Wishing I came across this video at the start of the weekend and not the end haha. Not great support on Batocera sites but this is perfect. Simple to bloody understand for someone not so savvy with codings and shit haha. Thank you!!
Thanks for this great tutorial. I finally got it to work. The links didn't work if I added the game folders however I had to click into the folder and add the individual roms then it worked.
Quick and easy tutorial on creating links to games on an alternate drive and placing them in the main Boot/Roms folder. All the roms on my second internal HDD are now detected and play fine.
Note: Drives should be manually named to prevent automatic naming issues. The system names drives in the order it encounters them, so if you have multiple drives, the links might stop working randomly when your drives are detected in a different order because the system has renamed them. E.g. You have 2 drives plugged in. one is drive 01, the other is drive 02. You restart. The system detects drive 02 before 01 this time. SO now none of your links will work. I didn't realise until I restarted a couple of times and noticed it. To name a drive(in linux) use gnome-disk-utility. If you don't have it installed, it's in the repos. The GDU lets you rename drives without reformatting them or anything. While you might try altering it in your file browser (thunar, dolphin etc) you might not get the response from other system. Best to use the utility so the boot record knows what to tell the system when it asks for the name of a drive.
Thank you for this information. I wasn't aware of this. I have a question regarding this. If you rename the drive in Windows, will that work? Or does it have to be renamed in Linux?
@@BatoceraNation I would assume that using windows to rename a drive (right-click > properties > change the name in that menu) would work. I would suggest testing this with a thumb drive and see if it's detected under the name you assigned with this method. I don't use windows, so I can't speak from experience. I switched from windows several months ago. A check with a small thumb drive would take 5 minutes, and that would be a good test to do before migrating everything over and discovering linux has a different naming registry reliance.
Another scenario, I have everything on one drive and it's filling up fast so I add another drive (drive D). It has to be formatted first on another PC. Then I created new folder for each system on the new drive. Then I copied roms from Drive C into the appropriate folder in Drive D. Then erased the roms from Drive A. Back to Drive D and created a link like you showed. I'm not sure if this is the best way but it worked so far. Keep up the great videos!!!! Some need to be updated too
You the man! No one else mentioned links. All the Linux guys are super techhi all we want is a laymen way rather than typing IP address and stirnfs for passwords
Can you make a tutorial on partitioning your internal ssd for dual boot windows/batocera? I have a wth ssd and only need 256gb for windows and would like to use the rest of the storage for batocera
not working for me on version 34, can see both my external drives. i have a 320gb with most games on but want to link some from a 2tb followed the guide but the links dont appear on my 320gb folders
Can I have two harddrives in my pc with batocera on one and Windows on second? Will pc give me any trouble? I want to have a emulator machine that isnt slowed down by Windows that steals resources in background but I also would like to keep my documents and mails and stuff.
Hi, I have a NucIntel with batocera installed on an internal 1to SSD sata. I have not enough space, and would like to put my Ps2 roms on my internal Nvme M2 500 go, but when I go on the F1 file manager, I can't see the Nvme...Do you have any idea ? thanks per advance.
I assume that you don't have Windows installed at all in your internal drives? If you don't, try taking out the second NVME drive and run "Error checking" in Tools (found in Properties of the Drive within Windows). Sometimes that helps Batocera see the second drive. In my experimenting, I know that it also fails to see it when the drive is a Windows "C Drive"
My Rcps3 apparently cannot boot create links folders inside /roms/ps3, BUT it can boot create link folders from /roms/rcps3 and the target is from /dev_hdd0/game weird Ive tried copying everything from /dev_hdd0/game to /rom/ps3 but it boots blackscreen after compilation
I have a 1tb hard drive that contains my BATOCERA but I’m trying to clone it to a 1tb mini ssd but since it does it read as a full 1tb it saying it’s too small. Any remedies you can think of?
What I don't understand is why you aren't making symbolic links (symlinks) of the folders that contain the metadata, such as boxart, image, media, snap, videos, etc? In fact, why not just create a symlink of the "colecovision" folder for example? Wouldn't that work? I am asking because I am investigating how to best expand the storage space to accomodate more roms. I am just curious as to why the folders might not work. Have you tried this approach? Did you not mention it because you haven't tried it or you have but found that it doesn't work and as such didn't cover it in your video?
Okay so batocera even sees regular internal drives as an external. So if I do a nvme to store boot and batocera and use hdds to store my roms I would have to link everything with this method?
You read my mind, Bro… now that I started adding PC and Higher end systems, I ran out of space. Now I’m hoping you can help me out with that question about cheats for newer windows games. 😉
I have all my roms and everything set up. But no room to update on my hard drive. So I added a new hard drive and was wondering how to get it to link to my original hard drive
I had a similar issue in EmuELEC and I made a script that made a symbollic link between the external drive console folder and the internal emuelec console folder. Now I can have SNES and MegaDrive on my Internal Storage, and N64, NDS, PS1 etc on my external drive.
Thank you so much for this video, but I do have a question needed help please, How do you unlink the files from the hard drive beside deleting the linked files one by one. Thank you advance.
Select All (Ctrl and then A) and then delete. Or delete the linked folder. But if you have a combination of linked and unlinked files within a folder, you might sort the files in the folder by type and then delete all the linked files.
Please Help ASAP, ido install Batocera to HDD Transcend 1TB, then i cant run boot Batocera from my laptop, after that i can run on my pc, but i need run it from my laptop, i need solutions please? can someone help me?!?!
Mandatory TIP!: The drive has to be in NTFS to be auto mounted by Batocera. I had the drive in BTRFS and I spend a lot of time trying to figureout what was going on.
hi i got portable 2TB batocera hard drive, but when i choose to start up thrue bioa it not starting up. note : when i plug in the hard drive to see it through the windows it not show any files, and when i go through disk management it show it to me but unknown files. How to fix this problem and start gaming
Did you flash Batocera to the portable hdd yourself ? So you want it to boot from that hdd as well? So the whole OS on the portable hdd? Or are you booting from a flash drive and using the portable hdd as storage for roms only?
