Is it worth upgrading to an SSD for a mame machine?

[equlizer]

Currently using a 7200rpm 1tb platter drive with windows 7 64bit.  Is it worth switching it over to an SSD?  Right now i see alot of hard drive access and things just feel choppy.

[haynor666]

If You are using Hyperspin (lots of stuff is read during game browsing) then probably yes but if You are using light frontend then it does not make sense. There is also matter of of OS booting which is faster from SSD but is it really important on Arcade PC?

Main purpuse of such computer is load mame (usually loaded into memory once) and then desired game. Once You do this Your hard drive does not do anything apart OS processes in background.

[big10p]

So, to sum up, yes it is worth getting an SSD, especially now prices are pretty sensible. My cabs boot to the frontend in seconds, and even the newer, larger games in MAME load pretty much instantly.

[monkeybomb]

Given the price, I think the boot time alone is worth it.   Attract mode starts exactly 10 seconds after I hit the power button on my bartop. I couldn't do that with a 7200 rpm drive.

Sent from my HTC Desire EYE using Tapatalk

[keilmillerjr]

Fvck yes. Boot time cut so much.

[paigeoliver]

Also, if you aren't trying to run everything in the universe you will find that even the most modest budget ssds will hold everything you need.

[UEDan]

Not even a question now a days. Boot up times alone is worth it, then you get a system performance boost.
I still stick ROMs on the secondary HDD.

[Haze]

I'm going to say no, not unless you have budget to spare and literally nothing else to spend it on, a better processor will always make more difference.  Loading / bootup is only small amount of the time you'll spend actually using the machine so not a priority for 'optimizing'  I don't get all this wooing over boot times, it's a couple of seconds of your day.

Likewise, better controls are infinitely more important than an SSD

Maybe if you're expecting the cabinet to take a real beating then an SSD might be a better option than an HDD, but many arcade games use regular HDDs now without that being a major concern for the manufacturers.

Otherwise, it's one of the very last things I'd consider allocating budget to.

[DeLuSioNal29]

I'll take a hybrid approach on all the comments left so far.  SSD and spinning drives.

I have the following running on my newly upgraded 500gb SSD (C drive bootable)
-  Windows 7 64-bit
-  Hyperspin and all the artwork and video previews
-  MAME executable (rom files stores elsewhere)

Spinning drive (2tb)
-  MAME Roms and CHDs
-  Console Roms

You could probably have another spinning drive for CD ISO's but I only have a handful that I like so I put those on my 2tb drive.

I chose to put ROMS on a separate drive because if I re-do the OS, I don't have to copy over that blasted ROM folder that's HUGE.  I simply copy over Hyperspin (also huge, but like I said it has a performance increase) and the main MAME program and configs which I have backed up on an external drive.

DeL

[markc74]

I run a 60gb ssd on mine because it was cheap as chips and holds all the roms / videos i need.

The bootup time is nice. Roms load immediately (although still run through their startup sequence which kinda offsets it). The biggest bonus by far is the front end absolutely flies. This is especially noticeable if you're using video snapshots.

[UEDan]

I'm going to say no, not unless you have budget to spare and literally nothing else to spend it on, a better processor will always make more difference.  Loading / bootup is only small amount of the time you'll spend actually using the machine so not a priority for 'optimizing'  I don't get all this wooing over boot times, it's a couple of seconds of your day.

I bought my 128GB SSD for $30 on sale. SSDs are getting pretty cheap.
The better processors will still be bottle necked by the HDD. So you can only boot and navigate as fast as the HDD. Think hyperspin reading all those images and videos.
The time difference isn't a few seconds.
My bartop isn't on 24/7 I play 1 game then turn it off. I wait less than 20 seconds to start selecting a game. I don't want to sit there and wait a minute to play 1 game of DK.

Likewise, better controls are infinitely more important than an SSD

True, but SSDs are cheap now.

Maybe if you're expecting the cabinet to take a real beating then an SSD might be a better option than an HDD, but many arcade games use regular HDDs now without that being a major concern for the manufacturers.

And a lot of them are using ROMs chips to boot. A lot will just have to boot once then left on the rest of the day.

Otherwise, it's one of the very last things I'd consider allocating budget to.

[zzc2]

Ebay has some cheap SSD's. I got one for my mame and it runs so much better now with it.

[JoeB]

I find SSD reliability going up, while drive reliability going down.

I purchased a 500GB WD black drive 9 months ago, and I already had to RMA it.  The RMA'd drive lasted 3 months!  Just got the 2nd replacement.

I'm now running my MAME machine using a Samsung 300GB 760 SSD and couldn't be happier!

[ark_ader]

Do it!  I just lost a drive with all my arcade stuff on it, and even though I have backups, I find current magnetic media is not up to the same quality of standards as of 3 years ago.

Just make sure you have backups as I have had SSDs fail on me from the first month.

Thanks for asking the question, as some of us have machines as old as 2002, and the drive is a real pain especially if you have not dome a recent back ups.  Also I might want to point out that portable HDDs have become cheaper and more reliable than desktop models, and a quick dump to one of these drives is a good idea.   

 

[elvis]

Between when this thread was posted and now, I've changed my mind on this subject.

A week ago I thought an SSD in a MAME cabinet was a complete waste.  Then last week I loaded up GroovyArcade on a spindle disk and spent 30 seconds waiting between exiting a game and seeing the menu.

I rummaged around my spare parts box, and found a older model 64GB SSD that was useless to me in a laptop or desktop.  I put that in the GroovyArcade setup, and now that 30 second delay is completely gone.

I'm sold.  SSDs in all my MAME cabinets from now on, especially with 32 and 64GB SSDs being (a) very cheap, and (b) pretty good performers even on the low end budget models.

[keilmillerjr]

^^^^ yep. Newegg has 60gb ssds for 26$ free shipping. If one cant affor that, they are in the wrong hobby.

[paigeoliver]

^^^^ yep. Newegg has 60gb ssds for 26$ free shipping. If one cant affor that, they are in the wrong hobby.

You can get the whole system on that too, unless you are being stupidly aspirational with crap that will never run right with arcade controls.

[JDFan]

^^^^ yep. Newegg has 60gb ssds for 26$ free shipping. If one cant affor that, they are in the wrong hobby.

You can get the whole system on that too, unless you are being stupidly aspirational with crap that will never run right with arcade controls.

Or spend an extra $15 and get a $39.99 + $0.99 shipping 120GB drive if you are ! ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820016006 )

[elvis]

I think the big thing for my test was just how enormous the mame.xml is these days (over 180MB), and how many games MAME supports overall.  Scraping the XML and files on disk for a full MAME set is nuts.

My Neo Geo cabinet, also GroovyArcade, is not a problem on spindle.  It only hosts the 159 Neo Geo roms (based on requiring the neogeo bios parent), so that doesn't take much time at all (nearly instant from exiting the game back to the frontend).

But this new cabinet is the first full MAME set I've built in a cabinet in quite a number of years, and is a real eye opener as to just how much software MAME now supports.  It's certainly reminded me of my appreciation for MAMEDev and the various dumping groups.

[Lamaman1971]

I use a hybrid approach - SSD for the boot drive (small and inexpensive) and a large mechanical drive for everything else.