Advice for installing Launchbox to C:/SSD drive with ROMs/ISOs on E:/HDD drive

[TiMe CaPsuLe]

Greetings LB community!

As my title indicates, I am attempting to place only essential Launchbox installation files on my SSD drive (C:).  I would like to use my E: drive for ROMs and ISOs so that I do not fill up my SSD.

During v11.4 installation, I believe I should choose the bottom option of the three offered, which states something like "leave your game files in their current location" whereas other options suggest Launchbox will move files around.

Am I interpreting this correctly?

And... any other suggestions for setting up my installation as I have indicated above.

Thanks to all of you in advance,

Mike

[Headrush69]

I keep LaunchBox on my SSD and all my roms on my larger platter drive.

If you go into Disk Management, you can also set your HD to mount onto a empty directory, which I do to the LaunchBox Games folder.

Using this method you can leave the LB defaults and keeps things simpler. You can access files in the LB Games folder, or the drive letter.

Edited August 30, 2020 by Headrush69

[Ingabagovinanana]

Hi all,

I am attempting to do something like this as well... It is not going very well.  I realized I didn't have enough space on my HD for all the games.   Someone gave me an SSD drive that they were not using, and I purchased another one to get a little more room for some games that I thought may require more speed, so I have (2) SSD and (1) HDD.  That is where I went wrong.  I ended up copying all of my games to an external HDD, then copied my hard drive to an SSD using Acronis.  I then put all games back on the HDD, and tried to move things around in LB so they were all pointing to the correct path.  I got frustrated and moved all sorts of things around that I shouldn't have.   I decided to uninstall LB and start over again.  All my paths are correct, MAME works inside MAME but none of the games work in LB.  You click on them and nothing happens.  

Is it a must that the emulator, the games and the LB all be on the same drive?  I would think that wouldn't matter, but that is the only thing that is different from my original setup that actually worked.  

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I don't know much about computers, but I am learning quite with this COVID Project.

[JoeViking245]

2 hours ago, Ingabagovinanana said:

MAME works inside MAME but none of the games work in LB.

 MAME needs to know itself where the roms are located.  You can't simply tell it in the command line [like pretty much every other emulator].  The easiest way is to edit the "mame.ini" located in MAME's root folder.  Near the top you'll find the line "rompath".

On that line, add the full path to your roms.  If they're in multiple paths, separate them with a semicolon  (  ;  ).  Also, especially if the folder path has spaces in it, add a double quote (  "  ) at the beginning and the end on the folders.   [double quote ( " )   Not to be confused with two single quotes ( ' )]

rompath        "roms;D:\roms\Arcade;U:\Roms\MAME NonMerged"

  

[Ingabagovinanana]

Thank you,

I will give that a try.  When I looked that up, all it said for path was roms.  I guess default would be the same path as the emulator path?  So you are saying that I can point the .ini file to multiple drives and regardless of what Rom I want to play, Mame will know to look for it in either drive?  Will it be that easy for LB if I want to put some Roms in one drive, and other roms in a different one even if they are the same platform and using the same emulator?  I always try to make things more difficult than they should be in the name of saving money.

I appreciate your help JoeViking245.

Sincerely,

Ingabagovinanana

[JoeViking245]

@Ingabagovinanana  

20 minutes ago, Ingabagovinanana said:

default would be the same path as the emulator path

Yes.  The default folder is "roms" which MAME will look for under, from where it was executed.  So if mame64.exe is executed (started) in S:\MyEmulators\MAME\, it will look for the rom files in S:\MyEmulators\MAME\roms\

26 minutes ago, Ingabagovinanana said:

point the .ini file to multiple drives

As you can see in my example, I tell MAME to look in 3 different locations on 3 different drives.

rompath        "roms;D:\roms\Arcade;U:\Roms\MAME NonMerged"

S:\MyEmulators\MAME\roms\
D:\roms\Arcade\
U:\Roms\MAME NonMerged\

This tells MAME all it needs to know about where to find the roms.  Again, it doesn't care where you put them, as long as you tell it where to find them.

36 minutes ago, Ingabagovinanana said:

Will it be that easy for LB

Of course!  LaunchBox "doesn't care where you put them, as long as you tell it where to find them."  Even if they're in the same Platform.

And LaunchBox makes the process easy too.  You won't be able to use the MAME Arcade Full Set Import Wizard 'cause you can only give it one location for roms. 

1 hour ago, Ingabagovinanana said:

I always try to make things more difficult

I'm sure they've come across worse, but LaunchBox has you covered...

Tools,  Import, ROM Files... Next.  Then Add Folder 

And then just follow the prompts.

[Ingabagovinanana]

Thank you.... I guess I was spoiled by it using the same folder as the default, didn't realize it had to be pointed too if the files are moved.

I do appreciate it.  Thanks for the screens, makes it so much easier to understand.  Can't thank you enough.

Ingabagovinanana   

[Ingabagovinanana]

I tried this last night and it did not work.  I will look it over again tonight see if I can figure it out, if not, I will shoot you some screenshots of my set up with some context.

Again, I appreciate your help.

Ingabagovinanana