After you flash Batocera to the portable hard drive you need to let it boot once. This expands the storage and creates the file structure. Then when you connect it to your PC yes, you wont be able to read the share partition as its in ext4 fornat which windows cant read by default without special software like disk genious. However boot Batocera and press F1 on your keyboard and you can use the inbuilt file manager to access the share parition and moves files across. You said though it wont boot at all? You need to go into your PC bios setting and allow booting from the usb port as primary.
I have a hdd divided into two partitions of 500Gb. (1 fat32 and 1 ntfs) but when I look at my batocera partition it only gives me 6 Gb, what's wrong here and how do I fix this...
The 6GB partition is the Boot partition thats in Fat32. The other partition which Batocera creates when you boot for the first time in the share partition which holds your games, themes etc. This is auto formatted to ext4 by Batocera. Windows cannot see the ext4 partition. You would need special sofware like Disk Genius. Otherwise boot into Batocera, press F1 on keyboard and you can see the share partition with the built in file manager. Not sure though then why you have 2 at 500GB in fat32 and ntfs.
@@BatoceraNation So I have batocera on an internal ssd, I have an nvme installed with windows where I get my roms. Sometimes I can access the nvme drive directly in batocera other times I cant, is there a way to keep the drive accessible permanently. The only way I seem to be able to access the nvme from batocera is to repeatedly restart my system and hope it connects
Thank you again for you're great videos which have been a great help. I've already managed to add an extra drive for which I store my roms on, but can't seem to see a CD-ROM drive.
Good Evening I recorded the image of the batocera 38 for PC on a 128 memory card... I was wondering if there is a way to show not only the internal disk but also two other disks where there are roms, In a Batocera Nation video I saw that it could be done via F1, copying the Gamelist file and creating links to the ROMs but it doesn't work for me... Where am I wrong? Does it work even without Batocera installation?
I keep loading batocera on a 2 tb internal ssd drive on an old gaming pc. When I go to add roms to it via the network, it says I don't even have room for one 4 gig game? Same thing when I try to add roms with a connected drive. When I look at the drive on a windows machine, it looks like it only partisians off like 6 gig for OS and the rest is partisianed Off. So basically I can't load roms, says not enough space?!? Any ideas? Wanted everything, os and roms one one internal hardrive...
When you boot up your Batocera PC, go into System Settings, then click on Information. How much space is your hard drive reporting? It should be close to 2TB. Try not to stick the portable SSD drive into a Windows PC because it will mess up the Batocera drive. To add ROMs into the SSD drive, press F1 on your keyboard and there you should see the ROMs folder. Plug another portable drive that contains your ROMs into the Batocera system and from there you can copy and paste your ROMs into your Batocera SSD from within Batocera. If you try to do it within Windows, it won't work.
You might also want to repeat the process of reinstalling Batocera unto the 2TB SSD. Then when it loads up for the first time, press F1, plug a portable drive with your ROMs, then copy and paste.
hey so im using a 32gb usb drive to run the batocera and trying to use the internal 256gb ssd for storage. I am having problem with switching the storage setting to it as i am seeing "NO-NAME - 222.8G" after i select this and restart the system. my rom storage is still only at 22gb.
That’s Awesome, so basically you can use this when your main batocera drive is running low on space, the other roms that might not fit there you can “link it” with out it affecting your main batocera drive. Pretty much right?
Awesome tutorial you have! That's great! I Am using Batocera now with multiple hard drives using symlinks. But i can only see the main drive on the share folder over the network, is there a way to see the other ones? Thanks
I tried to do this with my PS3 and Xbox 360 games on Batocera 38 and while the games list correctly in the menu, when I try to play them I just get a black screen. This doesn't happen when I launch them from my main drive.
hi, is it compatible with dolphin GC/Wii emulator ? I see all my roms in batocera but when i launch them. Dolphin doesn't find them ? and i can't find my drive in dolphin gui windows.
I have linked my roms on my Batocera flash drive to a folder on my internal HD and it works a treat However every time I reset batocera they vanish, do I need to save it somewhere?
It seems batocera gives a new name to drives everytime they are conected, it can be solved by manually naming the drives/partitions in windows or some gnome tool in linux.
What can be if my portable hdd KinHank sometime start with the correct number of roms and emulator and other times charge only a very little rom number and other emulator? I do not understand how to fix and ever charge all my roms Thank you for your videos
Hey Batocera Nation. I am curious is it possible to use a second drive but keep scraped files on the install drive? I'd like to store my roms on a larger slower drive but would like to keep the videos and images on the fast loading 128gb nvme that batocera is installed to. Is this doable? I currently am using a 500gb ssd for my storage drive with all the user data files through the typical batocera setting. Works great but the 500gb is running thin. I'd like to put my 2 tb mechanical drive in.. would be awesome if I could just somehow utilize that drive for the room files only while keeping the scraped stuff on the fast nvme.
So I'm basically linking a folder. I have two SSD's in my PC. One has windows the other is Batocera with a ton of roms. Can I Use this method if I ran out out of space on my Batocera Drive and make a rom folder on the windows disk and link that folder?
i have a asrock 4800 with a 2tb internal ssd as my main and i want to use my m.2 as storage it doesn't recognize it. it's been formatted to the correct format. any suggestions?
Got the same problem I guess. I got 2x internal m2. Ssd's. 1 ssd contains win10, the other contains batocera userdata (roms etc.) I boot up batocera from an external usb stick. I would like to connect some games from my "win10 ssd" to the "roms ssd" but I can't connect my "win10 ssd". Any suggestion guys?
Is it possible to copy paste Roms from main storage to external and then linking those files to batocera so that I can have more space on my main storage. And if so what exactly do I need to do before so that the ext hd is accessible to be used for extra storage.
