How do you properly format a Micro SD Card?

[Snake S71]

I'm using an A10 Micro SD card and I installed Recalbox on it. It works fine but I tried flashing it again with RetroPie and it won't boot. When I flash Recalbox back onto the card, it boots just fine.

Do I have to format the card manually in a specific way?

[Scavy]

@Snake-S71 hi
Recalbox is flashing the card when installing. It means it formats the card & it write on it. I don't know the way retropie installs, and in fact we don't care, it's Recalbox forum.

[Snake S71]

@Scavy They both flash the the micro SD card the same way. Both are through the raspberry pi imager and both have a pop up claiming to format the card on flashing.

I've had it work one way and not the other, e.g. running RetroPie just fine, formatting and flashing Recalbox, running recalbox just fine, formatting and flashing RetroPie again, raspberry pi no longer boots, formatting and flashing Recalbox, recalbox works fine.

I asked on this forum because it seems like a simple issue with Recalbox I just don't understand.

[Scavy]

@Snake-S71 check if your retropie release is the correct one. I suggest you ask on retropie's forum why it doesn't work. On Recalbox, it runs and it's what is important in THIS forum

[Snake S71]

I figured it out.

My specific issue was because I'm using the Retroflag GPi case. The case's screen requires a patch to be installed to use Retropie. I forgot about it because the Recalbox has an install package specifically for the GPi case (which is super nice) and it just works with the screen/buttons. I've re-flashed Recalbox a few times and I forgot to manually reinstall the patch when switching back to RetroPie.