Internal HDD becomes too slow with LB: how i can solve?

[legolas119]

Hi , i have a desktop PC, with a SSD as disk C (where i have my OS) and a 2TB HDD where i put all my emulators, roms and Lauchbox.

Currently LB becomes really slow, i don't know why-...My HDD is almost full, do you think this is the reason? Does i need to change the internal HDD as it is too full and for this reason LB becomes slow? 

I'm evaluating if i could buy an external 4TB HDD instead of an internal one, whre to transfer LB and emulators/roms, but i don't know if this choice will solve my issue related to the LB perfomance...

Which could be the cause of the slowdown?

thanks!

[AstroBob]

Hi @legolas119 thanks for the report here.

LaunchBox is certainly known to perform better on an SSD rather than a HDD, but that said it may not be the only reason why you might be seeing issues here. We'd need to know a bit more about the specifics of your setup, to try and advise further. 

We recently published a guide specifically on troubleshooting performance. You can view it below: 

It would be great if you could follow the steps outlined in that guide to see if that improves what you're seeing. If not, at the bottom you can see a list of diagnostics to provide, and we can try to dig into this further. 

Keep me posted

Cheers,

[legolas119]

oh many thanks, it is very useful! I had already unckeced the Storefront Imports option. But ow i disable the Non-Local Related Games option and the performance increase significantly!I'm not able to find the "Save Management" option in Tools --> Option --> General. Is it in a different place now?thank you

[AstroBob]

3 hours ago, legolas119 said:

I'm not able to find the "Save Management" option in Tools --> Option --> General. Is it in a different place now?thank you

You need to be on a least 13.18-beta1 for this option to be available, so you'll need to opt in to the beta by going to Options > General > Updates and turn on Update to Beta Releases. It isn't available in versions prior to that.

Great to hear some of the changes have made improvements, would be great to hear if turning this off adds further improvements to your boot speeds. 

Let me know

[legolas119]

well, currently i have 13.17 version...the automatic update doesn't update it to any newer version..i will wait for the official release

In any case, now performance are better than before, disabling the option i mentioned above!

Do you think that if i buy a bigger HDD (a 4TB instead of the current almost completly full 2TB) i could have additional speed?  

Do you think that moving my lauchbox and roms/emulators folders in an external SDD drive like this : https://www.amazon.it/dp/B08RX4QKXS?tag=marketital068-99167-21&linkCode=osi&th=1 could be a good solution too? Or is it better to have an internal HDD (an internal SSD unfortunately is currently too expensive for me...)?

thanks!

Edited Tuesday at 08:51 PM by legolas119

[AstroBob]

2 hours ago, legolas119 said:

well, currently i have 13.17 version...the automatic update doesn't update it to any newer version..i will wait for the official release

You need to have the option to opt into Beta releases turned on for it to find the update, but we’re close to the official release this week anyway. 😊

It’s hard to say with certainty, but if you’re sticking with an HDD and simply expanding the storage, I don’t think it will provide a noticeable gain in performance unless the new HDD has significantly faster write speeds. That said, moving from an HDD to an SSD may give you a boost, simply because SSDs are inherently much faster to access.

The main performance delay you’ll notice with an HDD is the time it takes to spin up. For example, when loading a game, it may take a bit longer to get the HDD up to speed. For lightweight games, I don’t think it would be that big of a deal, but on some heavier platforms that constantly read/write to the disk, you might notice a difference.

Before investing in a purchase like that, it would be good to understand what exactly you mean when you say “LaunchBox is slow.” A new external SSD will only impact how fast you can access games. If the performance issue you’re experiencing is related to startup times or navigating around LaunchBox, then upgrading to an SSD for your games won’t help at all, as those processes rely on the internal drive where LaunchBox is stored.

If you’re able to elaborate on what you’re hoping to achieve and provide more details about the performance issues you’re seeing, I might be able to advise further. I hope that makes sense!

[legolas119]

17 hours ago, AstroBob said:

You need to have the option to opt into Beta releases turned on for it to find the update, but we’re close to the official release this week anyway. 😊

It’s hard to say with certainty, but if you’re sticking with an HDD and simply expanding the storage, I don’t think it will provide a noticeable gain in performance unless the new HDD has significantly faster write speeds. That said, moving from an HDD to an SSD may give you a boost, simply because SSDs are inherently much faster to access.

The main performance delay you’ll notice with an HDD is the time it takes to spin up. For example, when loading a game, it may take a bit longer to get the HDD up to speed. For lightweight games, I don’t think it would be that big of a deal, but on some heavier platforms that constantly read/write to the disk, you might notice a difference.

Before investing in a purchase like that, it would be good to understand what exactly you mean when you say “LaunchBox is slow.” A new external SSD will only impact how fast you can access games. If the performance issue you’re experiencing is related to startup times or navigating around LaunchBox, then upgrading to an SSD for your games won’t help at all, as those processes rely on the internal drive where LaunchBox is stored.

If you’re able to elaborate on what you’re hoping to achieve and provide more details about the performance issues you’re seeing, I might be able to advise further. I hope that makes sense!

thank you!

Well, when I say "launchbox is slow" i'm talking about the user experience on launchbox, I'm not referring to performace issues related to access games.  I'm referring to startup and navigating aroud. For example, before to disable the "Non-Local Related Games option", the startup was really slow and navigating around games it was slow too. It requested a lot of time also when i right-click on a game in order to choose the "Edit" option.   Now, disabling that options, Launchbox is really faster!  I will evaluate if buy a new external or internal HDD as the current one is full, i need a 4TB disk   I will search for a good HDD model, but it is quite difficult to find a 4TB HDD with 7200rpm for example...

[AstroBob]

Thanks for the update, glad to hear those changes have improved things for you. Based on your explanation, just to make clear a new external HDD just to store your games won't make a different in terms of the performance of navigating around LaunchBox, since that is stored on your internal HDD. If you were to upgrade the internal HDD though, to one that has faster read/write speeds then it's possible you may see an improvement, but I don't think it would be that noticeable. That said, if you need to upgrade for more space anyways then it's probably worth it, but just want to be clear in terms of what you can expect for LaunchBox performance.

Let me know how you get on or if there's anything else I can help you with.

Cheers,

[legolas119]

thank you! Yes i need to upgrade my internal HDD where i store both LB and all my emulators/roms as it is almost full. I will look for a good internal HDD, possibly better than the current one

I'm evaluating if it could be a good solution to move both LB and roms/emulators from the internal to an external HDD: if i will not notice particular issues related to performance, i will prefer an external HDD as i can quickly move it on a different PC 

 

thank you again!