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Help: Setting up hard drives for Mame

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Midcoastsurf:
Hello,

I posted this in the "software" section, but thought more people might see the post here.   I am new to the board and to Mame, but have been in the pinball/arcade hobby for about 16 years.  I am building a bartop mame machine and am looking for suggestions about the best way to set up my hard drives.  I have 1 80gb and 1 250gb hard drive.  I will be running Windows XP.  Both hard drives are wiped clean.  Looking for advice around partitioning, amount needed for Win XP, etc.  My initial thought is to partition the 80 gb into two portions, one 20gb and one 60gb with Win Xp on the 20gb, then put the consoles games on the remaining 60gb (Only really want Atari, Nes, SNES, N64, Genesis).  Then put Mame on the 250 gb (obviously not much room for CHD files.)

I realize that buying a larger Hard drive would be the best solution...but that is not an option right now.

Thanks for the help,
Brad

Eldritch1969:
Hi there,
Your parttioning scheme seems to me to be quite alright. Only thing I have doubts about is the need to have a 20 gigs partition for WinXP. Yous should (in my opinion), get a smaller partition for the OS, by using Tiny XP, for instance. Or by stripping XP down to the bare essentials. Consider 10 gigs to be sufficient in that case.

It will boot much faster and run more smoothly, too
That is what I have done for my own bartop build.

Garza:
I agree if you are going to partition tiny XP would be the best. However if you are just going to use Reg XP Why partition? I have mame, and all the emus in individual folders and use atomicFE for the Front end and it works perfectly. By just using one partition it may make your mame affair that much easier... Just a thought...

brad808:
Here's my opinion. Old hard drives tend to be loud and bartops tend to be pretty cramped for space. I would partition the 250gb drive with maybe 20-30 gig for system and the remainder for all the roms. My hyperspin folder with just mame (videos, roms, mostly all the good working chds) is 70 gig. I would imagine you could fit all the rest of the emulators you want to on there as well. Then in the future if you need the extra hard drive, throw it in there and bam extra space for whatever you need.

rCadeGaming:
My MAME PC isn't accessible right this moment, but if memory serves, 80g is enough for most of MAME's working roms and a selection of CHDs.  Don't think you need all the CHD's, a lot of them are for newer non-working games, or games that are too dumb to warrant the space.


--- Quote from: Garza on November 20, 2012, 02:55:28 pm ---if you are just going to use Reg XP Why partition?
--- End quote ---

Good question.  Is there a speed benefit to partitioning Windows seperate from MAME?  I was just going to put everything together on one partition on an 80g solid state drive.

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