Trouble writing to SD card.

[burkey0307]

I’m using an 8 GB Sandisk SDHC card, and I’m trying to write the RetroPie iso image to it using Win32 Disk Imager. The problem is that it only writes the first partition on the iso file. The size of the sd card after writing is about 50 mb.

Very few people seem to have this problem, and I haven’t found any solutions for it yet. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[Anonymous]

I am a noob, but maybe this will help you:

In windows, it only displays the fat32 partition (boot) of your sd card. All the retropie goodies are on a linux partition which doesn’t show up in windows. If Win32 disk imager actually did write the image correctly, just put the sd card in your raspi and turn it on.

If it boots into emulationstation, it worked.

[seanmalter]

So I too have been having this problem,

Im using windows and trying to get more space for my roms on the SD card but 50 mb isn’t even enough for some of the snes games I want to put on there.

Any ideas?

[RetroMarine]

Expand your filesystem on sd card by going to sudo raspi-config

Sent from my C5155 using Tapatalk

[RetroMarine]

They say to have an 8gb sd card for the roms, but the retropie image takes up damn near 4gb, so I would recommend a 16gb or higher if you want to put a lot of roms on. PSX roms are huge too, so for me, I use a 128gb sd and my retropie has just about every rom for every system under the sun.

Sent from my C5155 using Tapatalk

[Anonymous]

In my opinion, putting your roms on the sd card is not the way to go. Ever since I switched to putting only retropie on the sd card and all the roms on a usb flash drive, I haven’t had any problems with the card corrupting. whereas, with the roms on the card, it would corrupt at least once a week. (usually when a rom doesn’t exit properly and I’m forced to pull the power, but sometimes for no reason)

It’s also much easier to move roms over to your system because you can just pull the usb drive, put it in your computer and move them over (or edit them). I also recommend putting your save files and savestate directories on the flash drive. Then you dont lose all your saves every time the sd card corrupts. This can be super frustrating when you’ve put in 20 hours on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

In order to use a flash drive for rom storage you need to point each emulator in es_systems.cfg to the correct directory on the flash drive. I recommend calling the parent rom directory on the flash drive “romz” instead of “roms.” Since there is a USB copy script automatically enabled when you install retropie, it will automatically create a “roms” directory with sub folders on the flash drive and if it detects any roms in that folder next time you plug in the flash drive it will automatically move the roms to the sd card, which will kill all your sd card space and defeat the purpose of usb rom storage. I still cant figure out how to disable the rom copy service so any help on that would be appreciated.

Other things to know: you’ll need to do some stuff to get your pie to automount your usb drive every time it boots. This article walks you through it: http://www.bobjectsinc.com/tinycomputers/raspbian-automatically-mount-usb-drives/

Disadvantages of USB storage: It takes up a USB slot, so that will either mean one less controller, no wireless adapter, or the need for a USB hub, which I dont really like the thought of. I’ve seen that they can cause a bunch of controller issues and the use for a large peripheral like that sort of kills the portability and ease of the raspi.

my solution: I use a usb adapter for SNES controller that hooks two controllers to one usb port. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dual-USB-adapter-for-SNES-controller-Super-Nintendo-/200375560296?pt=US_Video_Game_Controllers&hash=item2ea7506868

It works great except on some games if the player 1 controller doesn’t respond, use the other controller. In rare cases it will even switch player 1 and 2 mid game. not that big of a deal though.

also when I need to connect the raspi to wifi (to get updates or if I wanna ssh in from my laptop) I just shutdown the raspi, remove the controllers or the usb drive , replace it with the wireless adapter, then boot up. You can control your raspi via ssh and launch a virtual terminal window as well. I use cyberduck to do this

anyway, I hope this helps somebody

[seanmalter]

Thanks So much guys! I’m going to go fix it right now

[Author]

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