How do you store your ROMs? An adult discussion

[Archolm]

Hello all, been emulating for many years now and every year I feel like I learn something new and focussing on ROMs, I have been through some packs through the years. Just when I thought I had the "best" version of a ROM, I'd learn something new and then have to search and archiving of that ROM set.
Only recently have I discovered a certain joy for the SHMUPS genre. However not all, if they do at all, frontends display the genre of a game. So I find myself, analy yes I admit, sorting games into categories so at least I can pick the game from an emulators file browser. These are not full-on system sets, these are through the years, heavily curated lists of the best of the best or at least the curious.

From perhaps a game company's view I'd own well over millions of gameplay hours.
But I play very little and a lot of the time I find more joy in reading up or collecting patches/roms/watching retrospectives on YT.
These past few months I have been looking at the higher disk space req consoles, the PS3, Vita, little WiiU, little XBox 360 and yes I'll admit, full-on Switch xci's.
Again, very very little playing, but I'm like in love with the JRPGs and there's just an awesome library there. It always feels like I'm collecting and "one day" I'll play them.
I have ordered a 6TB WD Black HD for just this purpose. They will complement my 2 WD USB drives. One will be in my system facilitating constant access and the 2 USB ones will be my backups.

My too long didn't read:

1. How do you store your ROMs, do you categorize? Full sets, small collections?
2. What sort of storage do you have to store all these ROMs? Do you back up these files?

Hope a good discussion can come of this and whatever you are willing to share, please do! Please follow GBAtemp.net rules and no linking of ROMs.

 

[Jayro]

Nothing crazy, just a ROMs directory on my gaming drive, organized by system. Only a few full ROMsets for the Gameboy family, NES, and GameGear. The rest are just hand-picked favorites I actually play, and some ROMhacks. The loose ROMs there are just some GoombaColor injects I was testing.

 

[DinohScene]

I have a dedicated storage drive for games.
Be it console ROMs/ISOs or PC ISOs, everything is categorized per manufacturer and generation.

I'm a digital archivist :x

 

[SylverReZ]

Nothing special. I store them at most on my hard drive, also love to archive my physically game collection from cartridges to optical media.

I have a dedicated storage drive for games.
Be it console ROMs/ISOs or PC ISOs, everything is categorized per manufacturer and generation.

I'm a digital archivist :x

Same here. If there's something that I should feel like the world should see that is very uncommon, then I post it to Archive.

 

[Lostbhoy]

Pretty much in console labelled folders on the sd card and backed up on my pc.

I have (more or less) full rom sets which are just alphabetically sorted but my retro arch does have a few genre related pages for driving, shmups, fighting, arcade classics and the good ol favourites page takes a beating!!

 

[Missterobe]

I have a drive specifically for roms with folders for each system I want and each system has 50 or 100 roms depending on how many games I like from each one. 10 systems and 700 roms in total excluding any Windows games which I store in a different drive.

I did a lot of work to make them look nice. For example all my 100 PS1 roms are .pbp files(files you can play on a PSP) so there's no .cue and .bin files and different folders with many tracks or multiple disks, just one file per game.
My DOS games are all .zip files(some are old abandonware, some I zipped from my GOG collection) and I run them on Retroarch using Dosbox pure and it reads them directly from the .zip file.
My Dreamcast roms are all .chd files so again no multiple folders and files for each game.

All my other roms are like this too. Very easy to organize and manage and they look great.

 

[Jotunheim]

I put in my HD or SSD and make a backup in Google Drive.

 

[ViviVoid]

I have full sets for most things up to where file sizes are too much for full sets, for stuff from about the Wii forward I just have the games I like or am interested in playing someday. Then I have everything backed up with 2 redundancies. Everything I'm not playing currently is compressed as small as it will go.

I just sort by console.

 

[Kioku]

Full sets where applicable and they are sorted by manufacturer, console, locale.. if they are stored on a drive for the platform, they are split into smaller subfolders, each containing anywhere from 20 to 33% of the library (depends on console).

 

[Redhorse]

Interesting topic... First I ripped my last gen console 9games) from the carts, then I realized there was a way to trim them, I then dl'd them trimmed and inadvertently mixed them in with the regular ones, then I found there were archives in numbered order... all mixed together (now)... now I have to figure out how to separate them without deleting the best of them... and that is only from two consoles, of 6k + games... ugh!

I do have 'final storage' for some that are listed first per console and then (one folder down) per genre... not sure that is the best way though. it IS good to know that I'm not the only person that spends more time collecting them than actually playing them.

 

[eternal]

Cheap way is to get a nice large hdd like 12-16tb and store all your want to keep forever files there, and keep them in super organized order, and maybe backup periodically (not to the cloud).

Another option is to save up the money and build a full on NAS type server, and run Plex on it while youre at it. lol You could use something like UnRaid and have it just for the files you want to keep forever and then expand from there as your knowledge grows.

But yeah most of the joy of collecting the good old files is finding them and keeping those patches etc. for games. Im sure there's a discussion somewhere on reddit datahoarder about other ways to save files.

 

[JuanMena]

No need to copy/store, as long as Internet exists, there will always be roms available.

 

[SylverReZ]

I put in my HD or SSD and make a backup in Google Drive.

Most of mine goes on MEGA.NZ.

 

[eternal]

Most of mine goes on MEGA.NZ.

I dont trust the cloud when it comes to roms

 

[SylverReZ]

I dont trust the cloud when it comes to roms

That's fair. This is referring to my own personal backups.

 

[eternal]

That's fair. This is referring to my own personal backups.

I get that, but arent you not worried about the site ever going down? I remember when emuparadise was a thing, and zippy passed away recently? I think maybe due more to money but even still

 

[SylverReZ]

I get that, but arent you not worried about the site ever going down? I remember when emuparadise was a thing, and zippy passed away recently? I think maybe due more to money but even still

Not at all, as a matter of fact, I have them stored on my HDD too so its a matter of putting them elsewhere in case they go down.

 

[x65943]

They are more or less in random folders across 3 hdds attached to my PC, and I use the everything search app to find them when I want them

 

[SylverReZ]

They are more or less in random folders across 3 hdds attached to my PC, and I use the everything search app to find them when I want them

Same here too.

 

[Necron]

Not too long ago I did some maintenance to my DSLite, so I could play 4 swords on it (thanks old me for getting the 3in1). So I noticed I had games laying everywhere, just centralized them on a folder called ISOs (I know, but it works) and then each game ordered by system, then region, then alphabet. This last one I'm a bit iffy about, since it's harder to look for stuff, but keeps things tidier (something like Everything does help a LOT with this tho).

As for the packs themselves, always try to get stuff like redump and such, plus I'm lazy to dump all my games and this feels easier and better lol.