How To Move Launchbox Cache To SSD (Tutorial)

[Mr.Laor]

I tried. Still takes up to 30 seconds to regain control after any edit. Funny thing is if I make an edit using the genre editor plug in, I regain control right away, even editing multiple files.

[neil9000]

13 minutes ago, Mr.Laor said:

I tried. Still takes up to 30 seconds to regain control after any edit. Funny thing is if I make an edit using the genre editor plug in, I regain control right away, even editing multiple files.

??? Then that tells me you are running a plugin that is causing issues?

[Mr.Laor]

Could be. I can't check right now. Could a plug-in , even when not being run, be using up ram/memory?

[Fredyyy]

4 hours ago, sundogak said:

 

@Fredyyy Depends on what you are trying to achieve and where seeing performance choke point. I just wanted boost to scrolling performance and with the cache of images that fits the bill with how setup in the original post.  If you have tons of space on your SSD then that is easier then the symbolic link and you get overall program benefit of SSD performance.  Some quick testing on my setups though didn't indicate it was worth eating up SSD space (other than cache) and I preferred keeping my "game drive" completely independent of ? drive where possible (~20,000 game setup).  Plus, even with the emulators and ROMs on another drive your images and videos for LB are now on your SSD (not just the cache files). Those can grow be pretty big (~ 0.5 TB on my setup).  So my take is try it with the cache on SSD and see if that is suitable for needs. It is quicker/easier to setup and if change mind easy enough to remove the symbolic link and go with full SSD install. 

Thank you for the detailed response! I have only 500GB SSD and 1 TB of HDD. My total gaming set is around 800GB. I have windows 10 on the SSD and launchbox on the 1TB HDD. PC boot fast, but LB boot slow. I watched a youtube video of someone playing zelda wii u on an SSD and on a HDD. There was a noticeable difference. 

so my thought was to keep the majority of the roms on HDD. Move launchbox to SSD so hopefully LB can boot faster and also ONLY moving the power demanding roms like (Wii U, ps3, wii) to SSD.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Fredyyy

[RamBRO]

Legit tip,  thank you!

[KRI$85]

On 6/28/2017 at 8:44 PM, Robin55 said:

Just thought I would give people a little tutorial here on how to use "mklink" to create a Symbolic Link for the Launchbox Cache. Some people say it improves performance (I certainly noticed it)  and some say they don't notice much of a difference, I guess it depends on your set up.

This method worked for me very well when I moved the Cache to my SSD, I found that I could now use images set to there highest quality without any impact on performance and the images look great on a 4k TV. So here is what worked for me:

1. First download and install LINK SHELL EXTENSION found here http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html (be sure to install the dependency's first)You should now have the option when you right click on a file to "Pick Link Source".

2. On your SSD where you want your CACHE to be located create a folder called "CACHE" (I find that creating a Folder named something like "Launchbox Cache" and then placing the new Cache folder inside it works best).

3. Go to your Launchbox folder and find the original CACHE folder in the IMAGES folder and copy everything in the CACHE folder to your new CACHE folder on your SSD. (this may take a while, alternatively you could just delete everything in the original cache folder if you wish but you will have to repopulate it later after the folder is linked, not a big deal really I just leave launchbox in "attract mode" so the Cache gets filled up).

4. Once you have copied everything (or deleted everything) from the original CACHE folder also delete the actual ORIGINAL CACHE folder itself as well (this part is important).

5. now go to your SSD and right click your new CACHE folder (or the folder it's in) you created earlier and select "Pick Link Source"

6. now go to your IMAGES folder in launchbox right click it and select "Drop as Junction" This will automatically create a new CACHE folder (where you deleted the original) INSIDE the IMAGES folder with a little chain icon attached to it indicating that it is now linked to your SSD CACHE folder! That's it simple but took me a while to get my head around so I just thought I would post this.

A way to test if this is working correctly is to do the same with your platform videos folder, if after following the instructions above your videos display properly, everything is working fine! or of course you could just watch the space left on your SSD as the cache fills up.

Thank you very much for the tip but I have a question, is it possible to somehow protect, exclude these folders from clearing the cache, just an hour ago I lost the entire cache from LB, BB so I'm a bit torn🤬