Sorting Roms / find and handle dublicates

[Chris Kant]

after catching several rom packages I know that I have a lot of dublicate roms with (sometimes) different naming. to test, check and delete thousands of games I would like to ask the group here if there is a rom manager out there for i.e. NES, SNES Games etc. to make the checks if there are duplicates. in my dreamy visions I see a tool that would go into the 7z or zip file, check the MD5 checksum put it in a list and after scanning all roms it would then check the checksums and shows me the duplicates. so that I have the chance to delete one or another etc. also with the possibility for renaming it in a batch like way.

does someone of you are using something like that and give me some recommendations?

 

best regards,

me

[moudrost]

I use a combination of 3.

ClrMamePro: https://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro/

I have used this for as long as I can remember. I tend to stick with it for MAME, however it will do any DAT. I avoid this for large ISOs such as PS2 since it can't handle decompressing very well and often will fail fixing issues. It is probably one of the easier ones to wrap your head around and is great for cartridge based consoles.

ROMCenter: https://www.romcenter.com/

I moved to this one to deal with the above issue for CD based systems. I find this to be a bit buggy sometimes but does a decent job when it works.

ROMVault: https://www.romvault.com/

I feel like this is where all the action is on the development side. There is a paid version that will maintain up to date DATs for you, but I'm just starting to migrate towards this for all things but MAME. It is different enough that I'm not the most comfortable with it yet, but I could see myself using this as my go to when I am.

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Speaking of DATs, these are all useless without them. You will use these in combination with one of the applications above to scan, rename, fix, remove duplicates, or rebuild sets to your liking. I recommend checking YouTube for various how to videos or reading through as much documentation before you begin. I highly recommend creating a backup of your files BEFORE you start because you can destroy things pretty easily if you don't know what you are doing.

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No-Intro handles cartridge based systems. Go here to get the needed DATs: https://datomatic.no-intro.org/index.php?page=download&s=64

Redump handles CD based systems. Go here for those: http://redump.org/downloads/

You can create your own DATs using ClrMamePro. It is built into the executable to generate one. You can also acquire one already made from many places you acquire the games from. I'm not aware of any place that hosts these specifically.

Honorable mentions for TOSEC: https://www.tosecdev.org/downloads There are tons of systems not covered by the above and are handled by this group. I don't see a bunch of people looking for these games, but it is at least worthwhile knowing about them. For example, I use TOSEC for Spectrum games since what is covered in No-Intro is pretty small in comparison and I like Spectrum games.

For information purposes only, there is/was a thing called Goodsets. I have no idea if anyone really manages this anymore. The sets were difficult to deal with because of all the garbage ROMs in each. Go here for more information if you are curious: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/GoodTools

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Good luck and have fun.

[Chris Kant]

7 hours ago, moudrost said:

I use a combination of 3.

ClrMamePro: https://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro/

I have used this for as long as I can remember. I tend to stick with it for MAME, however it will do any DAT. I avoid this for large ISOs such as PS2 since it can't handle decompressing very well and often will fail fixing issues. It is probably one of the easier ones to wrap your head around and is great for cartridge based consoles.

ROMCenter: https://www.romcenter.com/

I moved to this one to deal with the above issue for CD based systems. I find this to be a bit buggy sometimes but does a decent job when it works.

ROMVault: https://www.romvault.com/

I feel like this is where all the action is on the development side. There is a paid version that will maintain up to date DATs for you, but I'm just starting to migrate towards this for all things but MAME. It is different enough that I'm not the most comfortable with it yet, but I could see myself using this as my go to when I am.

---

Speaking of DATs, these are all useless without them. You will use these in combination with one of the applications above to scan, rename, fix, remove duplicates, or rebuild sets to your liking. I recommend checking YouTube for various how to videos or reading through as much documentation before you begin. I highly recommend creating a backup of your files BEFORE you start because you can destroy things pretty easily if you don't know what you are doing.

---

No-Intro handles cartridge based systems. Go here to get the needed DATs: https://datomatic.no-intro.org/index.php?page=download&s=64

Redump handles CD based systems. Go here for those: http://redump.org/downloads/

You can create your own DATs using ClrMamePro. It is built into the executable to generate one. You can also acquire one already made from many places you acquire the games from. I'm not aware of any place that hosts these specifically.

Honorable mentions for TOSEC: https://www.tosecdev.org/downloads There are tons of systems not covered by the above and are handled by this group. I don't see a bunch of people looking for these games, but it is at least worthwhile knowing about them. For example, I use TOSEC for Spectrum games since what is covered in No-Intro is pretty small in comparison and I like Spectrum games.

For information purposes only, there is/was a thing called Goodsets. I have no idea if anyone really manages this anymore. The sets were difficult to deal with because of all the garbage ROMs in each. Go here for more information if you are curious: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/GoodTools

---

Good luck and have fun.

Thank. So there is no such tool as I look for. Especially on the cd based one where I did all the chd and rvz conversions.

[moudrost]

You are out of luck if you converted your CD based games to CHD or RVZ. That is the main reason I keep everything in a format that I can scan even with the space and inconvenience hit in having to extract the game prior to running it. LaunchBox can extract them automatically before running the game and with the exception of a few platforms, it is pretty quick. If it is a game I run often, I'll convert it to CHD and point that one game to a special directory I keep those in and keep the original so I can audit it.

[Chris Kant]

23 hours ago, moudrost said:

You are out of luck if you converted your CD based games to CHD or RVZ. That is the main reason I keep everything in a format that I can scan even with the space and inconvenience hit in having to extract the game prior to running it. LaunchBox can extract them automatically before running the game and with the exception of a few platforms, it is pretty quick. If it is a game I run often, I'll convert it to CHD and point that one game to a special directory I keep those in and keep the original so I can audit it.

Even for the none cd based games I potentially have no luck and have to go with the dat files.