So I just watched your video on how to add GOG games. Can I make a "GOG" folder in my larger drive and create a link for the entire folder? Also want to do the same with steam games. Or change the path for a folder maybe?
Is it a mechanical drive or an SSD drive? It should work. I've tried it on a 4TB SSD drive and it works extremely well. If you have a 8TB SSD drive, make sure that it is genuine. Some sold on Amazon are fakes. If you got a great low price on it, then it might be fake and that's why it is slow.
You can't. When you install Batocera on a hard drive, it wipes everything off from that drive. It's like trying to install Windows on that same hard drive.
@@BatoceraNation I think he can. He can get a separate linux distro on his USB and boot it up off the USB. Then do a partition ==> th-cam.com/video/ocDbPt4eRbk/w-d-xo.html after that he could then install batocera onto the new partition using the other linux distro. I did it myself, but I need to find the instructions.
@@BatoceraNation I couldn't find anything, but I think when you partition enough space (10GB I recommend for updates), then you can install Batocera onto the empty partition. I think he will have to rename his folders to share, and move around the games into folders Batocera will recognize. I would probably test it on a small drive for kicks.
Are his Rom drives formatted as ext4? Or is it just that his batocera system is grabbing the transfers? I am really struggling to get my roms on an NTFS drive )Win 10) transferred to my bootable Batocera thumb drive.
Not sure what you are asking. When you flash Batocera the share partition is formatted to ext4 which windows cannot read by default. When Batocera is booted, you can press F1 on keyboard which brings up the inbuilt file manager, that way you can locate your roms and transfer them over that way. Or, if you want to transfer files over using windows explorer you can actually format the share partition to a diff file system other than ext4..You can format it to exfat for eg. But doing that may have some negatives. If you check the Batocera wiki it will have all this information on using diff file formats other than the default ext4. Or, do you mean using a sep sep flash drive or portable hdd for roms only? I used to do that. I used to boot Batocera from flash drive but run the games from a portable hdd. I had that formatted to ntfs but again, doing that may have issues with certain systems.
Is there a way to acess my roms folder from another computer via smb share ? that would be way easier for me as I have Rpi3 with batocera, and also an older computer with Batocera, so if I could access my roms from my main computer instead of carrying an external hard drive from the living room to another place itd be way easier. A detailed video about this would be much appreciated.
Mate, you're a god. Thank you so much for your videos, they help everybody and me immensely on getting along with our favorite gaming system! I have another question; is it possibly to put steam games (steam via flatpak in batocera) to a second ssd? Thank you in advance for our reply!
Sometimes this happens for some reason. Try rebooting Batocera,if it's still not showing try again. If it doesn't show after a few reboots then I don't know
I'm a Windows emulator, is it possible to partition my external hard drive which has all of my roms on it and install batocera on an 8gb partition? That way all of my save data is accessable across all platforms (want batocera to make my emulation portable and connect to other pc's)
@@BatoceraNation I've been on discord server and been getting lots of help. I want to thank the folks on the server and you for the assistance. thank you very much.
@@BatoceraNation before this project I've been emulating on my desktop pc with retroarch and a few stand alone emulators. for this project I bought a 8 terabyte external drive to hold the roms. the guys on the server told me that sometimes batocera gets flaky with large external drives. saying that my best long term fix is to reformat it to gpt and to use a network protocol to transfer the roms via USB. your solution of just plugging it in after booting seems to be the easier fix. I am going to unplugging it anyway to keep the drive from running with I'm using the system.
@@BatoceraNation thanks for help another question so I set up switch on my system works well problem I'm having is controller issues I have an Xbox One elite controller I'm using do you have any videos or can you make a video on best or recommended controller settings for switch games much appreciated love you vids thanks
Is it possible to link all rom folders as one step ? This means : not linking the contents of the folder , each one after another but linking all folders of the romfolder from the external drive to the boot drive . Great Video and thx
@@BatoceraNation Im not sure running Batocera or even just for rom storage on an SSD will be of any benefit I mean you are connecting the SSD via usb 3.0 cable right? (Or even 2.0 i think is fine for retro emulation). So its only going to allow max data speed as what the cable allows right? So running a normal portable HDD using USB 3.0 or a portable SSD using usb 3.0 for Batocera I think would give the same performance. Right? If you have an internal HDD or SSD using its sata connection well ofcourse thats gonna be faster. But again, for retro emulation.. Im not sure its of any benefit either. Maybe if you have modern games on there as well, via Steam or whatever then yeah, I can see then having an SSD internally would be beneficial. My lenovo m73 only has 1 usb3.0 port. I run batocera OS from a usb3.0 flash drive from that port. I have a 2TB portable HDD plugged into one of the USB2 ports. Seems to run just fine. Sometimes, on higher end system emulation Id get those slight pauses or stutters for certain games, like say a Bloody Roar game on gamecube or PS2. I tried swapping them around, putting the flash drive into the usb2 port and the HDD thats has the roms on into the usb3 port. I even tried flashing Batocera on an internal HDD and running the whole thing off that. So its using the sata connection that way. All 3 methods didnt seem to give me any noticeable diff results. I thought defo having it all on the internal HDD would perhaps eliminate any pauses or stutters as it would be the fastest data access method but no, I didnt see any noticeable improvement. I upped the RAM from 4GB to 8GB, cant say for sure if that made much if or if any difference either. Anyway… you get my point I think 😁
I was wondering is there a way to have multiple locations to pick up the roms on a media box like hk1 box. I have the Micro sd card with the roms on one section with 117gb and the img on the other but I didn't know where to go to link it up because I don't have enough room to connect to it wireless and add anymore than 1gb of space. If you could let me know or point me in the direction where you already have a video showing it? Thank You!
@@BatoceraNation I appreciate every single video you have, if anything, they are very informative 👍. Please keep them coming and thanks for your hard work 👍.
