Seriously Wrong

[gjbnh]

Something appears to be seriously wrong with the current Recalbox for 64 bit!

Burned under 2 different OS, using different downloads, using multiple Burners, no drive letter is assigned to the SHARE partition. After first burn, chkdsk runs ok, but as soon as roms are added, it chokes on chkdsk. The same appers to be true for CHECKDISK, a commercial program, and AOMEI Partition Assistant hangs on loading the partition. These problems may not appear if upgrading from within Recalbox.

[Zing]

@gjbnh Please avoid empty headlines and fanfare: "Seriously Wrong" does not indicate anything, most users make big warnings about problems, they are just trying to draw attention to a small user manipulation issue, which most of the time the user could have solved it by reading the documentation, watching the official youtube tutorial videos, or searching here on the forum.

Some information you need to say when opening a thread:

• The topic title should briefly describe the problem and the post should be as detailed as possible.
• What is your hardware?
• What is your version of Recalbox (say version, don't say "latest")?
• Have you built your Recalbox yourself or downloaded a ready-made image from the Internet or bought it all ready?
• Have you just flashed the system image and are having this problem, or has everything worked before and stopped working? If it worked before, what kind of manipulation did you do in the middle of the process?
• How are you flashing the Recalbox image?
• Have you tried with another hard drive to make sure the problem is not with the hard drive?

no drive letter is assigned to the SHARE

It's a Windows problem, but it's easy to fix:
https://forum.recalbox.com/topic/22741/transferring-roms-directly-to-microsd-card-it-works

We recommend that the system be separated on one device and ROMS/BIOS/etc on another device, this goes for all hardware (although many users don't do that, but this is the most effective way to avoid problems).
You could keep the system on a USB flash drive and the ROMS on a hard drive, or vice versa, or the system on an internal hard drive and the ROMS on an external hard drive (keeping the ROMS on an external USB device makes it easier for the user to transfer ROMS ).

[gjbnh]

@zing Would not have made the headline if the problem wasn't REPEATABLE!! TRIED 6 times USING THE SAME system, AND 2 DIFFERENT OS!!

As far as using different media, I'm pretty well maxed out here....hence using the same USB stick...and WHY have the share partition as part of the boot if it's NOT supposed to be on the same media????

The image was DL'ed the image over the last week....what part of latest don't you understand???

I used banaethcer, rufus, imagerwriter AND pi imager writer thinking THAT could be the cause....

The image came from the recalbox website...

If it was MY hard I'd be VERY surprised. The source of the roms is saved to SEVERAL different partitions on several DIFFERENT hard drives...

I'm NOT and alarmist, and am NOT an average user! This project is VERY impressive, but does appear to have some bugs....just pointing them out. I've tried Betocera, Lakka, Retroarch..ONLY this one seems able to handle almost everything I throw at it!! AWESOME!!

The post you referred to appears that the Boot OS and the share partition is ON the SAME microsd card BTW.

[Bkg2k]

@gjbnh first, using caps won't solve your issue any faster. Then, @Zing is right: when millions (yes, millions) of people are using Recalbox and have no issue at all while I do have issues on my setup, it means:

• There is something in my setup that cause the issue
• or I'm doing something wrong
• or I'm expecting something different.

The SHARE is not part of the RECALBOX (boot) partition. You must boot once to let Recalbox creating other partitions.

Regarding the SHARE partition, it's a window problem. Before Windows 10, don't expect to be able to read more than the boot partition on an SD cads/USB stick. Starting from Windows 10, you should get the volume letter randomly assigned.
Anyway, it's pretty easy to assign a volume letter manually using the Windows' disk manager. Once assigned, it will not change until the media is formatted or flashed again.

Finally If you physically connect the media to your PC before copying your roms and it ends up running chkdsk, this means:

• You didn't unmount the media properly
• Or the OS does something wrong with the media (I had the issue once on a particular Windows setup)

You should also try copying your roms over the local network in \\RECALBOX\share\roms. Yes it's slower, but always working though

Hope you'll manage to get Recalbox working soon!

