Where to install roms and emu?

[praet]

Hi,

Please bear with me here as I am a total noob to LB/BB. So I've just installed LB and paid for the licence. Prior to LB and BB, I've just been using Mame without a front end.  

What is the concensus in regards when importing roms in LB? Do you either copy/move/leave as-is roms into LB?  

Also, do you put emu folders in the Launchbox directory (eg: c:/users/praet/LaunchBox/mame etc), or do you have the emu folders stored elsewhere on your system? eg: C:/gaming/emus/mame etc..   and I guess the same for roms, eg: c:/gaming/roms/mame etc..

Just seeing what the consensus is in regard the folder/file structure.

 

Cheers

Edited August 7, 2017 by praet
Worked out some things I asked previously

[Lordmonkus]

It's really up to you where you store your stuff but I will suggest another drive other than C:\, mainly because if / when you need to format your computer you wont lose your LB setup.

The way I have mine setup is have a folder on my H:\ drive called "Emulation" and then in there I have my "Launchbox" install and then I have a folder called "Emulators" and another called "Roms". Within the emulators folder I have all my emulators installed to their own folders named with version number or date in the case of a nightly build of an emulator. In my roms folder I have all my roms sorted by the system they are for.

On my HTPC though which only has a single 160 gig hard drive I have Launchbox installed to the root of C:\ so it is C:\Launchbox and then within that folder I have an "Emulators" folder and a "Roms" folder.

When I import my games I tell Launchbox to leave them where they are on my hard drive.

[fromlostdays]

Yeah there's no right or wrong here. The only real reason to keep those in the Launchbox folder is if you want to make it completely portable, as in you could put the entire thing on a flash or external and move it between computers. Other than that, if you intend to continue adding games and systems you might want to invest in a hd for just roms because they fill up fast.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

[praet]

Thanks @lordmonkus and @fromlostdays for the advice  I think I'll reinstall LB and have it rooted on c:/ as I always forget where its installed  

Incidentally, does running emus and roms via an external HDD slow performance within BB and/or during gameplay?  I'm a little worried that my PC might encounter issues suddenly and I'll lose my entire roms/emu collection, so I'm considering running the collection off an ext hdd.

 

[Lordmonkus]

Performance should not suffer at all other than possibly longer load times of games that are DVD images such as PS2 and Wii games, especially if you have those games zipped and need to be unzipped before loading.

[Darkcloud]

The Performance suffers if the games dont load fast enough. This happens with Isos from my NAS but Retroarch has the option to load the roms/isos to the RAM in most cores. That way the initial startup will be quite a bit longer but there should be no stuttering because of loading. 

[praet]

Thanks Lordmonkus and Darkcloud

[Keith Krummel]

Hello, I have different amount of Roms when I open the program through start- applications  then opening in the folder. This shouldn't be an issue if they're in the correct LaunchBox folders, correct? Thanks for your help.