@@BatoceraNation Thanks. i REALLY don't want to give up on this, but it's not looking very promising for me to make the full switch over to Batocera. And that's a shame, because i LOVE the way its made, being it's own OS and not a POS Windows OS filled with bloatware. I tried out Breath of the Wild, sending the link from an internal drive to Cemu. It booted fine, but no matter the settings i was getting horrible performance. I couldn't even get passed the intro dialogue. I would get about as far as the light shinning with Zelda calling out to Link and it would crash. And my PC isn't a power house but it's no slouch either. These are my specs; Gigabyte B450 Ryzen 5 3600 Zotac GTX 1650 16g of RAM I don't have any issues running Cemu on Windows @ 1080p. I can even push BotW at 4K if i lock the game @ 30fps. So i know my PC can handle it. But i can't get it working right at all in Batocera. I've turned on all the mods and workarounds in the graphics pack as well, FPS+ etc. Any ideas? If i can get this working like it does on Windows as well as RPCS3 and Yuzu, and can get enough PC games that i really want to work, i'll switch to this in a heartbeat lol.
Checkout BN's vids on installing windows games (note that not everything will run) and in your case perhaps it a matter of settings up the graphics card? Suggest checkout BN's vid on 'Setting up discrete graphics cards in Batocera' vid. That may help.
@@BatoceraNation so what you're doing here is linking *single* rom files from a given directory (pcengine or collecovision) - I was asking if it wouldn't be more simple to link the whole directory (pcengine for collecovision from the example movie) into the "roms" directory..anyway, I'll try this by myself when I will finally install Batocera on my machine ;-)
You are the Best!!!! congratulations on the beautiful work you do here on TH-cam. I'm Brazilian and I'm learning a lot from your videos
Wishing I came across this video at the start of the weekend and not the end haha. Not great support on Batocera sites but this is perfect. Simple to bloody understand for someone not so savvy with codings and shit haha. Thank you!!
Glad that we could help!
Thanks for this great tutorial. I finally got it to work. The links didn't work if I added the game folders however I had to click into the folder and add the individual roms then it worked.
Yes that's a problem with Batocera 30 and below. In Batocera 31, folders can be linked too.
@@BatoceraNation Wow. Thats great. Yes im on 30 now. Cant wait to upgrade to 31.
Thank you for the knowledge and the linking collections - much appreciated
this video must be on top of the list on tutorials for batocera bro ! GG for me for arrive here !
This was perfect! Thank you. Added a 2TB HDD I had lying around for some additional games! Yay!
Thank you so much!
I was looking for a better tutorial on how to do this and this works perfectly.
Quick and easy tutorial on creating links to games on an alternate drive and placing them in the main Boot/Roms folder. All the roms on my second internal HDD are now detected and play fine.
Note: Drives should be manually named to prevent automatic naming issues.
The system names drives in the order it encounters them, so if you have multiple drives, the links might stop working randomly when your drives are detected in a different order because the system has renamed them.
E.g. You have 2 drives plugged in. one is drive 01, the other is drive 02. You restart. The system detects drive 02 before 01 this time. SO now none of your links will work.
I didn't realise until I restarted a couple of times and noticed it.
To name a drive(in linux) use gnome-disk-utility. If you don't have it installed, it's in the repos. The GDU lets you rename drives without reformatting them or anything. While you might try altering it in your file browser (thunar, dolphin etc) you might not get the response from other system. Best to use the utility so the boot record knows what to tell the system when it asks for the name of a drive.
Thank you for this information. I wasn't aware of this. I have a question regarding this. If you rename the drive in Windows, will that work? Or does it have to be renamed in Linux?
@@BatoceraNation I would assume that using windows to rename a drive (right-click > properties > change the name in that menu) would work. I would suggest testing this with a thumb drive and see if it's detected under the name you assigned with this method. I don't use windows, so I can't speak from experience. I switched from windows several months ago. A check with a small thumb drive would take 5 minutes, and that would be a good test to do before migrating everything over and discovering linux has a different naming registry reliance.
@@BatoceraNation yes I simply named mine Mass Storage when formatted in windows and that's what stuck
Thank you soooo much. this was 1,000,000 x better then the wiki or what their discord had.
This is awesome! I want to try this with my 256 ssd and 8tb hdd. That way all my emus will run from ssd.
It should work!
Another scenario, I have everything on one drive and it's filling up fast so I add another drive (drive D). It has to be formatted first on another PC. Then I created new folder for each system on the new drive. Then I copied roms from Drive C into the appropriate folder in Drive D. Then erased the roms from Drive A. Back to Drive D and created a link like you showed. I'm not sure if this is the best way but it worked so far. Keep up the great videos!!!! Some need to be updated too
Yeah, it sounds right. Do need to update some video. Switch, PS3, Sega Model 3 are coming.
Is your drive D internal or external hdd?
@@AZM195 internal
You the man! No one else mentioned links. All the Linux guys are super techhi all we want is a laymen way rather than typing IP address and stirnfs for passwords
Can you make a tutorial on partitioning your internal ssd for dual boot windows/batocera? I have a wth ssd and only need 256gb for windows and would like to use the rest of the storage for batocera
not working for me on version 34, can see both my external drives. i have a 320gb with most games on but want to link some from a 2tb followed the guide but the links dont appear on my 320gb folders
here I also use v34 but it doesn't generate links to files and folders... were you able to get around this problem?
How do you make your C and D driv appear? 8:51
Doesn't work. Need a custom gamelist, if i only link the rooms the system doesnt see it
Worked like a charm....thanks brother.
Can I have two harddrives in my pc with batocera on one and Windows on second?
Will pc give me any trouble?
I want to have a emulator machine that isnt slowed down by Windows that steals resources in background but I also would like to keep my documents and mails and stuff.
