up RetroPie on my Intel NUC and after copying all the roms I had already stored on my NAS, the 1TB m.2 drive is entirely full. I'm literally sitting with 54mb left on a 1TB drive. I wanted to use the second drive to take over and start picking up the extra weight but I'm not sure about the best way to do this with RetroPie. I was wondering if there was a way to "balance" data, sending new data to the drive with the most available space automatically like unraid does, except in Ubuntu.
If that is not possible, is my best option to go into my fstab and mount new data heavy directories just like I would a network drive? Like mount /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gc to /dev/sda/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gc? Or is there some symlink thing I need to do? I've edited fstab to pull roms from a network location before, but I'm not sure how much changes with an internal drive, and even moreso confused whether it is okay to split the roms folder across multiple drives.
Pi Model or other hardware: Intel NUC8i3CYSM with 1TB NVME SSD + 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD
RetroPie Version Used: 4.6.1
Built on top of Ubuntu 18.04
Guide Used: https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/RetroPie-Ubuntu-16.04-LTS-x86-Flavor -
If that is not possible, is my best option to go into my fstab and mount new data heavy directories just like I would a network drive?
Yes, why not ? EmulationStation doesn't care about your disc, it just needs the folders to exist and to be writable by the user running it.
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@mitu Alrighty, I did that and it seems to be working fine for the most part.
It does throw a drive on my ubuntu desktop for every mount I have set up, which is fine I guess, but when I start up the machine it shows each mount with its own folder name, and after awhile they all change to just "Disk2".
Also, there is 80GB left or so on my main drive and when I try to transfer a file bigger than that to the secondary mounted drive it says there isn't enough disk space left on home, even though the data isn't actually going there. Did I do something wrong in my fstab?
# /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> # / was on /dev/nvme0n1p2 during installation UUID=e29c692f-9fa0-4dca-838f-68d80d25c2fa / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # /boot/efi was on /dev/nvme0n1p1 during installation UUID=CE8B-70DB /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1 /swapfile none swap sw 0 0 #Data drive UUID=38b2971b-e7b4-4e3d-a43c-1e8e8ad81bc2 /media/pi/Disk2 ext4 defaults 0 0 #Data drive rom mounts /media/pi/Disk2/roms/gc /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gc none bind /media/pi/Disk2/roms/wii /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/wii none bind /media/pi/Disk2/roms/ps2 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ps2 none bind /media/pi/Disk2/roms/atari800 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari800 none bind /media/pi/Disk2/roms/ngpc /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ngpc none bind /media/pi/Disk2/roms/ngp /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ngp none bind /media/pi/Disk2/roms/3ds /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/3ds none bind /media/pi/Disk2/roms/saturn /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/saturn none bindI know this isn't RetroPie specific, but I've looked all over the place and I'm just kind of winging it with this. I thought I mounted everything correctly, but this is only the second time I've ever messed with mounting file locations in Linux. Kinda hoping there is just something stupid I didn't put in, like when you told me to add something to my network drive mount and Atomiswave magically started working.
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The
/etc/fstablooks fine. The error message about the file size - do you have enough space on the 2nd drive for it ? If you rundf -h, what's the free space on each partition/mount point ? -
It's showing 398GB available on /dev/sda which is the second drive. The primary is /dev/nvme0n1p2. It's pretty crazy how much drive space I lose in ext4 as well, but I don't know that there is much I can do about that besides reclaiming the file system overhead.
I know there is plenty of room on the second drive, though. I was able to transfer the files by sending them over in smaller chunks that were smaller than the available space on the primary drive. It just seems like I did something wrong if it's throwing me errors like this. Also, when I go to the Samba shares, the file location shows up as /Disk2/Disk2/roms/systemname which I thought was odd.
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on udev 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev tmpfs 790M 3.3M 787M 1% /run /dev/nvme0n1p2 916G 788G 82G 91% / tmpfs 3.9G 12K 3.9G 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/loop2 55M 55M 0 100% /snap/core18/1668 /dev/loop1 2.5M 2.5M 0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/748 /dev/loop3 90M 90M 0 100% /snap/core/8268 /dev/loop4 2.3M 2.3M 0 100% /snap/gnome-system-monitor/148 /dev/loop0 98M 98M 0 100% /snap/core/9289 /dev/loop5 4.3M 4.3M 0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/544 /dev/loop6 256M 256M 0 100% /snap/gnome-3-34-1804/36 /dev/loop7 161M 161M 0 100% /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/116 /dev/loop10 15M 15M 0 100% /snap/gnome-characters/399 /dev/loop9 102M 102M 0 100% /snap/p7zip-desktop/220 /dev/loop8 1.0M 1.0M 0 100% /snap/gnome-logs/100 /dev/loop11 162M 162M 0 100% /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/128 /dev/loop12 384K 384K 0 100% /snap/gnome-characters/550 /dev/loop13 256K 256K 0 100% /snap/gtk2-common-themes/9 /dev/loop14 63M 63M 0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1506 /dev/loop15 55M 55M 0 100% /snap/core18/1754 /dev/loop16 1.0M 1.0M 0 100% /snap/gnome-logs/81 /dev/loop17 3.8M 3.8M 0 100% /snap/gnome-system-monitor/127 /dev/loop18 45M 45M 0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1440 /dev/sda 916G 472G 398G 55% /media/pi/Disk2 /dev/nvme0n1p1 511M 6.1M 505M 2% /boot/efi tmpfs 790M 1.9M 788M 1% /run/user/1000 -
I don't have much experience with this, but I thought I read in a plex setup guide that they don't recommend using the /media folder for secondary drive mounts because ubuntu has funny permissions / ownership issues with that. They suggest using /disks instead.
Does this sound plausible?
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@construkt Seems fine. Can't understand why you get an error copying.
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Maybe my smb.conf is messed up? Here it is here: https://pastebin.com/RZWC8qtn
I've been trying to make it show up in Windows on the network with no success so I've followed a few guides trying to make that happen. I still have to type in \retropie in windows explorer because it wont show up in my network automatically. Still working through that, but it's possible I put in some settings incorrectly.
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@construkt said in Trying to spread files across two different hard drives:
Maybe my smb.conf is messed up? Here it is here: https://pastebin.com/RZWC8qtn
Is the error showing up when you try to copy over the network ? I though you were trying to copy from the 1st disc to the 2nd.
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@YFZdude it automatically mounted it to /media/pi, so I just didn't change it.
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No, sorry I meant over the network. I'm transferring files from my Windows machine to the mounted folders, which are also shared on the network.
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What's the point ? You already have a desktop available, why don't you transfer them directly ? Regardless, your share definition might be the problem - since Samba doesn't know you have more space available on
/home/pi. -
I definitely could. I did get the necessary programs for doing such on it, but I have more tools available on my desktop, and a lot more real estate. Plus my desktop has 3 large displays and is on a desk while the NUC is sitting on an entertainment center that is awkwardly low.
My share definition? So it's just Samba not understanding how the folders are connected then? I'm really just worried that I'll fill up the primary drive more and won't ever be able to transfer anything across the network to the retropie box.
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@construkt Use the RetroPie-Setup script to restore the default Samba shares, I think it should work better than the current share situation.
Plus my desktop has 3 large displays and is on a desk while the NUC is sitting on an entertainment center that is awkwardly low.
Just SSH to your RetroPie and use
mcto transfer the files. -
@mitu alright thanks ill give that a shot
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