Re: Backup software for ROMS

[N-D-N]

Hi,

Wanted to check to see if anyone knows of any software for backing up ROMS. Looking for something that would take my Mame ROM folder, copy my roms (the way they are, not into some other format) into other folders (span) that are the size of a CDR. That way, all I would have to do is simply burn them to a CDR, then just delete the (span)folders off my hard drive.

Thanks,

N-D-N

[1UP]

UHH...  Why don't you just burn the folders to CD?  That just might work!    You should be able to point Mame to look on the CD for the roms.  You must have a LOT of them if you need to move them offline, most roms are TINY!

[Malenko]

I think he wants something that will divide the rom selection into as many 650MB or 700 MB sections as possible, so that he can just burn then delete the folder. Therefore making a 1 to 1 copy of his rom archive using as few CDRs as possible and not duplicating roms.

You can always RAR it into 700 MB sections :p

[nipsmg]

it would be really easy to write something that will start alphabetically and move as many roms as possible into a separate folder, and start over when reaching the limit.  I could easily write something like that in about 5 minutes..

If it were to be optimized to use the least amount of CDR's possible, however, I guess you'd probably have to use a best fit algorithm to fit as many roms as possible onto a cd.. however, even if you didn't use a best-fit.. I'm not sure the difference in space saved would even span an entire CD-R so it's almost not worth it.

NipsMG

[SirPoonga]

I did thi manually, it doesn't take long, about 5 minutes.
Just make about 7 olders.  display the folders in one explorer window.
Then open up another exporer window.  Then start highlighting 750 megs worth of roms, cut and paste them to a folder.
For me I made an indexing tool too so I know which CD the roms are on.

[Lilwolf]

I had plans at some point to allow you to copy your roms into 700 mg locations by type... where it would copy for each parent rom, a single image for screenshot, flyer, cabinet, marquee... and all its children.  

So you would say fighters... and it would copy all the fighters you had left, fill up a 700 and maybe 200 into another directory... then you say puzzles and it continues... until they are all done.

this way you could play from the CD's...

the trouble is that I didn't want to copy them because I was out of diskspace on my computer at the time... and I didn't want to write a program to move my wrongs... becuase when I !@#!@'d up when debugging I didn't want to trash them all....

Well, I bought a new harddrive... and keep a copy on each

[Howard_Casto]

You have to make it slightly smaller than 700 megs as the filesystem complains if it's right at 700.  I do like sirp and keep adding until they are full. I would like to eventually put all of my roms on cd but as I have multiple emulators I support now [and of course I had to get the romset for testing purposes... (no seriously)] my collection is HUGE.  I'll have to wait until dvd burners become affordable before I can back them up.  

On the bright side if any of the rom sites go down I have a complete set as far as arcade roms go.