Running ROMs from a USB drive does not work

Mouseke

Information:

Raspberry Pi3b
Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website, RetroPie Image v4.1 (retropie-4.1-rpi2_rpi3)
8GB SDCard, 500GB exFAT formatted USB HDD
Wii U Pro Controller working
Used this guide https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive
I'm a Linux newbie

Problem:

I followed this guide to the point where I needed to reboot the system, it all seemed fine but the RetroPie icon was gone in the menu where all the different consoles are. Also when using WinSCP and I would transfer my roms to /home/pi/RetroPie I could upload a few but later I would get the following message.

Copying files to remote side failed

General failure (server should provide error description).
Error code: 4
Error message from server: Failure

Common reasons for the Error code 4 are:
- Renaming a file to a name of already existing file.
- Creating a directory that already exists.
- Moving a remote file to a different filesystem (HDD).
- Uploading a file to a full filesystem (HDD).
- Exceeding a user disk quota.

When logging in with putty I see I have no disk space left for the 8GB SD card so it would be seem the guide did not work. Here is some extra information after using the guide. Before I saw the USB HDD when I entered the "df" command.

When doing "ls /media/usb0 -l" I see this before I saw the expected information when following the guide.

When doing "ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/" i get the following information. Where 1A8B-F488 is the ID of the USB device that was showing before when using "df", I know for sure because I wrote this down for it (/dev/sda1 /media/usb0 and ID = 1A8B-F488)

This is what is showing when executing the command "".

I hope you guys can help me, thx in advance !!

dankcushions

exFAT

the guide needs it to be fat32. if you use exfat your fstab probably needs to look different - perhaps someone can help.

herb_fargus

@dankcushions also possible he didn't disable the USB ROM copy perhaps?

Mouseke

I disabled the USB transfer daemon, I'm trying again now with my HDD being FAT32 formatted. I had to do this with some weird free thirdparty tool (http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/index.html). Windows 10 wouldn't let me !

I'll post my results in a moment.

Mouseke

OK it seems formatting to FAT32 fixed the issue. Thx for your replies and this great project, this topic can be closed.