Jump to content
LaunchBox Community Forums

Big Box on an external HDD drive?


Michael Capone

Recommended Posts

Hi everyone.  I have emulators, roms, chds, images, etc. etc. all over my computer with no frontends.  It's a mess.  It's time for me to organize my collection....it's time...for Big Box.  My plan is to use Big Box on a PC.  I just like the look and feel over the regular Launchbox.  I do not have a cabinet.  With that said, my collection is taking up a lot of my internal SSD hard drive space (especially those pesky chd files).  Anyway, my plan was to buy an external 2TB HDD drive just to store my collection and Big Box on.  I would run Big Box right off of the external drive.  I know running the latest and greatest games off of an external drive, while possible, is a bad idea because of overheating and such.  However, small games are fine.  Where would Big Box fall in to this?  Is it too powerful of a program to run safely on an external HDD, or should I not have a problem?  Anyone else doing this?  I just like having such a big drive dedicated solely to my emulating addiction.  I am not looking for portability.  What do you guys and girls think?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Michael Capone said:

Hi everyone.  I have emulators, roms, chds, images, etc. etc. all over my computer with no frontends.  It's a mess.  It's time for me to organize my collection....it's time...for Big Box.  My plan is to use Big Box on a PC.  I just like the look and feel over the regular Launchbox.  I do not have a cabinet.  With that said, my collection is taking up a lot of my internal SSD hard drive space (especially those pesky chd files).  Anyway, my plan was to buy an external 2TB HDD drive just to store my collection and Big Box on.  I would run Big Box right off of the external drive.  I know running the latest and greatest games off of an external drive, while possible, is a bad idea because of overheating and such.  However, small games are fine.  Where would Big Box fall in to this?  Is it too powerful of a program to run safely on an external HDD, or should I not have a problem?  Anyone else doing this?  I just like having such a big drive dedicated solely to my emulating addiction.  I am not looking for portability.  What do you guys and girls think?

Lots of people run Launchbox/Bigbox from a USB drive, as long as its a decent USB 3 drive it should be just fine. You could also use the USB drive for the roms only and have Launchbox/Bigbox on a faster internal drive, for more snappiness when loading images/videos and the like.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you Neil.  Your second option sounds great.  I am not much in to IT and have never installed Launchbox yet so this may be an obvious question, but...  I can install Big Box on my main internal SSD drive and store the roms, chds, etc. on an external HDD drive.  Then when I go to install a new emulator to Big Box I will have to tell it the location of the roms on the external drive and not to copy them over to my internal SSD?  Then going forward, I will always need to make sure my external HDD is connected to my PC whenever i want to play?  Is this right, if so I like this option because it frees up my internal SSD of all the rom and chd files.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Michael Capone said:

Thank you Neil.  Your second option sounds great.  I am not much in to IT and have never installed Launchbox yet so this may be an obvious question, but...  I can install Big Box on my main internal SSD drive and store the roms, chds, etc. on an external HDD drive.  Then when I go to install a new emulator to Big Box I will have to tell it the location of the roms on the external drive and not to copy them over to my internal SSD?  Then going forward, I will always need to make sure my external HDD is connected to my PC whenever i want to play?  Is this right, if so I like this option because it frees up my internal SSD of all the rom and chd files.

Yes 100%. When you add a system to Launchbox you tell it where that systems roms are stored, then you get three options, "move roms to launchbox folder", "copy roms to launchbox folder", or "leave roms in there current location", so you would just select the third option. Also all the media paths are editable after you have imported a system, so you could move certain things elsewhere and then just edit that location in Launchbox. For example,

image.thumb.png.3e016b441b5eeac6ff8103b16f7fc599.pngAlso it is worth mentioning that Launchbox itself is a potable program, so it can be moved around to different folders/drives if so desired, and as long as the roms themselves didnt move it would still work. Also there is a option to change the rom path for systems in Launchbox, so if you moved a system from the USB drive somewhere else, you just need to choose the option in Launchbox to change the rompath for that system and point it at the new location.

  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

Question; I recently put all my PS2 games onto a separate internal drive thats much larger for space reasons and successfully imported them into LB but when I try to launch a game I get  "An error occurred while trying to launch the game: access is denied". I've tried changing access permissions for the folders and clicking 'Share Folder' options but i'm still getting the error. The same games work when inside the Launchbox/Games folder but not from a different drive? Any ideas?

IMG_20200326_2033170.jpg

Edited by Johnny85
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...