Running out of space due to art/video files

[Cranrat]

Hi all,

I'm running out of space on the SSD that Launchbox/BigBox is installed on my HTPC. I believe the space is being taken up by the art files and movie files that are downloaded for each individual ROM/PC Game. The SSD that Launchbox is installed on is 111 GB, I have the emulators and ROMS on a seperate 6TB drive and the computer games are installed on a 3TB drive.

I have a 149 GB SSD thats not being used, is there a way I can set up Launchbox to use this drive for additional art/video files?

 

Thanks in advance!

 Dave

[Cranrat]

Well I never did find a way to set up LaunchBox to use an additional storage device for storing art/videos/ect, but what I did end up doing was taking a backup of the SSD that LaunchBox was installed on and then took that SSD and the SSD that wasn't being used and I created one volume by combining the two of them using Windows 10's Disk Management. When creating the new volume I made sure that it was created with the same drive letter that LaunchBox was originally installed on and then I just copied the backup of LaunchBox over to the new volume.

[sundogak]

You can have custom paths to art and ROM folders in LB>  Select the platform and right click on platform name, select Edit. Then change paths of the various media folders you want on the other drive (see screen snap below)

 

[Cranrat]

Thank you Sundogak, I'm sure I'll have to put this advice in to good use further down the road.

[The Papaw]

Here is something I found and do every so often and reduces my images folder to almost half the size. When you add games and artwork is scraped, it's a crap shoot as to what format and size you are going to get. Might be jpg's, might be png's, etc.. And the image sizes???  They can be very tiny to HUGE in file size (both physical size and pixel size) .

I use a program called FS-Image Editor (FS=FastStone I think). It's free and still updated regularly. It's suppose to be for photos but works with most all images. It allows you to re-size or convert images real easy. One at a time or batch, batch (whole folder at a time) is the key here. If you have a big collection, it will take a little time to do it the first time. I have almost 8tb of game data, so it took me a bit to figure it all out and do it the first time.

Start with one system, say Atari 2600, use FS-Image Editor to navigate to where you have say your "Front" images. Decide on the size & format you would like them to be, The 2600 games came in a taller box, where most of our fronts/poster images come from. (I had tried finding the original sizes of the boxes/cases at one time and calculating the actual dimensions/pixels, but eventually gave up on it.)

Anyways, so with the taller posters like the 2600 uses, I went with like 675x1000s and used jpg format. I let FS-Image Editor save them to a new temp folder, that way I could look at them before any changes were made in LB. Usually they look great, Every no and again, someone will upload an odd image and it may look funny stretched but can easily be replaced. After I look at the new ones, I delete what's in the "Front"  folder in LB for that system and just cut-n-paste the new ones in. Done, never need to touch again, until new games are added. (FS-Image Editor is fast too, I think it took like 1 minute to resize and convert 24,000 images use in one of my mame folders)

Most of the fanart (background) images are 1920x1080. I resize all of them to 960x560 using jpg format.

I think I use something like 500x600 for the more square type covers, like PS2 or PS3 games.

Depending on all the type of images you scrape in will be how much time it will take you to go through everything.

You will be amazed how much you can decrease the size! And wow, does it look so much nicer!

Something else I check is the videos that have been downloaded, I browse through them and just double check the file size. You might be amazed how many of them are pretty big. When I find one, I usually just do a simple search for the game with trailer in the search and find a smaller 1-2 minute trailer and replace it. I usually try to download webm video files when I can instead mp4 files as they are usually smaller in size. But in the end, it is always personal preference. On PC games, I usually search for them on Steam and I use IDM to download trailers there in webm format.

And as always, make backups before replacing anything.

I run LB on most of my at 4k and a couple @1080 and it looks amazing, clean and I think actually make LB/BB a teeny bit faster running.

Maybe this will help ya out a bit, others too!

 

 

Edited January 3, 2020 by Wanderer189

[turbofeet]

Hi There

One of the things I do with my setup  is that I have my Launchbox and Emulators on a Local SSD Drive but the Roms on my Server which are accessed via a symbolic link.

I do this as although my gaming/launchbox drive is a 2TB SSD my full setup including the Roms is considerably larger.

