On July 30, 2025, the U.S. Executive Order “Suspending Duty-Free De Minimis Treatment For All Countries” came into effect. This removes the previous duty exemption for low-value packages and introduces new procedural requirements that are still being defined by U.S. Customs and the United States Postal Service. In response, DHL has announced a temporary halt to standard postal parcel shipments into the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Dismiss
Hi, I’m new to most Linux/Raspberry Pi stuff, and I’ve ordered what I need for RetroPie.
My question is:
When I plug in the image to the Pi (I have an SD reader), will I need to keep that SD card in to use RetroPie, or will I be able to just put it in once and then remove it?
I’m asking this because the reader I have is communal, and I won’t be able to keep it forever.
The raspberry pi doesn’t have built in storage- so the microsd is your operating system and harddrive essentially. So yes- you’ll need to keep the microsd in there if you want it to run.
You can get microsd cards and card readers for pretty cheap online.
The card reader is only needed to install the image from a laptop. You don’t need it afterwards as you can plug the microsd directly into the raspberry pi.
I just use a 64gb sandisk ultra SD card and it is enough for my needs. Other people will run games off a USB stick or the network. I find it easiest just to keep everything on the SD card. As far as card readers go – you can get them anywhere, most will work. When you create the SD image it creates the boot portion with your OS but also has space for ROMs after you expand the filesystem with sudo raspi-config
Author
Posts
Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
The forum ‘New to RetroPie? Start Here!’ is closed to new topics and replies.