External HDD suggestions due to size of MegaCD ROMs

[JWDog]

May be better to first use
fdisk -l

where and how do i do this?

[jca]

how do i ssh into MISTer?

You could instead use F9 on the KB to go to the console and type the commands after login.
To ssh I use Putty, the advantage is that I can copy the results of commands or scroll back to the beginning of the session.
For now just use F9
Use first the command fdisk -l
At the end of the list you should see Disk /dev/sda which is the physical disk and after that Device /dev/sda1 which is the partition.
If fdisk tells you that you do not have permissions use
sudo fdisk -l
I do not remember if you have to.

[JWDog]

What is it asking at login?

Sorry for all of these noobie questions.

[jca]

First I forgot to tell you: you have to do this on MISTer, not on the PC
login: root
Password: 1

[JWDog]

Here are the results of the fdisk -l

[JWDog]

looks like it is seeing it right?

[JWDog]

the results of the blkid

[jca]

It sees the disk and the NTFS partition.
type
mount
At the bottom of the screen it should say /dev/sda1 on /media/usb0 blah blah blah
If so type
cd /media/usb0
ls
You should see your games directory, if so type
cd games
ls
You should see all your sub directories
From then on you can type ls <sub directory> like ls ATARI2600 or ls Genesis (careful with small letters and caps)

[JWDog]

i typed mount, but "/dev/sda1 on /media/usb0 blah blah blah" did not show up. This is what i got.

[jca]

try
mount /dev/sda1 /media/usb0
and see what it says

[JWDog]

it says the following:

The disk contains an unclean file system (0,0), Metadata kept in Windows cache, refused to mount.
The NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume as read-only with the "ro" mount option.

[JWDog]

it also states that the operation is not permitted.

[jca]

Did you properly eject the drive when you created under windows?
You can try to reconnect it under Windows and see what Windows says, may be run a disk check.
When it is OK under Windows eject it properly and try again on MISTer.
If it is not mounted under MISTer I suspect the partition is too big.
In this case I would go back to Windows, delete the partition, create a new one of 2TB (which is more than enough), create a games directory, copy a single sub directory and its contents, eject the drive, connect it to MISTer and see if the core associated with this sub directory can run games.
If it works you can go back to Windows and copy everything you need.
Another solution would be to wait if any one has a better idea.

[jca]

it also states that the operation is not permitted.

try
sudo mount .....
but I doubt it will work.

[JWDog]

Thank you i will give it a try and let you know what happens. thank you for all your help! awesome!

[jca]

When I initially wrote
May be your drive is to big
I had the feeling it could be the case.
At this stage I still cannot say if it the case, I looked on the internet for "Linux NTFS HDD 5TB" and it seems that people run into trouble with that, I read about it rapidly and cannot figure out what are the exact problems. It is also with mainstream distros on PCs. NTFS is not native to Linux, MS dis not publish the specs and it has been reverse engineered. Is it 100% compatible? May be not.
If it was me I would go ahead with a 2TB partition. Now what to do with the remaining space? Creating 2 more partitions of 2TB and 1TB and see if they are mounted on /media/usb1, usb2? If so what to do with them.
I guess only MISTer Linux specialists can answer these questions. This is how far I can go but at least you know that your disk is good and seen by MISTer, the partition is also seen but has not been mounted which explains why you got this empty directory error. Some progress has been made and soon you will be able to install and run all of your CDs. Good luck.

[JWDog]

jca: I got it to work. I must have had to reattach the hdd to my PC and it had to repair it, must have not ejected properly or something. then got it to mount as you said. Thank you so much!!! now another question... how do i hide the recycle.bin directory that windows makes?

[JWDog]

so the problem isn't that it is too big

though i will have to check if it spinsdown... then I will have to use the script.

[jca]

Glad to see that it is working. Good to know that it was not too big , it would have been a shame to waste space but I think it will take you a long time to fill it. Regarding the recycle bin I have no idea as my disk is formatted ext4 and instead of a recycle bin I have a folder called lost+found which is not a recycle bin but serves other purposes (you can look on the internet). It does not bother me and I suppose it is the same for the recycle bin. Leave like it is. Your drive will spin down, likely after 35 min like mine. WD HDD do not support the hdparm method so you will have to use the script. Do not forget: use notepad++ to create the files and set the end of line to Unix/Linux style as Linux does not like dos/windows line ending.

[jca]

Regarding the recycle bin: it was late yesterday and what I said was not very useful. Why does it bother you? It should not be visible when you use MISTer.
The recycle bin is a Windows thing and you could delete it or hide it. To hide it you do not use attributes like in Windows, you prefix the name with a dot:
xyz visible and .xyz not visible. If you reconnect your drive to Windows what will it do: nothing, recreate the recycle bin, ...?

[JWDog]

It is visible in MISTer when I back out of the directories to the root of the hdd. I don't have a problem with needing the file, just want to hide it so I don't see it in MISTer.

[jca]

If you really want to hide it:
If the name of your recycle bin is xyz do the following in the console.
cd /media/usb0
mv xyz .xyz (or you could just delete it) rm xyz
exit

Linux does not care about this file, only Windows does.
In both cases, if you reconnect your drive to Windows it will not find a recycle bin with all the consequences (which I have no idea what they are).
I guess the worst that can happen is that Windows will create a new recycle bin.

[jca]

I found this:
The $RECYCLE.BIN directory can be deleted from Windows command line rmdir /q /s C:\$RECYCLE.BIN as described in the first answer to this similar question, although as a system virtual folder care should be taken. Also, it will get recreated upon deletion of files from the drive containing it.

So you can safely delete the recycle bin using the console. If you reconnect your drive to Windows and delete files on that disk Windows will recreate a new recycle bin. In this case I think it would be better to empty the recycle bin before ejecting the drive, reconnecting it to MISTer and deleting the newly created recycle bin.

[JWDog]

Thank you jca! Your help has been much appreciated. I will post some results incase others have issues.