File Management

[THRobinson]

Hey guys, just looking for the best way to keep things organized.

I have a 1TB drive... was thinking of making a partition, maybe 60GB for Win10/LaunchBox then have the other partition labelled GAMES and no folder with sub-folders, just the drive with a folder for each system. That way if I need to format, I can just format the C:\ and not touch the games.

Not sure if that's a good way to do it, or just 1 partition, and a folder named GAMES with sub folders for each system.

Ideally I'd get an SSD for the software and games on the HDD... how much space would the OS/LaunchBox/Emulators take?

[spectral]

You'd be better off having LB/BB on the same partition as the games and emulators. You can put the emulators and games in folders inside the launchbox folder. That way if you do reinstall windows you dont have to set up Launchbox again too. Alternatively you could get an external USB HDD and have Launchbox, emulators and ROMS all on that. Launchbox doesn't really benefit from being on an SSD. Size wise if you have Bigbox and a premium emumovies account to download videos,music,etc it can take up a lot of space.

Edited June 24, 2017 by spectral

[SentaiBrad]

I think it's best to put your LB install, games and emulators all on their own drive. It's the same effect as if the games and emulators are in the LB folder, which is to say things will use a relative path. They just need to be on the same drive, so by extension in the folder counts. This way things stay portable if the drive letter changes or computer changes. You can't change the actual paths without needing to re-import or edit the XML, but still.

Yea, an SSD will provide some benefit, but not a whole lot. All of my stuff is on an 8TB SATA3 5400RPM drive and it all runs fantastically. The space LB takes up depends on the size of your library and media. I know mine is close to 150GB before any games or emulators.

[THRobinson]

Well, formatted a 1TB drive, installed Win10Prox64, plus GeForce Drivers and all current updates, took about 21GB.

Went to partition, but only let me go as much as about 450GB... even defragged to see if made a difference and nope. So formatted the drive, at Windows setup, did the Shift+F10 and into DiskPart, was going to set it to 30GB but then the install said was below the 37GB min. recommended so went for 40GB instead.

Good point about LB being separated. That's why I was trying to partition to 30GB... figured gives 9GB worth of wiggle room for updates and more space on the (now) D:\. I'll keep LaunchBox and  all roms and emulators on there.

Next question....

I had a folder called EMULATORS inside the LB folder, inside of which I had subfolders for each emulator. I then had a GAMES folder under LB, and inside that subfolders for each system. Is it better to do that? or have an Emulator folder, and keep the games with each emulator?

Reason I used a game folder was in case I changed the emulator or for whatever reason used 2 emulators because maybe some games run better on one than the other.

[zetec-s-joe]

Personally I have a few External drives

I have one named "GAMES" then have the following folders inside

Arcade
Computers
Consoles
Handhelds
Pinball

Inside them I keep full HyperSpin Ready sets, eg. "Nintendo Virtual Boy - HyperSpin 2.0 XML"

[spectral]

I have a folder for the emulators each within their own folder inside it and a seperate folder for games with a  folder in that for each system. Whether you put the individual games into seperate folders of their own shouldn't really make a difference. For some reason I put disc based games in their own folders but just stick all the roms for SNES for example into the SNES folder together. The only one I found any real reason not to sort games into seperate folders with is mame. It makes it more awkward dealing with CHD's and the various bios roms, parent roms, etc.

Edited June 24, 2017 by spectral

[THRobinson]

12 minutes ago, spectral said:

I have a folder for the emulators each within their own folder inside it and a seperate folder for games with a  folder in that for each system. 

Sounds like what I've been doing.

Just hate to get this all sorted and setup, then shoot myself in the foot later down the road finding that I should have done it a different way.  

[spectral]

I'm still only just getting into all this myself but so far haven't ran into any problems doing it like this. I think it is how most people do it. I currently have it on an internal 2TB drive while I get everything properly configured and set up and all the images and video's I need downloaded. Once I know it's total size I plan to buy a USB HDD and move it all over too that. Hopefully I'll have set it up right that it can fairly easily be moved between PC's. I bought a completely new PC around a year ago which I use for everything which I will just run BB on when I want to play. However my old PC I am going to have hooked up to a seperate monitor and boot right into BB. Sort of a mame cab without the cab. It wont run as many games but should be good up to PS1/N64 I think (Phenom II X6@3.05Ghz, 4GB RAM, GTX 560Ti)

If I do run into any problems with folders, etc I'll let you know.

Edited June 24, 2017 by spectral

[THRobinson]

I have a 1TB... should be enough, from what I've read most CHD Mame's don't work, and only a few are good (SF, Killer Instinct, Gauntlet) and I don't plan to have all the consoles on it that have CD ISO's and need gamepads. Mostly sticking with games that can be played with a cabinet because that's what I'm building. Got the guts all in my old case now for testing with a 20" 4:3 monitor sitting on top. Giving HyperSpin a test run this weekend, but already finding it less user friendly. Also testing RetroArch.

I do have a few old 40GB drives, but IDE, else I'd have used the 1TB as a devoted drive, not partitioned.

Grabbed a, i3-7100 3.9Ghz with 2x8GB ram, my old GTX650 Ti Boost video card. Been busy setting it up and such so no games tested yet. I assume old MAME and NES etc will be fine... more concerned with N64 and a few PSOne games that I wanted to install.

[spectral]

Unfortunately I dont have the space nor woodworking,etc skill and tools to build an actual cab. I would love one though. So given I have to accept that I'm going to just be running from a pc either way I figured I may aswell play into the strengths of that and get various controllers and adapters and what not to play various systems. Still dont have everything yet, getting it as I go. So far I have a Dualshock 3, 360 pad, Hori mini fight stick 4(or whatever its called) and a USB Saturn style pad. Aswell as mouse and keyboard obviously. Plan to get get a SNES pad and N64/PS2 pad adapter. I think I'll skip the DC pad adapter as the DC pad kinda sucks, I'll use the 360 pad. But since I'm using disc based games too it massively increases the size of the games folder. I think I'm going to be looking at, at least a 2TB drive. I may just go for a 4TB though and give myself lots of room too add stuff later.

 

I've not tested much on my old PC yet either just my new one and I'm pretty sure anything that doesn't run on that is down to the emulator or settings rather than the hardware (6700K@4.5Ghz/16GB 3200 RAM/GTX 1070)

Edited June 24, 2017 by spectral

[THRobinson]

Space... I'm scratching my head trying to figure out where to stick mine. But I have so many 'need to do' projects that I needed one that was fun so, it's getting built. I was going to build a bartop... but really, when not in use, where do you put it if you don't have a bar?  Figured at that point I may as well build a full size and build the bottom of it to open and have storage in it. 

I basically took the profile of a regular arcade machine, and trimmed it down. Not using a 50lb CRT, so, got it down to 26" wide, 22" deep, and 6'2" tall. I'm 6'3" tall and didn't want a cabinet where the marquee was chin level.

Folks use to have a huge garage and ever tool ever made, but downsized a decade ago, and after my Dad passed, my Mother/Sister who knew nothing about tools kinda just shoved everything into the smaller garage and some parts were lost, broken, some tools I can't find... So, ya... I suspect by the time I'm done this project I'll probably have a few new tools.

Clamps, circular saw, drill, sander and a hand held jigsaw.... be about all the tools needed I suspect. I have a few forstner bits coming off eBay, cheap but only need for a few holes. I am also buying a 3-in-1 nail gun for my air compressor, not specifically for this project but I'll definitely use it for some brad nails while glue dries.

Maybe if it turns out well I can sell flat kits, like IKEA... with crappy assembly instructions.