External hard drive in a mame?

[Igorr]

I may be able to get a large capacity external hard drive to replace the one I was going to use in my mame. This would work right? It would use the operating system that is on the hard drive thats on the computer now right? Any ideas/comments?

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I use a laptop in my cabinet that had an unfortunately small internal HDD ... since Daphe took up all the space on the laptop's HDD, and I have about 7000 MAME roms running, I use a USB 2.0 external hard drive and I experience no problem whatsoever with it.

[Kitsune Sniper]

MAME simply reads the data from the hard drive as it normally would. It loads it into memory then runs it from there. It might be a bit slower to read the data, depending on the USB cable, but it shouldn't be that much of a difference, if any.

I'm not sure if there would be issues with CHDs, but I don't believe anything bad would happen with that.

[diskoboy]

As everyone else has already stated, yes, it works.

I keep all my roms/chd images on my 320GB WD Passport. With a complete collection of MAME chd's taking up around 77 gigs, those portable hard drives are a godsend.

[Kitsune Sniper]

As everyone else has already stated, yes, it works.

I keep all my roms/chd images on my 320GB WD Passport. With a complete collection of MAME chd's taking up around 77 gigs, those portable hard drives are a godsend.

Hah, man, just wait until Laserdiscs become common. Your Passport won't be enough. :p

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Hah, man, just wait until Laserdiscs become common. Your Passport won't be enough. :p

Laserdisc image files aren't that large...they're roughly around 1 GB each ... and there are probably only around 20-30 LD games total.

You should be able to fit all of the LD games featured on Daphne (which is nearly every single LD game) on a 320G drive and still have plenty left over for MAME roms.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Laserdisc image files aren't that large...they're roughly around 1 GB each ... and there are probably only around 20-30 LD games total.

You should be able to fit all of the LD games featured on Daphne (which is nearly every single LD game) on a 320G drive and still have plenty left over for MAME roms.

Uh, last I heard, Laserdisc CHDs are going to be around 17 GB EACH. Daphne laserdisc images are just MPEG encodes. MAME Laserdisc CHDs are full copies of the data on the discs.

[diskoboy]

Hah, man, just wait until Laserdiscs become common. Your Passport won't be enough. :p

Actually, I have the Daphne Mpeg's on there too.. Gotta have my M.A.C.H. 3! :)




But now that MAME is supporting Naomi, Naomi 2, and Haikaru games- you're right.... I'm gonna need a bigger hard drive.

[jb143]

I'm running Dragon's Lair as well and it barely makes a dent on my hard drive. Mame doesn't even really run LD games yet anyways. And there's no real reason it has to. With Daphne and a good frontend you can integrate them seamlessly into your cabinet.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Uh, last I heard, Laserdisc CHDs are going to be around 17 GB EACH. Daphne laserdisc images are just MPEG encodes. MAME Laserdisc CHDs are full copies of the data on the discs.

Ah. I was unaware that they were MPEG encodes.

(I always just assumed they were 1:1 rips encoded to some type of digital format)

Can't imagine the real LD looking much better, it looks like most if not all of them aren't even suffering visually from any compression.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Ah. I was unaware that they were MPEG encodes.

(I always just assumed they were 1:1 rips encoded to some type of digital format)

Can't imagine the real LD looking much better, it looks like most if not all of them aren't even suffering visually from any compression.

That's easy to explain.

""...mamedev can waste your disk space with impunity." - R. Belmont.

Any questions?

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

That's easy to explain.

""...mamedev can waste your disk space with impunity." - R. Belmont.

Any questions?

So ... as far as LD images go ... do the LD games that are featured in current builds of MAME UI work if you have actual 1:1 rips of the laserdiscs in your rom folder?

[Kitsune Sniper]

So ... as far as LD images go ... do the LD games that are featured in current builds of MAME UI work if you have actual 1:1 rips of the laserdiscs in your rom folder?

*slaps forehead* I'm sorry, I misread your post.

They should work once the CHDs are made available. I have no idea what laserdisc games are on the emulator at the moment, but the only one that's working 100% is Cube Quest.

Also, I correct myself - Cube Quest's CHD is 12 GB.