I Need to Go BIG For My Next Build

AlphaBetaPie

I've been doing a build on my MicroSD card, but for my Pi4 upgrade, I want to go big or go home. I did a quickly tally today, and with all my roms (including many ISOs for PlayStation, Saturn and Sega CD) and all the media goes with those (like game play videos, screenshots, covers, etc), I'll need at least 150-200gigs of space. Obviously that means I'll either need a larger USB stick (which my local PC store sells in the size of 256GB no problem), or just an external USB hard drive. I've read some things about mounting them some way, and it's a fairly easy process.

What would be the process for setting up enough HDD space so I never run out on my game setup?
And as a quick work around to the above question, I don't suppose it would be possible just to plug and play the external drive into one of the extra USB ports and just point my rom directory there in my XML file? IE: d:/externalhdd/roms and not have to fuss with any setup?
My current SD card is very large, and has a lot of unused space, almost the full amount I need. Would it be easier to partition it up and use it internally?

simpleethat

@alphabetapie as far as setting up USB storage for Retropie it is quite simple and outlined quite clearly here: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive/.

I've used that method on four builds with pretty much no problems.

AlphaBetaPie

@simpleethat Thanks, that was suppringely easy. I feel like the last time I tried this, there was much more involved process than just doing the automate way from the link. But it seems to have worked, for the most part. I did run into one small issue.

I tried this on a fresh image/install on a brand new Pi 4. I bought a 2TB portable Seagate drive (that was already formatted to exFat, and I read that this is fine and no need to reformat). I created the retropie-mount folder in the root and plugged it in. But each time the Pi loads, I get this error at boot up:

[FAILED] failed to start usbmount@dev-sda.service

I made sure usbromservice was installed in optional packages, and enabled it in the config tool files (although I think it already was by default). Funny thing is, I checked the USB drive on my desktop afterwards, and Retropie copied all the files/directories over to it it was supposed to. So will this work any, despite the error? And why am I getting it if it's actually working properly?

mitu

@alphabetapie said in I Need to Go BIG For My Next Build:

[FAILED] failed to start usbmount@dev-sda.service

The error is benign and can be ignored. /dev/sda is the whole disc device, so it cannot be processed (since it has not filesystem). The partition you created is on /dev/sda1 (1st partition on disc) and it works fine, as you already noticed.

AlphaBetaPie

@mitu said in I Need to Go BIG For My Next Build:

@alphabetapie said in I Need to Go BIG For My Next Build:

[FAILED] failed to start usbmount@dev-sda.service

The error is benign and can be ignored. /dev/sda is the whole disc device, so it cannot be processed (since it has not filesystem). The partition you created is on /dev/sda1 (1st partition on disc) and it works fine, as you already noticed.

Thanks a lot for confirming! Much appreciated.