Retropie 4.6 image gives FAT rather than FAT32 boot partition
-
Hello all,
I'm pretty new to this so please forgive me if I'm missing something basic.
I've read on countless forums that the Raspberry PI 4 requires an SD card with a FAT32 boot partition.
If I use the Raspberry Pi Imager from raspberrypi.org on my Windows 10 machine to write their reccomended Raspbian Buster release onto a card (16GB or 128GB, same result) I do indeed get a FAT 32 boot partition.However, if I download the Retropie 4.6 image from this site and use either Etcher ot Win32diskimager to write to a card (again, tried both 16GB or 128GB), I get a FAT boot partition.
Admittedly, it doesn't seem to matter as Retropie loads nidely on my PI4, resizes the card to full capacity and I can configure, add ROMS etc.
Should I be concerned about this or am I missing something ?
Am I safe to continue building up games on a 128GB SD card or will I run into problems ?
Would I perhaps be safer starting with the Rasbian Buster build with the FAT32 partition and install Retropie on top of that ?
Appreciate it if anyone can provide some guidance, thank you.
-
I've read on countless forums that the Raspberry PI 4 requires an SD card with a FAT32 boot partition.
No, it doesn't require any filesystem on the card, when you write the image on the card all the partitions will be erased anyway. What you see is the result of the partitions included in the image.
If I use the Raspberry Pi Imager from raspberrypi.org on my Windows 10 machine to write their reccomended Raspbian Buster release onto a card (16GB or 128GB, same result) I do indeed get a FAT 32 boot partition.
Yes, they seem to have switched to Fat32 a while back.
Admittedly, it doesn't seem to matter as Retropie loads nidely on my PI4, resizes the card to full capacity and I can configure, add ROMS etc.
Should I be concerned about this or am I missing something ?No, there's no problem, the boot partition is only for the bootloader files, the OS resides on the other (
ext4
) Linux partition. -
Hi Mitu,
Sorry I think you missed my point.. I understand that the card is reinitialised and all partitions are erased when burning a new image. I'm saying that when I do this, using the Retropie 4.6 image, with either Etcher or win32diskimager, the resulting BOOT partition on the card is FAT and specifically NOT FAT 32.
Please see that attached comparison from Windows Disk Management following imaging of Retropie 4.6 using Etcher, compared with the official Raspberry PI Debian release using the Raspberry PI imager from raspberrypi.org. Note, Retropie image gives a FAT boot partition, Raspberry PI Debian release image gives a FAT32 boot partition.
So I'm wondering is this should be a concern. Is this deliberate and the Raspberry PI is happy with a FAT boot partition (it certainly boots ok with that image) or am I missing something ?
Thanks
-
I think I understand your concern. Still they may have switched the BOOT partition style to FAT, but it should not affect anything else since the main system is on the Linux partition, and then the storage partition is completely separate from that. So the boot partition changing to FAT should not really change anything at all. It may have been done actually since the BOOT partition is so small that using FAT32 may have really been a waste, but I'm not a developer, just stating what I think may be correct in this case. Hope that helps a little. :)
-
Ιt doesn't effect performance or stability. It is not a problem which you should worry about. Ι have two setups, one with FAT and another one with FAT32 boot partition (manual instillation from Buster Lite) and no problems or difference at all.
-
Many thanks for the replies, it would seem then, that I'm being over cautious and should press on with my build.
I also posted over on raspberrypi.org and got similar responses.
Contributions to the project are always appreciated, so if you would like to support us with a donation you can do so here.
Hosting provided by Mythic-Beasts. See the Hosting Information page for more information.