Hi, I have a NucIntel with batocera installed on an internal 1to SSD sata. I have not enough space, and would like to put my Ps2 roms on my internal Nvme M2 500 go, but when I go on the F1 file manager, I can't see the Nvme...Do you have any idea ? thanks per advance.
I assume that you don't have Windows installed at all in your internal drives? If you don't, try taking out the second NVME drive and run "Error checking" in Tools (found in Properties of the Drive within Windows). Sometimes that helps Batocera see the second drive. In my experimenting, I know that it also fails to see it when the drive is a Windows "C Drive"
Hi. My external ssd remains with the light on after I shut down my pc. Is there a way to fix this? Thanks
How about when using 2 internal drives? How can I get Batocera to see the second internal drive? Neither show up in the file explorer.
Asking the same
My Rcps3 apparently cannot boot create links folders inside /roms/ps3, BUT it can boot create link folders from /roms/rcps3 and the target is from /dev_hdd0/game
weird
Ive tried copying everything from /dev_hdd0/game to /rom/ps3 but it boots blackscreen after compilation
I have a 1tb hard drive that contains my BATOCERA but I’m trying to clone it to a 1tb mini ssd but since it does it read as a full 1tb it saying it’s too small. Any remedies you can think of?
What I don't understand is why you aren't making symbolic links (symlinks) of the folders that contain the metadata, such as boxart, image, media, snap, videos, etc? In fact, why not just create a symlink of the "colecovision" folder for example? Wouldn't that work? I am asking because I am investigating how to best expand the storage space to accomodate more roms. I am just curious as to why the folders might not work. Have you tried this approach? Did you not mention it because you haven't tried it or you have but found that it doesn't work and as such didn't cover it in your video?
I was just about to the same thing. Thats what I do and it obviously works fine.
my laptop has a built in micro sd card reader and this worked. i use batocera from a usb drive
Great guide ! Seems to me this is extremly easy and all the sudden i got 120 gb of more space 😎😎
Nioce
Okay so batocera even sees regular internal drives as an external. So if I do a nvme to store boot and batocera and use hdds to store my roms I would have to link everything with this method?
You read my mind, Bro… now that I started adding PC and Higher end systems, I ran out of space. Now I’m hoping you can help me out with that question about cheats for newer windows games. 😉
For the newer Windows games, your best bet is to use Steam via Flatpak in Batocera.
I have all my roms and everything set up. But no room to update on my hard drive. So I added a new hard drive and was wondering how to get it to link to my original hard drive
I had a similar issue in EmuELEC and I made a script that made a symbollic link between the external drive console folder and the internal emuelec console folder. Now I can have SNES and MegaDrive on my Internal Storage, and N64, NDS, PS1 etc on my external drive.
Yes, that makes it easier for us to add more games when we are running out of room in our internal drive.
Perfect,..... 120 giga ssd its ok for Batocera main system and for the roms linked to other internal drives ?
Thank you so much for this video, but I do have a question needed help please, How do you unlink the files from the hard drive beside deleting the linked files one by one. Thank you advance.
Select All (Ctrl and then A) and then delete. Or delete the linked folder. But if you have a combination of linked and unlinked files within a folder, you might sort the files in the folder by type and then delete all the linked files.
how do you scrape the media in advance?
What I want to know is: is it possible to use your dvd or bluray drive to play disc based games
Please Help ASAP, ido install Batocera to HDD Transcend 1TB, then i cant run boot Batocera from my laptop, after that i can run on my pc, but i need run it from my laptop, i need solutions please? can someone help me?!?!
up
Not sure what you are exactly asking but I suggest ask on the official Batocera support forum, may be easier to get some help on that question there.
Mandatory TIP!: The drive has to be in NTFS to be auto mounted by Batocera. I had the drive in BTRFS and I spend a lot of time trying to figureout what was going on.
Thank you. I will add it in my video description.
which version ? btrfs auto mounting should have been fixed in 30 already i think
Well, not for me. (Batocera 30 / x64)
@@AlbertoNavarro ok,maybe fixed in 31 then. I dont remember precisely
@@nicolas.adenis-lamarre Thanks for your work by the way, good to see you arround here.
Hi, Thank you for this tutorial, I have my roms in Network (NAS) drive.
Is there away to recognize shared folders by Batocera?
I have not tried it. I believe there are some who have tried this. Your best bet is to ask in the Batocera.org forums
Thanks, that was really helpful
hi i got portable 2TB batocera hard drive, but when i choose to start up thrue bioa it not starting up.
note : when i plug in the hard drive to see it through the windows it not show any files, and when i go through disk management it show it to me but unknown files.
How to fix this problem and start gaming
Did you flash Batocera to the portable hdd yourself ?
So you want it to boot from that hdd as well? So the whole OS on the portable hdd?
Or are you booting from a flash drive and using the portable hdd as storage for roms only?
im booting from the portable hdd
After you flash Batocera to the portable hard drive you need to let it boot once.
This expands the storage and creates the file structure.
Then when you connect it to your PC yes, you wont be able to read the share partition as its in ext4 fornat which windows cant read by default without special software like disk genious.
However boot Batocera and press F1 on your keyboard and you can use the inbuilt file manager to access the share parition and moves files across.
You said though it wont boot at all? You need to go into your PC bios setting and allow booting from the usb port as primary.
I have a hdd divided into two partitions of 500Gb. (1 fat32 and 1 ntfs) but when I look at my batocera partition it only gives me 6 Gb, what's wrong here and how do I fix this...
The 6GB partition is the Boot partition thats in Fat32.
The other partition which Batocera creates when you boot for the first time in the share partition which holds your games, themes etc.
This is auto formatted to ext4 by Batocera.
Windows cannot see the ext4 partition.
You would need special sofware like Disk Genius.
Otherwise boot into Batocera, press F1 on keyboard and you can see the share partition with the built in file manager.
Not sure though then why you have 2 at 500GB in fat32 and ntfs.
Fonzi is correct in everything he shared.
