How much hard drive space is needed for EVERYTHING?

[vetteguy112233]

I just filled my 80GB and have to buy a larger hard drive. So far I've only got NES, SNES, Gameboy, GB Color and GBA, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, MALA and screenshots. I would eventually like to get more emulators and roms. I also want to obviously play PC games as well, but mainly just shooting games.

Assuming I am going to get all CHD files and all emulators/roms with screenshots, does anyone have any idea on what size of hard drive I should get? 320GB, 500GB, 1TB???

[nipsmg]

1Tb is a safe bet I think.  I have a 120GB hard drive right now with only MAME, ALL Nintendo except 64, all Catrtidge based sega, all atari, and colecovision and it's pretty close to full, and I think that's v120.  If you want to add N64 it's HUGE, plus the laserdisc games, any CD based systems (PSX, Dreamcast, Saturn), etc.  I think 500MB should hold pretty much everything right now, but it may not be enough going forward, and being that you can get 1tb drives for like 89.99 (check slickdeals/digitaldeals daily) it's probably just worth going the Terabyte route, storage is friggin cheap right now.

[Dazz]

I have 2TB (4x500gb) in my cabinet and I can honestly say that I need another hard drive or two.  BTW - This is 2TB without movies or music.

[vetteguy112233]

How large (not zipped) is MAME with all roms and CHD files and screenshots? From what I've researched I'm guessing around 30GB, is this correct?

[Dazz]

How large (not zipped) is MAME with all roms and CHD files and screenshots? From what I've researched I'm guessing around 30GB, is this correct?

My Mame folder is 130GB total.  This includes MAME, roms, CHD and the Laserdisc CHD for .129.

[vetteguy112233]

Ok, that makes me feel better. I can get a 320GB HD for $35 tomorrow, so considering I've filled my 80GB with almost everything I want. I'll get it and use my current 80GB as a slave and should still have room left after I get the CHD's for MAME.

[daywane]

in a year or 2 from now you will get sick of all the versions of the same game.
I have took out all games except English and USA games
PS1 and Dreamcast I use the Cd's
all stored in a 120 gig HD

[Cakemeister]

There's a Murphy's Law corollary that states that emulators will expand to fill all available disk space. So you might as well get the $35 320 gigabyte drive.

[9innail]

I would agree with the 1TB drive.For a little extra money you shouldn't have to upgrade for a year or two. 
I have a 250GB sata drive on my arcade cabinet and a 1TB fileserver on my network, and a 500GB external drive I use for transferring files. 

[Havok]

Plus the Mame LD files are huge!

Definitely get 1 TB...

[youki]

Just one question?  Will you have the time to  test "all" ?  (i mean in one life !)

[Ummon]

I'm so glad I only have a few hundred games, hardly any clones, and no console systems (well, I do have MESS, for Vectrex and Odyssey2, though I almost never play them).

[Dazz]

Just one question?  Will you have the time to  test "all" ?  (i mean in one life !)

Sure... look at Circo from Emumovies.com. 

[raqman]

yes, but if one only wanted MAME and superfast load times, then SDD is the way forward, dont you all agree?

True they are quite expensive now, where a 64GB drive costs around £140, but I reckon in a year, prices and sizes will be more affordable and looing at how fast EEE laptops load up, in a fourth of a time of a hard disk, then on an arcade machine, this woudl be great!!

[massive88]

So far I've only got NES, SNES, Gameboy, GB Color and GBA, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, MALA and screenshots.

320gb should be fine for that. 

My entire setup right now takes about 260 gbs, and I have those you listed plus all other atari systems, game gear, SMS, several Dreamcast and PSX games, many computer games.

It goes up really fast if you start to add in Sega CD, Saturn, DC, PSX, Laserdisc etc....

But those listed above, plus MAME (mame is 96.5 GB with Roms + CHDs right now) plus screens and movies should fit just fine on 320 GBs without problem.