MiSTer FPGA | Use External USB Drives | Quick Tips Guide

[@retrotoast]

Chapters: 00:00 - Intro and Overview 00:17 - Prepare Folders and Copy Roms 01:40 - File System 01:50 - Play Test 02:27 - Castlevania Aria of Sorrow (GBA) 03:05 - Chu Chu Rocket (GBA)

[@robbiej111]

Omg, I was just googling how to do this and you put your video out 2 hours ago! How lucky am I 🍀 Super sub and thumbs up from me 👍

[@retrotoast]

That’s awesome, I’m glad that it could help you Robbie!

[@misterretrowolf1464]

Hey Retro Toast!! Thanks so much of this video. It was just what I was looking for.

[@retrotoast]

Thank you. Glad I could help!

[@mike7599]

You don’t have to delete the file on the SD card. The mister will default to the hard drive roms if it’s plugged in and your sd roms will reappear when you unplug the hard drive. Useful if you want to keep a few of your favorite large capacity games onboard your mister but want the entire library stored on your external hard drive.

[@DotMatrixAudio]

Very cool. What's better? Migrate my 32gb Mister SD card to a 512gb one or just use a big external HDD or SSD for it?

[@retrotoast]

Prefer SSDs as they are more reliable than Micro SD cards in the long term.

[@CharlieGuitar87]

Hi, I do the tips exact same as on your video but my PSX Core dont detect any game or BIOS. Help please.

[@retrotoast]

Hi Carlos, it is virtually impossible to do trouble shooting without more details and having access to your Mister setup. First thing I would try is to 1. use a different USB drive and see if it solves the problem but also try it with other cores, i.e. GBA, SNES or whatever to see if it doesn't work with any core or just PSX. There are some USB drives that may not work properly, keep that in mind. Best options in my opinion are solid state USB sticks / drives as they have low power requirements and work more reliably.

[@高橋勲-l1c]

For the life of me, I can't get this working. It keeps saying can't find... I'm using Y split cables just incase so it should be a power issue

[@TheFrenchy82]

thanks for the video. now.... it's only "light" roms... What about running PSX or Saturn games or PC engine CD games, from external HDD ? No problems at all with , let's say the music or FMV sequences ??? I'm curious....

[@retrotoast]

Yes you can put all your big roms and CD games on an external drive, that's pretty much the main purpose for external drives, other than having something more reliable than MicroSD cards which tend to fail more often than a quality external drive. I suggest a USB powered SSD drive, Using a Samsung T5 myself.

[@TheFrenchy82]

@@retrotoast Ok ! thanks for the tips !!! 😀

[@retrotoast]

@@TheFrenchy82 You're welcome, hope you're having fun with your Mister system! Which systems do you like to play on it?

[@TheFrenchy82]

@@retrotoast I like to play old arcade games... And oh boy I'm really lucky right now : tons of arcade are coming every weeks on Mister. I also like to play SNES games (I was a teenager , back then... so it's my console of heart !!) and I'm really checking on PSX and Saturn games. I was a Sega fanboy for a long time. I own a Megadrive, a saturn.

[@retrotoast]

@@TheFrenchy82 fantastic. I like them all but have a love for old Atari, Amiga, C64 and Mega Drive. Exciting times with all the new arcade cores being added!

[@LFiers]

Nice video! Does this work work with "Update All" in the same way, i wokr have any issues? Also, secondly, what's better, migrate my 32gb micro SD Card in my Mister to a bigger 512gb micro SD Card or simply just use a bigger 1 or 2tb HDD or SSD? What's the better option?

[@retrotoast]

I have not had any issues so far. Regarding external drives I prefer to use a high quality SSD drive that can fit all games I imagine on playing. Just consider first what you may want to play in the future, then it's easy to calculate the drive size you may need.

[@LFiers]

@@retrotoast Wound having an SSD make a difference considering the Mister only does USB 2.0? And also, does the external drive need to be powered or will it be sufficiently powered by the Mister? Thanks.

[@davefitzpatrick83]

Great video! Thanks!

[@retrotoast]

Thank you Dave, I appreciate it!

[@lim0408]

Thank you!

[@retrotoast]

You're welcome!

[@OilFreak]

ty

[@retrotoast]

Glad it could help you.

[@tdmax2288]

Hello, I formatted my WD My Passport 1TB in the exFAT file system, for Psx and GameBoy on Mister, I don’t have a computer, I transfer games to my external hard drive from my Poco F3 smartphone via otg. after when I throw some games on it, it stops being detected on the smartphone .. but on the PC, mister, the hard drive works fine .. what could be the reason for this? my smartphone does not cope well with exFAT? there is no such problem with NTSC

[@retrotoast]

Sorry I can't comment on doing this on a Smartphone and issues that may arise from that. I use Windows only for anything related to MiSter. I wouldn't recommend using NTFS file system for Mister, use exFAT for best compatibility.

[@tdmax2288]

hello, I use an external hard drive WD Mi passport 1Tb, in conjunction with my Mister, I formatted it in exFAT, tell me what should be the size of the cluster. standard 128kb or 4-8kb?

[@retrotoast]

According to Microsoft small cluster size for improving space utilization is for 7MB to 256MB file sizes if I understand that correctly. Honestly speaking I would just go with standard. 1TB is already big and I wonder how much space you will save, probably negligible.