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an Idea...
Lecithin:
--- Quote from: TOK on February 28, 2009, 04:53:26 pm ---Flash drive sounds like a great idea, particularly if you drop it on your leg.
--- End quote ---
:laugh2:
u_rebelscum:
You probably don't have to worry about this, but I'll bring it up anyway.
Flash drives have a lower write times before failure than hard drives. Mame saves to the cfg files every time that game is exited, as well as nvram or diff if the game has it. To increase the flash drive's life span, you might want to have these saved to you hard drive by changing the CORE OUTPUT DIRECTORY OPTIONS in mame.ini to folders in the HD. SSD (solid state drives) have write leveling algorithms in the firmware that extend their life spans; most flash thumb drives ATM don't have them.
Mind you, the flash write times is something in the order of 1,000 to 10,000 times (vs HD's 100,000), so it probably would be years before you start seeing problems due to write times.
RayB:
There is no reason running off a Flash drive should be any "slower" unless you're streaming data (ie: CHD games)