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Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: swirlee on January 15, 2015, 07:50:52 pm

Title: Running emulators and front ends from external drive?
Post by: swirlee on January 15, 2015, 07:50:52 pm

Will having all my emulators, MAME, my roms and hyperspin on an external HDD USB 2.0 work ok?

Title: Re: Running emulators and front ends from external drive?
Post by: Slippyblade on January 15, 2015, 08:39:57 pm

I currently run my retro console emulators off a USB stick with no problems.  I can't imagine a USB hard drive being an issue.

Well, I could see ONE problem.  If you moved it from one comp to another, the drive letter might change.  Which could screw with any configs you have on there for ROM paths and such.

Title: Re: Running emulators and front ends from external drive?
Post by: thomas_surles on January 15, 2015, 09:03:30 pm

Quote from: Slippyblade on January 15, 2015, 08:39:57 pm

I currently run my retro console emulators off a USB stick with no problems.  I can't imagine a USB hard drive being an issue.

Well, I could see ONE problem.  If you moved it from one comp to another, the drive letter might change.  Which could screw with any configs you have on there for ROM paths and such.

I used an external drive with maximus. I works great. But when I changed computers the drive letter did change. But all I had to do was go into maximus and change the directories. Only took about 10 minutes though

Title: Re: Running emulators and front ends from external drive?
Post by: EMDB on January 17, 2015, 08:54:54 am

I think Hyperspin will suffer from the external disk as it's themes and configurations use a lot *** really a lot *** of separate files. Emulators and ROMS are only loaded once which will only give a small, probably unnoticeable startup penalty.

Title: Re: Running emulators and front ends from external drive?
Post by: Sparkolicious on January 23, 2015, 11:28:04 am

I have my Hyperspin backup on a usb drive and it works fine. A couple things to note though. If you are running a lot of emulator,s in addition to changing the drive letter to match current setup, you will need to install other bits. For example ZiNC. You need to have visual basic runtime 5 installed or no worky.. Direct x or several emu's like project64 won't work. .net updates as well.. and you need to run DTools lite and setup and scsi drive that matches the one set up in SSF for sega saturn. Also some emulators save configs in your reg. (epsxe) You'll need to set those up too. It sounds like a lot of work, but compared to setting up 120 systems, it's nothing. ;)  Mine is P: Have moved it all around with minimal issue.. SSF not withstanding.. freaking thing is a pain in the butt.