@@BatoceraNation So I have batocera on an internal ssd, I have an nvme installed with windows where I get my roms. Sometimes I can access the nvme drive directly in batocera other times I cant, is there a way to keep the drive accessible permanently. The only way I seem to be able to access the nvme from batocera is to repeatedly restart my system and hope it connects
Thank you again for you're great videos which have been a great help.
I've already managed to add an extra drive for which I store my roms on, but can't seem to see a CD-ROM drive.
You can't add a CD-ROM at the moment.
Im curious, why would you have/ want to add a cd rom drive into batocera?
Good Evening I recorded the image of the batocera 38 for PC on a 128 memory card... I was wondering if there is a way to show not only the internal disk but also two other disks where there are roms,
In a Batocera Nation video I saw that it could be done via F1, copying the Gamelist file and creating links to the ROMs but it doesn't work for me... Where am I wrong? Does it work even without Batocera installation?
Hi , have 2 installed device, first system and second 2tb roms archive. How to share in PC workgroup second device ?
Dude you are AWESOME!!!
Thanks!
I keep loading batocera on a 2 tb internal ssd drive on an old gaming pc. When I go to add roms to it via the network, it says I don't even have room for one 4 gig game? Same thing when I try to add roms with a connected drive. When I look at the drive on a windows machine, it looks like it only partisians off like 6 gig for OS and the rest is partisianed Off. So basically I can't load roms, says not enough space?!? Any ideas? Wanted everything, os and roms one one internal hardrive...
When you boot up your Batocera PC, go into System Settings, then click on Information. How much space is your hard drive reporting? It should be close to 2TB. Try not to stick the portable SSD drive into a Windows PC because it will mess up the Batocera drive. To add ROMs into the SSD drive, press F1 on your keyboard and there you should see the ROMs folder. Plug another portable drive that contains your ROMs into the Batocera system and from there you can copy and paste your ROMs into your Batocera SSD from within Batocera. If you try to do it within Windows, it won't work.
You might also want to repeat the process of reinstalling Batocera unto the 2TB SSD. Then when it loads up for the first time, press F1, plug a portable drive with your ROMs, then copy and paste.
hey so im using a 32gb usb drive to run the batocera and trying to use the internal 256gb ssd for storage. I am having problem with switching the storage setting to it as i am seeing "NO-NAME - 222.8G" after i select this and restart the system. my rom storage is still only at 22gb.
That’s Awesome, so basically you can use this when your main batocera drive is running low on space, the other roms that might not fit there you can “link it” with out it affecting your main batocera drive. Pretty much right?
Awesome tutorial you have! That's great! I Am using Batocera now with multiple hard drives using symlinks. But i can only see the main drive on the share folder over the network, is there a way to see the other ones?
Thanks
Try going to your root folder, then the "media" folder, and from there look for your other hard drives.
I tried to do this with my PS3 and Xbox 360 games on Batocera 38 and while the games list correctly in the menu, when I try to play them I just get a black screen. This doesn't happen when I launch them from my main drive.
dual boot batocera ?
Thank you so much for this
Glad it helped!
hi, is it compatible with dolphin GC/Wii emulator ?
I see all my roms in batocera but when i launch them. Dolphin doesn't find them ?
and i can't find my drive in dolphin gui windows.
Batocera isn’t displaying the symlinks for me. Any ideas why that might be?
Can you add bios files from an external hard drive as well?
1 question.. can batocera detect pcie x1 m.2 nvme? Im planning to use nvme to store the game rom
I have linked my roms on my Batocera flash drive to a folder on my internal HD and it works a treat
However every time I reset batocera they vanish, do I need to save it somewhere?
It seems batocera gives a new name to drives everytime they are conected, it can be solved by manually naming the drives/partitions in windows or some gnome tool in linux.
i have 120gb sata ssd and 500gb m.2 could i link from the m.2 t the sata ssd?
What can be if my portable hdd KinHank sometime start with the correct number of roms and emulator and other times charge only a very little rom number and other emulator?
I do not understand how to fix and ever charge all my roms
Thank you for your videos
Hey Batocera Nation. I am curious is it possible to use a second drive but keep scraped files on the install drive? I'd like to store my roms on a larger slower drive but would like to keep the videos and images on the fast loading 128gb nvme that batocera is installed to. Is this doable? I currently am using a 500gb ssd for my storage drive with all the user data files through the typical batocera setting. Works great but the 500gb is running thin. I'd like to put my 2 tb mechanical drive in.. would be awesome if I could just somehow utilize that drive for the room files only while keeping the scraped stuff on the fast nvme.
Yes. Link the games from the second drive and store your scraped files on your main drive.
@@BatoceraNation how exactly to do that?
So I'm basically linking a folder. I have two SSD's in my PC. One has windows the other is Batocera with a ton of roms. Can I Use this method if I ran out out of space on my Batocera Drive and make a rom folder on the windows disk and link that folder?
Does this work with a usb thumb drive on a pi4. So if the drive is removed they don't show. Then when inserted they come back up again?
Yes, the drive must be kept inserted for it to work.
@@BatoceraNation yes unfortunately the roms remain listed when drive is removed. Even after a reboot.
i have a asrock 4800 with a 2tb internal ssd as my main and i want to use my m.2 as storage it doesn't recognize it. it's been formatted to the correct format. any suggestions?
It doesn't recognize the M.2 storage or the internal SSD? For the M.2 SSD, make sure it is screwed in tightly. It's very picky about this.
Got the same problem I guess. I got 2x internal m2. Ssd's. 1 ssd contains win10, the other contains batocera userdata (roms etc.) I boot up batocera from an external usb stick. I would like to connect some games from my "win10 ssd" to the "roms ssd" but I can't connect my "win10 ssd".
Any suggestion guys?
Is it possible to copy paste Roms from main storage to external and then linking those files to batocera so that I can have more space on my main storage. And if so what exactly do I need to do before so that the ext hd is accessible to be used for extra storage.
