I am running out of space. Any ideas on how best to use storage?

[WInzen]

So I noticed that im running out of space.   And I see that IMAGES and MUSIC and VIDEO is now nearly 1/5 of my 500gb drive space. As well as my roms.

Maybe you have experience with this and cam make suggestions.   But I  am still adding new roms and plan on adding the BB jukebox and music files.

This is a dedicated pc win 10 LAUNCHBOX system with only launchbox and related software.

I have 2 drives.

1. 500gb ssd for software system and most roms
2. 2TB hd for backup and lazerdisc games.

Trying to keep roms on the faster drive but that is becoming increasingly difficult.  Also not sure how much spare space I should have.

 

• Can someone suggest what should be where and if there is anything i dont need or how they would do it differently to optimise space and efficency ?

 

Thanks ?

 

 

 

[damageinc86]

Yeah the images and video is a killer with having a nice launchbox setup.  Even worse if you have a theme like bannerbox, which requires a full replacement set of images since it cannot compile all your existing images into the banner image on the fly.  My 2TB drive filled up FAST!  I would say, just get a bigger drive honestly lol.

[WInzen]

3 hours ago, damageinc86 said:

Yeah the images and video is a killer with having a nice launchbox setup.  Even worse if you have a theme like bannerbox, which requires a full replacement set of images since it cannot compile all your existing images into the banner image on the fly.  My 2TB drive filled up FAST!  I would say, just get a bigger drive honestly lol.

sadly i cant do that as to put all my system on a new drive is just too much and its all brand new.  So could i put some of my roms on my 2tb drive ? i.e. which roms dont need speed of the ssd ?

I have lazer disc on the larger slower drive with no issues.  What about mame or wii or cube etc ? or portables?  in otherwords do some roms to your knowlegde benefit from ssd?

thanks for replying

 

 

[neil9000]

Just now, WInzen said:

sadly i cant do that as to put all my system on a new drive is just too much and its all brand new.  So could i put some of my roms on my 2tb drive ? i.e. which roms dont need speed of the ssd ?

I have lazer disc on the larger slower drive with no issues.  What about mame or wii or cube etc ? or portables?  in otherwords do some roms to your knowlegde benefit from ssd?

thanks for replying

 

 

I have all my roms on a 5400rpm drive, and Launchbox on the ssd, roms dont benefit from being on a ssd at all.

[WInzen]

Just now, neil9000 said:

I have all my roms on a 5400rpm drive, and Launchbox on the ssd, roms dont benefit from being on a ssd at all.

ah ha thats good news! makes my life a lot easier!

thank you neil you are a fountain of information which i hope to pay back to the community in the future!

 

 

[WInzen]

Also does anyone know if LB deletes all images video and music when its deleted in LB menu ?  As ive installed large amounts of roms and then narrowed them  down etc.

Edited February 20, 2021 by WInzen

[JoeViking245]

29 minutes ago, WInzen said:

anyone know if LB deletes all images video and music when its deleted in LB menu ?

Go to Tools and select Clean Up Media....  and select what you want removed.

[WInzen]

13 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

Go to Tools and select Clean Up Media....  and select what you want removed.

great i manages to get rid of 47 gigs of unused stuff!  thanks

 

LAUNCH BOX IS THE BEST! as is this community

Edited February 21, 2021 by WInzen

[KRI$85]

I know it's an old topic, but the problem is starting to affect me and I wonder why there is no possibility of inheriting media, image, video etc. if you have more of the same games in your collection but on other platforms, because it would be a game changer and you could save a lot, and you have to download the same media x times which only takes up valuable space. 
Of course, you can always play around with changing folders manually in the options of a given platform but with a large collection OMG. 
Clear media gives a false sense of help for me, of course

[dragon57]

1 hour ago, KRI$85 said:

I know it's an old topic, but the problem is starting to affect me and I wonder why there is no possibility of inheriting media, image, video etc. if you have more of the same games in your collection but on other platforms, because it would be a game changer and you could save a lot, and you have to download the same media x times which only takes up valuable space. 
Of course, you can always play around with changing folders manually in the options of a given platform but with a large collection OMG. 
Clear media gives a false sense of help for me, of course