[gjbnh]

@bkg2k Who knew translation was so bad...I assuming your French here.

If there is something wrong with my setup, this is the first time in a year it has manifested..and ONLY with this key...which I/ve checked under Winows and linux several times.

Yes the SHARE partition is created upon first boot...but it is part of the setup. The problem appears only when I tried to add roms, and for that matter ANY type of file. I check after adding roms. The file system on the stick suffers major corruption.

I'm aware of the drive letter problem. Windows 10, for me, does not assign a drive letter to the SHARE partition...I have to assign it manually.

Under windows, how exactly does one mount the media properly???? For that matter, how does one properly mount said media under linux??? Since under modern Oses, this is pretty much a plug and play operation???

I've had bad media under windows before. Sometime it gets fixed under linux. But this time, the stick formats under both windows and linux just fine....Was this your experience with your media??

Since this occurs on the SAME system, copying over the network is not possible that I know of. (can you copy over network on the same system??? I've not heard of it before!)

Would LOVE to get this working! It is AWESOME!

And my use of caps is to emphasize, not scream. People assume I don't know what I'm doing. I've had almost 50 years of computer experience. So, not a newbie here. I come to forums, any forum, to solve problems I CAN'T solve. I can usually figure things out, but this has me stumped. It doesn't appear to be my setup, or the key. The key is "new" as of a week ago. Brand new.

[Bkg2k]

@gjbnh Yes moderns OSes should mount/unmount USB drives properly (and automatically disable write-caches), but I've had some unexpected troubles with some windows install though.

On windows, to unmount properly, it's still recommended to use the USB sys-icon in the right of the taskbar.

When you say "the same system", I assume you're using Recalbox on PC, right? And obviously, on the same machine you're running Windows on. So yes, in such cases, no way to copy over the network.
If you own another PC, tower or laptop, you should try transfering your roms to this machine first, and then copy them back to Recalbox using the network share \\RECALBOX. Doing this for just a few roms should help us or at least give us some clues.

And just to be sure: Are your closing Recalbox properly using the "shutdown" item from the QUIT menu?

[gjbnh]

@bkg2k said in Seriously Wrong:

@gjbnh Yes moderns OSes should mount/unmount USB drives properly (and automatically disable write-caches), but I've had some unexpected troubles with some windows install though.

On windows, to unmount properly, it's still recommended to use the USB sys-icon in the right of the taskbar.

**ALWAYS use the icon here, unless system hangs...Have never had it hang when using Recalbox USB

When you say "the same system", I assume you're using Recalbox on PC, right? And obviously, on the same machine you're running Windows on. So yes, in such cases, no way to copy over the network.
If you own another PC, tower or laptop, you should try transfering your roms to this machine first, and then copy them back to Recalbox using the network share \\RECALBOX. Doing this for just a few roms should help us or at least give us some clues.

And just to be sure: Are your closing Recalbox properly using the "shutdown" item from the QUIT menu?

ALWAYS use the shutdown menu here...

Observation...The install creates 4 partitions..Recalbox boot, 1 meg blank space, SHARE partition, and an EXT partition. When I run chkdsk on Recalbox boot partition (which windows "sees"), it resizes the partition to make full use of it....and the device become unbootable. AOMEI sees the partitions as "bleeding", ie as not matching the partitions, but bleeding into one another....strange...

[gjbnh]

@zing I owe you an apology.

The USB I was using was bad.

The key formatted under windows and linux correctly.

The key tested fine under windows using 2 different programs.

But whenever I tried to copy roms to it, they became corrupt.

After almost a week of trying I gave up and returned the key to AMAZON. This is only the second time in 20+ years I’ve gotten something bad from AMAZON.

Your were right…I was wrong.

Thank you for a great product. It installed flawlessly on other devices I have.

[Zing]

@gjbnh Thanks for your feedback, I'm glad you solved the problem.