So I just watched your video on how to add GOG games. Can I make a "GOG" folder in my larger drive and create a link for the entire folder? Also want to do the same with steam games. Or change the path for a folder maybe?
Unfortunately, it won't work for Steam games. It will only install on the internal hard drive. It might work for GOG games.
Can you have normal files and another batocera build on the same external hard drive ?
Hi, I recently tried to flash an 8 tb hard drive with Batocera. It loads and runs slowly. Is this too big? Thanks.
Is it a mechanical drive or an SSD drive? It should work. I've tried it on a 4TB SSD drive and it works extremely well. If you have a 8TB SSD drive, make sure that it is genuine. Some sold on Amazon are fakes. If you got a great low price on it, then it might be fake and that's why it is slow.
Will the drives stay linked when restarting everything or will they have to be manually linked every time the computer restarts?
Could you symlink to a NAS or SAN?
If I already have a 2TB HDD with ROMs, how do I install Batocera there so that I don't lose all my ROMs?
You can't. When you install Batocera on a hard drive, it wipes everything off from that drive. It's like trying to install Windows on that same hard drive.
@@BatoceraNation I think he can. He can get a separate linux distro on his USB and boot it up off the USB. Then do a partition ==> th-cam.com/video/ocDbPt4eRbk/w-d-xo.html after that he could then install batocera onto the new partition using the other linux distro. I did it myself, but I need to find the instructions.
@@Herotruth Thanks. I will have to look at that.
@@BatoceraNation I couldn't find anything, but I think when you partition enough space (10GB I recommend for updates), then you can install Batocera onto the empty partition. I think he will have to rename his folders to share, and move around the games into folders Batocera will recognize. I would probably test it on a small drive for kicks.
@@Herotruth Yes, it's always best to test it on a small drive to be on the safe side.
Hi, this worked perfect, but one problem it is showing double games in batocera. Also how do you unlink if if needed.. Many thanks.
All systems show duplicates? Or only cd systems where you have multiple files for one game, like bin/cue etc?
Are his Rom drives formatted as ext4? Or is it just that his batocera system is grabbing the transfers? I am really struggling to get my roms on an NTFS drive )Win 10) transferred to my bootable Batocera thumb drive.
Is it just a one way problem? IE windows cant read or writ to ext4 but Batocera is not restricted like that?
Not sure what you are asking.
When you flash Batocera the share partition is formatted to ext4 which windows cannot read by default.
When Batocera is booted, you can press F1 on keyboard which brings up the inbuilt file manager, that way you can locate your roms and transfer them over that way.
Or, if you want to transfer files over using windows explorer you can actually format the share partition to a diff file system other than ext4..You can format it to exfat for eg.
But doing that may have some negatives.
If you check the Batocera wiki it will have all this information on using diff file formats other than the default ext4.
Or, do you mean using a sep sep flash drive or portable hdd for roms only?
I used to do that.
I used to boot Batocera from flash drive but run the games from a portable hdd.
I had that formatted to ntfs but again, doing that may have issues with certain systems.
i'ts Good ... But, is necessary copy on principal hd the whell,snap,media ecc ? not work link ? if not work i'm a think... but i'm answer :D
Hi, I have a Nuc Intel with an internal HDD 2,5" and a M2 ssd, both with Batocera 30. But each one cannot see the other. Is it normal ?
If Batocera is installed on both of them then no. Batocera can't see another drive with the same operating system.
Ok Thank you. I have one for my children (then they can save what they want), and one for me.
@@tournesol74 Lucky children!
Can you do this with a M.2 internal drive?
Is there a way to acess my roms folder from another computer via smb share ? that would be way easier for me as I have Rpi3 with batocera, and also an older computer with Batocera, so if I could access my roms from my main computer instead of carrying an external hard drive from the living room to another place itd be way easier. A detailed video about this would be much appreciated.
Yes, there is. I don't have a tutorial on this yet, but due to a number of requests, I will be working on a tutorial in the near future.
Mate, you're a god. Thank you so much for your videos, they help everybody and me immensely on getting along with our favorite gaming system! I have another question; is it possibly to put steam games (steam via flatpak in batocera) to a second ssd? Thank you in advance for our reply!
Thanks dude
What skin are you using it’s amazing!
You mean the theme? Batocera club reloaded, downloadable within Batocera.
My external hardrive doesn't show up on the list when I connect it. Is there a solution for this?
Sometimes this happens for some reason.
Try rebooting Batocera,if it's still not showing try again.
If it doesn't show after a few reboots then I don't know
I'm a Windows emulator, is it possible to partition my external hard drive which has all of my roms on it and install batocera on an 8gb partition? That way all of my save data is accessable across all platforms (want batocera to make my emulation portable and connect to other pc's)
It is possible but it's rather difficult. If something goes wrong, you can wipe out your drive. The team does not recommend it.
where can i get box art for my roms?
When I restart I can’t see my storage drives and rims don’t work unfortunately for me 😢
Is it possible to have the ssd store all the media and the roms, so you only need a small sd card for boot purposes.
Thanks
Yes. But pick a fast microsd so that it will run smoothly.
@@BatoceraNation would a decent 32gb sd and a 2tb external hd be ok? Or would the 32gb slowly fill up with themes etc etc
I would get at least 128GB microsd card.
I use a SanDisk 32GB ultrafit usb3.1 flash drive for the batocera boot and a 2TB portable HDD for roms.. Any themes are also on my portable HDD.
Hi, My external hard drive is showing up in system settings but not in the file explorer program. Is there a setting I need to mess with?
Thanks
Try rebooting without the external drive plugged in. Then once it is rebooted, plug it in.
@@BatoceraNation I've been on discord server and been getting lots of help. I want to thank the folks on the server and you for the assistance. thank you very much.
@@JerryDurante Jerry, I'm curious, how was it fixed? For future reference. Thanks!
