@PandaExpress i wasn't thinking about hdparm, i was rather thinking about manually launching the emulator, which requires digging through the logs.

For your USB key, just follow https://github.com/recalbox/recalbox-os/wiki/Use-an-external-usb-storage-device-on-recalbox-(EN) 🙂 There is a section explaining how to sync your key with your SD