In my case I have this folder structure configured like this:

G:\Emulators\Emulators - Emulators
G:\Emulators\Launchbox - Launchbox
G:\Emulators\Roms - Roms / Games

This allows me to share the Roms on different HTPCs in my home as the rest of the setup files don't take up too much space. It also allows me to configure Emulators a little differently on a different less powerful machine (for example).

So; I copy the Roms to my Server and share this.

Say for arguments sake this share is:

\\MyServer\Roms

I can then and then create a "Symbolic Link" to the Roms like so:

1. Delete the local "G:\Emulators\Roms" folder as this is now located on the server
2. Open an Administrator Command Prompt.
3. I navigate to "G:\Emulators" directory which is where the "Roms" folder is configured in my case.
4. I then run this command to create a Symbolic Link to the "Roms" folder on my server:

mklink /D "Roms" "\\MyServer\Roms"

Browsing to that folder now and you will see the Roms as if they were on the "G" drive.

In theory the Roms do not need to be on a  server. They could be on a different drive; or anywhere really.

If your games are located within the "Games" folder within the Launchbox directly then you can do the same with that folder as well. Or indeed with the "Images" folder as you have mentioned above. For example:

mklink /D "Roms" "D:\Roms"
mklink /D "Images" "D:\Images"

Just ensure that you are in the correct folder within the Admin command prompt so that the link is created in that directory.

Hope this helps

 

[The Papaw]

@turbofeet Awesome tip!

[CitznFish]

On 12/29/2019 at 3:13 PM, sundogak said:

You can have custom paths to art and ROM folders in LB>  Select the platform and right click on platform name, select Edit. Then change paths of the various media folders you want on the other drive (see screen snap below)

 

Is there some XML file I can manipulate? I do NOT want to go through each and every line to change my assets folder to another drive...

[sundogak]

3 hours ago, CitznFish said:

Is there some XML file I can manipulate? I do NOT want to go through each and every line to change my assets folder to another drive...

The Platforms.XML file located in ...\Launchbox\Data has the paths to the media (towards the end of file). 

The rom paths are in ..\Launchbox\Data\Platforms\  then by the platform name. But you can change rom paths in mass directly in LB via the Tools menu.

If just moving everything to another drive then shouldn't have to do anything since by default all the paths are relative to LB install location. You should double check your emulator paths in LB though if some were not using relative paths.

[CitznFish]

45 minutes ago, sundogak said:

The Platforms.XML file located in ...\Launchbox\Data has the paths to the media (towards the end of file). 

The rom paths are in ..\Launchbox\Data\Platforms\  then by the platform name. But you can change rom paths in mass directly in LB via the Tools menu.

If just moving everything to another drive then shouldn't have to do anything since by default all the paths are relative to LB install location. You should double check your emulator paths in LB though if some were not using relative paths.

I installed LB on my SSD C drive but want all the assets on my 6TB D drive.  I found the XML files but what a pain to edit. Instead I found this post, and it's so much quicker and easier using symbolic links in Windows:

 

 

[sundogak]

yep, use that tool for my cache files for my SSD as well. Glad you resolved with easier solution. 

 

[RpT]

On 1/3/2020 at 12:33 PM, The Papaw said:

Here is something I found and do every so often and reduces my images folder to almost half the size. When you add games and artwork is scraped, it's a crap shoot as to what format and size you are going to get. Might be jpg's, might be png's, etc.. And the image sizes???  They can be very tiny to HUGE in file size (both physical size and pixel size) .

I use a program called FS-Image Editor (FS=FastStone I think). It's free and still updated regularly. It's suppose to be for photos but works with most all images. It allows you to re-size or convert images real easy. One at a time or batch, batch (whole folder at a time) is the key here. If you have a big collection, it will take a little time to do it the first time. I have almost 8tb of game data, so it took me a bit to figure it all out and do it the first time.

Awesome idea, thanks!

I found that you can search by filetype in windows and then drag-n-drop, so you can do your subfolders or even your entire system by choosing to set the MAX resolution it should be (for example, I reason that on my 1080p system, no art should be bigger than 1920x1080). Then you enable the settings to preserve original aspect ratio and not to resize items that are smaller. Seem to be clawing back a ton of space since some of these items such as BOX - Front have come down with super-high resolutions!