To zip or to unzip...games, that is the question?.

[Bigjosher84]

I guess I post this here, since I did not see an area just for "Launchbox_>Windows". I have a rough idea about this, but just to make sure. As the Title suggest is it better to unzip rom files?. Even if a zipped file saves on file size, is there any major drawbacks to keeping roms zipped? advantage versus disadvantage.

 

Thank You,

                  God Bless and be Safe :)

[C-Beats]

Zip files are almost never required or of any real help. This is especially true for cart based systems where the ROM files are already extremely small. Zipping them just adds more process overhead before you can use the file. If the emulator has to unzip before reading the file it can also wear out SSDs because you have to write to the disk so much more often. CD based systems all have compressed file types that don't require the entire file be uncompressed to read and should be used to save space. Extensions like CHD, RVZ, CISO, etc.

[Bigjosher84]

Thank You C-beats

                  God Bless and be Safe 

[xokia]

I found it depends on the platform. Some platforms zipped files can save some space for more roms. I think it was xbox I tried zipped vs non zipped and there was around 120GB of space savings (for a large collection). The tradeoff is the time it takes to unzip.

Then there are some like nintendo switch where very few games offer any savings at all zipped vs unzipped.

Edited Tuesday at 05:58 PM by xokia

[Bigjosher84]

Thank You Xokia 

                  God Bless and be Safe 

[MrDeKat]

On 2/26/2025 at 2:51 PM, C-Beats said:

Zip files are almost never required or of any real help. This is especially true for cart based systems where the ROM files are already extremely small. Zipping them just adds more process overhead before you can use the file. If the emulator has to unzip before reading the file it can also wear out SSDs because you have to write to the disk so much more often. CD based systems all have compressed file types that don't require the entire file be uncompressed to read and should be used to save space. Extensions like CHD, RVZ, CISO, etc.

One question. I've converted PS2 and PSP ISO files to CHD files, but Launchbox doesn't detect the achievements of most of them. However, when playing them in their corresponding emulators, it does detect the achievements.

Is this a limitation of Launchbox (as it happened with RVZ files) or maybe there is something I'm doing wrong?