HELP!! Attract Mode from External Drive

[Bear34jm]

I hope there is someone out there that can help me or answer my question.....  I have a bunch of roms; so many that the only way I could POSSIBLY run them is with a 256gb micro sd card.  I don't want to go out and spend that kind of money on an sd card.  I have seen people burn specific images on an external drive and run attract mode from there, however I want to make my own.  I don't want to be stuck with someone else's image.  how can I do this?  Or is it possible to download an image like Rey's or Nachos, or Kevin's and add or delete roms from the drive and not the
Pi?  Does this make sense?  HELP!!

[jedione]

just use floobs image it's like 5gigs,  no roms just the basics compiled
update AM to latest if you want to have new menu display
  connect to your pie via ftp from your computer...
and add all your systems to AM one at a time and test when your done,, plug micro sd card
into computer and use win32 disk imager to make your image.
through it on your drive.

[Bear34jm]

Jedione,

I appreciate your input.  I understand how to set up AM, however I don't have a big enough SD card for the amount of roms.  I want to run everything off of an external hard drive. I can't figure out how to build AM off of the hard drive and then run it from there to my pi.  Any suggestions?  I downloaded floobs image to start with.  I can't add all my roms bc I don't want to go spend $150 or more on a 256gb sd card. I just want to run it from the external drive that I already own.  I hope this clarifies my question.....

Thanks!

[jedione]

ohh ok maybe this might help then,,http://www.htpcguides.com/properly-mount-usb-storage-raspberry-pi/

if not ,,i tried

[Bear34jm]

I will play around with this. 

Thank you for the help!!

[akafox]

You don't have to run any thing from the SD card at all everything from the hard drive. This is what I do.

You don't need a 256 GB card at all. You only need a 64GB max to run all [popular] consoles. If you want to run more ROM based stuff (hand helds, computer) then you might need a 128..and have a lot of room left over.

Now if you want to run any optical based ROMs (CDs) then yes you will need a LARGE card I would guess about a 2 terabyte (2TB) drive. (that's crazy!) and this is just an estimate..I honestly do not have hard numbers!

Now that being said you can save space by deleting many arcade roms. A full set of advance mame roms is umm 16.7 GB I think. You can cut that down to a little over 8 GB once it's cleaned of duplicates and unplayables. This goes for consoles as well. (I have an old 120 GB that i use..because I don't have room enough on my 32GB to hold the video snaps)

All you have to do is change the path to your roms in the attract mode emulator config. the path will be /media/usb/your/path/here
e.x. rompath /meida/usb/roms/psx/

make sure to change or add your extensions..

.iso;.ccd;.cue;.bin;.mds  are a few I can think of

the pi works like a desk top....it loads from the sd card..after it is loaded it can get it's files from anywhere..even over a network..just like a real computer..because it is a real computer..just a small one

[djrobx]

I have a 256gb SSD and comfortably fit roms and media up to Snes/Genesis/TG16 era (beyond that the digital joysticks on my cab would make most n64+ era games unplayable) , but not mame CHDs. 

If I weeded out only the roms / chds I really wanted  (playable, US games, no clones) then it would probably all fit in 256, but 128 would be super tight.

All this said AM doesn't care where the roms are or if they're even there once you've built the list.