I would check out this utility: https://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html

[KRI$85]

18 minutes ago, dragon57 said:

I would check out this utility: https://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html

Hmm, thanks I'll check it out, but you reminded me that there's a chains option in the system, I use it so that the media and cache are read from the SSD system
although maybe this is a better solution, and it won't take up twice as much space as it is when using as a link or something like that

edit:

OMG I've been using it for so long that it turned out that the system doesn't have something like that and what I use for SSD is this program haha oh this sclerosis
Unfortunately, this has the problem that it takes up space, i.e. there are the same files in 2 places, so I can just as well download the image files again, it will come out the same ;(

Edited yesterday at 01:36 PM by KRI$85

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, dragon57 said:

I would check out this utility: https://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html

I use this and it's very convenient.

@KRI$85 The [potential] problem with this is, you'd need to know which games are "duplicated" to symlink those.  Or... I suppose you could symlink each platforms' respective Images subfolders' images to the other platforms' subfolders, as a whole.  You wouldn't be able to link the folders because some platforms will have games that others don't. You'd need to link the individual images.  Unless... you put every single platform image(s) into ONE folder (with the respective image-type subfolders), then link all the 'other' platforms' images subfolders to that one.  So you'd have something like /LaunchBox/Images/EverySinglePlatform/Box - Front/everygame.png(s)

Myself, I'd rather have each platform-specific image/video available. e.g. "1942" Box-Front

   

If you're talking say, just Clear Logos, that'd make a lot more sense.

 

 

You could also run an image resizer app on your images.  Take the NES Box image above for example... will you EVER display that image at 1530 x 2100?  Even the Clear Logo is 2400 x 790.  Look in all your Views and see if you need/use a logo that big.

For videos, you could a similar thing.  For my cab monitor, I've resized them to 640x480 and trimmed them to a max 37 seconds.  

 

[KRI$85]

6 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

I use this and it's very convenient.

@KRI$85 The [potential] problem with this is, you'd need to know which games are "duplicated" to symlink those.  Or... I suppose you could symlink each platforms' respective Images subfolders' images to the other platforms' subfolders, as a whole.  You wouldn't be able to link the folders because some platforms will have games that others don't. You'd need to link the individual images.  Unless... you put every single platform image(s) into ONE folder (with the respective image-type subfolders), then link all the 'other' platforms' images subfolders to that one.  So you'd have something like /LaunchBox/Images/EverySinglePlatform/Box - Front/everygame.png(s)

Myself, I'd rather have each platform-specific image/video available. e.g. "1942" Box-Front

   

If you're talking say, just Clear Logos, that'd make a lot more sense.

 

 

You could also run an image resizer app on your images.  Take the NES Box image above for example... will you EVER display that image at 1530 x 2100?  Even the Clear Logo is 2400 x 790.  Look in all your Views and see if you need/use a logo that big.

For videos, you could a similar thing.  For my cab monitor, I've resized them to 640x480 and trimmed them to a max 37 seconds.  

 

It's more about the fact that, for example: I have a teknoparrot platform, and now I created a raw thrills platform and I thought it would detect these image file names and here's a surprise. I can always go to edit and folder and change the paths, this is the fastest way, but with a larger list of platforms and duplicate games it will take some time, otherwise if I had 200 TB of space I wouldn't even bother

I know, I know, I do it like that, I reduce the photos and crop the video, every gb, mb is worth its weight in gold when the space runs out hehe

Tell me on what screen size do you use launchbox bigbox?

Edited 17 hours ago by JoeViking245
moved reply out of quote

[JoeViking245]

7 minutes ago, KRI$85 said:

for example: I have a teknoparrot platform, and now I created a raw thrills platform and I thought it would detect these image file names

The issue here is it's 2 separate platforms.  So it's looking in 2 separate folders.

 

9 minutes ago, KRI$85 said:

Tell me on what screen size do you use launchbox bigbox?

My cab has a 22" 1680x1050 monitor. 

TBH, I don't really fire up Big Box that often. And when I do, it goes to the 65" TV.  But I don't really "look at it" because I already know what game I'm going to play.  I just find the game, press "X" on the controller and it launches.