@@BatoceraNation before this project I've been emulating on my desktop pc with retroarch and a few stand alone emulators. for this project I bought a 8 terabyte external drive to hold the roms. the guys on the server told me that sometimes batocera gets flaky with large external drives. saying that my best long term fix is to reformat it to gpt and to use a network protocol to transfer the roms via USB. your solution of just plugging it in after booting seems to be the easier fix. I am going to unplugging it anyway to keep the drive from running with I'm using the system.
@@JerryDurante Oh wow, an 8TB hard drive! Yes, the big hard drives don't work so well in Batocera. Thanks for updating me.
Thank bro, 👍🏻
You're welcome!
genius ! i dont know batocera allow create sym links !
Your Awesome
will this method work with a internal SSD?
Yes. I two internal drives on my test systems. One SSD and one 2.5 inch drive. It works.
@@BatoceraNation thanks for help another question so I set up switch on my system works well problem I'm having is controller issues I have an Xbox One elite controller I'm using do you have any videos or can you make a video on best or recommended controller settings for switch games much appreciated love you vids thanks
Is it possible to link all rom folders as one step ?
This means : not linking the contents of the folder , each one after another but linking all folders of the romfolder from the external drive to the boot drive .
Great Video and thx
If they're named with the same name format as the original ones inside Batocera's "roms" folders, it should work.
Can I install and run batocera on external drive?
Yes! I do recommend those mini SSD external drives. They're fast at running Batocera.
@@BatoceraNation
Im not sure running Batocera or even just for rom storage on an SSD will be of any benefit
I mean you are connecting the SSD via usb 3.0 cable right? (Or even 2.0 i think is fine for retro emulation).
So its only going to allow max data speed as what the cable allows right?
So running a normal portable HDD using USB 3.0 or a portable SSD using usb 3.0 for Batocera I think would give the same performance. Right?
If you have an internal HDD or SSD using its sata connection well ofcourse thats gonna be faster.
But again, for retro emulation.. Im not sure its of any benefit either.
Maybe if you have modern games on there as well, via Steam or whatever then yeah, I can see then having an SSD internally would be beneficial.
My lenovo m73 only has 1 usb3.0 port.
I run batocera OS from a usb3.0 flash drive from that port.
I have a 2TB portable HDD plugged into one of the USB2 ports.
Seems to run just fine.
Sometimes, on higher end system emulation Id get those slight pauses or stutters for certain games, like say a Bloody Roar game on gamecube or PS2.
I tried swapping them around, putting the flash drive into the usb2 port and the HDD thats has the roms on into the usb3 port.
I even tried flashing Batocera on an internal HDD and running the whole thing off that. So its using the sata connection that way.
All 3 methods didnt seem to give me any noticeable diff results.
I thought defo having it all on the internal HDD would perhaps eliminate any pauses or stutters as it would be the fastest data access method but no, I didnt see any noticeable improvement.
I upped the RAM from 4GB to 8GB, cant say for sure if that made much if or if any difference either.
Anyway… you get my point I think 😁
How do i actually move all my roms to a new harddrive?
I was wondering is there a way to have multiple locations to pick up the roms on a media box like hk1 box. I have the Micro sd card with the roms on one section with 117gb and the img on the other but I didn't know where to go to link it up because I don't have enough room to connect to it wireless and add anymore than 1gb of space. If you could let me know or point me in the direction where you already have a video showing it? Thank You!
Yeah. The Batocera documentation has a way of being obtuse. It is hilarious.
For the most part Batocera's wiki page is very helpful and informative. Sometimes it can be obtuse.
@@BatoceraNation I appreciate every single video you have, if anything, they are very informative 👍. Please keep them coming and thanks for your hard work 👍.
Will this work with widows games as well?
Yes.
@@BatoceraNation Thanks. i REALLY don't want to give up on this, but it's not looking very promising for me to make the full switch over to Batocera. And that's a shame, because i LOVE the way its made, being it's own OS and not a POS Windows OS filled with bloatware. I tried out Breath of the Wild, sending the link from an internal drive to Cemu. It booted fine, but no matter the settings i was getting horrible performance. I couldn't even get passed the intro dialogue. I would get about as far as the light shinning with Zelda calling out to Link and it would crash. And my PC isn't a power house but it's no slouch either. These are my specs;
Gigabyte B450
Ryzen 5 3600
Zotac GTX 1650
16g of RAM
I don't have any issues running Cemu on Windows @ 1080p. I can even push BotW at 4K if i lock the game @ 30fps. So i know my PC can handle it. But i can't get it working right at all in Batocera. I've turned on all the mods and workarounds in the graphics pack as well, FPS+ etc. Any ideas? If i can get this working like it does on Windows as well as RPCS3 and Yuzu, and can get enough PC games that i really want to work, i'll switch to this in a heartbeat lol.
Checkout BN's vids on installing windows games (note that not everything will run) and in your case perhaps it a matter of settings up the graphics card?
Suggest checkout BN's vid on 'Setting up discrete graphics cards in Batocera' vid.
That may help.
Thanks really needed to know this will try it out soon - Hare Krishna
can you add a hard drive on the raspberry pi 3b using the same method ....great video b.t.w
I was hoping this would work on a network drive. :(
Can you link the scrapes in some fashion?
@@BatoceraNation I checked and it seemed to work. I just did the same thing and stored the scrapes externally.
Thanks for the update. Now we know it works.
What is scrape?
Why can't you simply link the whole pcengine directory from hdd to roms on main disk?
You should be able to link any game roms to the main Batocera system.
If I misunderstood your question, please elaborate it for me.
@@BatoceraNation so what you're doing here is linking *single* rom files from a given directory (pcengine or collecovision) - I was asking if it wouldn't be more simple to link the whole directory (pcengine for collecovision from the example movie) into the "roms" directory..anyway, I'll try this by myself when I will finally install Batocera on my machine ;-)