angelobodetti Posted April 14, 2016 Author Share Posted April 14, 2016 Hi guys, Anyone have issues using an external drive for emulation? I am setting up a USB 3.0 drive that will house all of my ROMs but also LaunchBox and the emulators. I'm doing this because I purchased an Alienware X51 which does not have room for a second internal drive. Does anyone else do this? Any suggestions or issues I should know about? Will larger games like PS2 or Wii have issues? Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted April 14, 2016 Share Posted April 14, 2016 Nope, all of my games, all over 20k of them are on an external hard drive, USB2 as well. There may be slightly slower loading for PS2 games, but I never really notice it. All my Wii and Gamecube games are also on their own external hard drive. Natively on real hardware these games were only ever read at a fraction of the average speed of a USB2 drive. My USB2 drives, and USB3 on USB2 ports, max out at like 25-30mb/sec? Some where in there, and the discs in the consoles are only ever read at like 4mb/sec. When I burnt Dreamcast games for example, the disc had to be written at a max of x2 or x4 because the way the data would get written, the console couldn't read it. So no you should be totally fine. LaunchBox would technically be better on an internal drive, but USB3 is also fairly fast now days. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelobodetti Posted April 14, 2016 Author Share Posted April 14, 2016 Great, thank you. Your videos are actually what gave me the idea. I just wanted to be sure that having LaunchBox, the emulator and the rom on and external drive together wouldn't be an issue. I was concerned because I just loaded Sega Saturn up via RetroArch and LB. when I went to play Alien as a test, it froze up a few seconds into gameplay. But when I check the yabause comparability page it says that alien works well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted April 14, 2016 Share Posted April 14, 2016 It could just be a fluke, or you can try moving LaunchBox to another drive if you are so inclined. As long as you only move your LB install it should be fine and boot up like normal. Otherwise, it could be other software interfering? Is it only this game or several others? Is it only that core or just RA? Is it other cores in RA too and other emulators? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted April 14, 2016 Share Posted April 14, 2016 I have a backup of my complete LaunchBox and games install on an external 2.5" USB3 hard drive and I can run it fine from there, without any issues at all. Load times are a little slower, but really not much, as Brad said USB3 is pretty fast now, I get nearly 110MB/s transfer from my USB3 drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chapel Posted March 10, 2017 Share Posted March 10, 2017 Did you install Launchbox on your external, configure it on your external and have all your ROMS there as well? I'm trying to build a single HDD that I can clone for my 3 computers so I don't have to pull the information off my NAS That way if I'm going to a friends house, I can grab one of my HDDs and plug it into their PC and just bring a controller and launch it rather than having to lug my whole rig around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angelobodetti Posted March 10, 2017 Author Share Posted March 10, 2017 That won't really work be abuse there are tons of drivers and software that need to be installed on the PC itself that you bdver really think of or realize. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chapel Posted March 10, 2017 Share Posted March 10, 2017 Also, I assume based on the install, you need to run it native. That said, is it possible to use this information to create copies that can be 'restored' so I don't have to rebuild every time - Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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