@paradadf
Tried another European Rom in the meanwhile, MD5 checksum:
53990A4AE36382AE17D15E26EDF89C92

Looks stable so far, even with Rice :)

@geekpr1977 could you repair your usb stick in windows ?

@substring the 4 blocks were just infinitely moving, I just unplugged it, hoping it didnt corrupt my filesystem.

@piet-van-diet ah peut être que le tien est un peu plus sensible

@Oliver-Daniel-Barth oh ! how bad

@Substring negative on reaching network shares.

OK i think i finally nailed down the issue. I think i need to start with a fresh USB drive. I changed the original recalbox directory to something different (i.e. recalbox-old) and allowed recalbox to set it up after a new install. I then just copied ROMS, Saves, BIOS, Cheats and the themes directories to the new recalbox directory. Doing it this way netted zero issues (although I had some issues with syncing my bluetooth controllers, but it eventually resolved itself after all updates and setting up was done.)

This seemed so trivial, especially since my entire experience with Linux involved 3 college credits 10 years ago. If this makes sense on why I had all of these issues, please accept my apologies for wasting your time.

@kelv @paradadf

I can confirm the issue. Tried to play this wonderful game yesterday and the emulator got stuck after 7 min gameplay.

Using the default Megadrive(Genesis) core.

Well, I fixed it. It looks like the default emulator was causing a problem. I swapped it to libreto gpsp and it started working. I thought that was the default but I guess not? Either way, it's working now so if anyone else has this issue, this is how I solved it.