Changing Drastic save location?

[helloThere]

Current Set-up:
PI 4B 8GB
5.1 V 2.5A PSU
32 GB SD Card
64 GB External Flash drive for Roms
2 sets of arcade joystick and LED buttons
Emulator: Drastic (NDS)

I noticed the save files for Drastic were going to opt/retropie/configs/nds/drastic/backup.

I tried editing the savefile_directory in retroarch.cfg, but that doesn't work with Drastic. Is there some way to change where the Drastic save files are placed to be the same directory as my NDS roms?

Alternatively, can I somehow move the entire /opt folder to the USB drive? I use my usb drive to make backups and want to preserve the save files and controller configurations too.

[Clyde]

You can "move" any folder to another location by using a symbolic link in its place. See the following example for moving /opt to /media/usb0/opt by using RetroPie's command shell that you get to by pressing F4 in Emulation Station (everything behind # is just a comment):

sudo mv -v /opt /media/usb0     # move opt to the usb drive 0 with [-v]erbose output
sudo ln -s /media/usb0/opt /opt # create the [-s]ymlink

Exit the console by entering exit or press Ctrl+d.

Caution: Always make a backup of your sd card before doing something this intrusive. I didn't test this myself, so I don't know if RetroPie is completely okay with a symlink for opt. Do extensive testing right after the operation.

[helloThere]

Thanks @Clyde, I'll try that out. How does symlink work exactly? Would symlink make a copy of the /opt folder in /media/usb0/, or would it just reference the original folder?

[sleve_mcdichael]

@hellothere said in Changing save location?:

Thanks @Clyde, I'll try that out. How does symlink work exactly? Would symlink make a copy of the /opt folder in /media/usb0/, or would it just reference the original folder?

The symlink is just a pointer/redirect, like a Windows shortcut.

[helloThere]

@clyde I moved /opt to /media/usb3/retropie-mount instead of media/usb0.

This came up when I ran sudo mv -v /opt /media/usb0, but I'm not sure what to make of it.

[helloThere]

@clyde

I either did something wrong or 'moving' /opt isn't possible. The controls weren't responding after I moved it.

Anyway, after re-flashing from the backup, what I did instead was basically made a new folder in retropie-mount where I can store save files and transfered the save files to there.

sudo mv -v /opt/retropie/configs/nds/drastic/backup /media/usb2/retropie-mount/saves 

sudo ln -v -s /media/usb2/retropie-mount/saves/nds /opt/retropie/configs/nds/backup

This symlink seems to be working so far. Could there later be problems to symlink through /media/usb2? I'm not sure if the encolsing folder where retropie-mount is located will change or not, depending which port the external flash drive is plugged in.

[Clyde]

@hellothere I guess that the usb drive is formatted with a file system that doesn't support Linux file ownership, e.g. FAT32, exFAT, NTFS or the like. Hence the errors when mvtries to transfer the files' ownership to the new location, and maybe also the nonresponsive controls, as the ownership might be important for some of the files or directories in /opt.

You can check the file system with this command:

df -T | grep usb2

(df -T lists all mounted file systems, and grepfilters its output to just the lines that contain usb2.)