How do you backup your downloaded ROMs? (lemmy.one)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by hellisfulloftacos@lemmy.one to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I use emulators that play directly from (.iso) or (.img) files, however as you probably know, most ROMs are downloaded as archives.

Do you backup your ROMs in their downloaded archived format? Or as uncompressed files?

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[-] AnEilifintChorcra@sopuli.xyz 16 points 4 days ago

For 3DS games I use NDSTokyoTrim to remove useless data from the game files to make them smaller.

DreamCast, PS1 & PS2 games get compressed to chd with chdman.

GameCube and Wii are compressed to rvz with Dolphin.

PS3 I remove the PS3_UPDATE folder, 256MiB for each game adds up. I also use Gnarly Repacks for PS3 games since they have better compression than anything I've tried so far.

Switch games, I use nsz.

Then I use tar with zst on all of them, Nsz and rvz already use zst so theres no change but I just like to keep everything the same accross all of my roms and pc games.

Everything else, GB, NDS, SNES etc all get archived and compressed with tar and zst. For these I'll also use the --ultra -22 option since they're small enough files anyway so they don't take long to compress/decompress. If anyone knows any specific compression/trimming methods that are better than zst, I'd love to hear about them!

Copies of all the tar archives are kept on 2 separate drives and a copy of the games are on my PC in whatever the smallest format is that is compatible with their emulator.

[-] zedricxks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

what programs do you use for the tar and then zst? do you happen to have a guide?

[-] AnEilifintChorcra@sopuli.xyz 1 points 23 hours ago

Just tar and zstd. They're probably installed by default for most distros anyway.

I think this is what I used when I first tried out zstd https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-and-use-zstd-compression-tool-on-linux

Tar supports input from zstd so I put everything on one line.

tar -I 'zstd -v --ultra -22' -cvf YourFile.tar.zst -C /path/to/your/file YourFile

-I takes the input from zstd which is in quotes.

--ultra it should be redundant but for some reason its needed for higher levels of compression.

-22 the highest level of compression offered by zstd.

-c for compress.

-v for verbose.

-f for the file name.

-C excludes the absolute path to the file/directory and just takes YourFile as the file/directory to compress. Its not needed if you're in the same directory as YourFile.

I would recommend leaving out

--ultra -22

and just test how much compression you get with the default level first because 22 is super slow and if it just can't compress the file you won't see any difference in file size compared to the default compression level.

[-] zedricxks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 hours ago

thats really helpful thank you!

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

Uncompressed playable format.

Backups are done with Veeam on a selfhosted Backup and Replication server

[-] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 11 points 4 days ago

My backup is seeding.

[-] 404@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago

Makes me think of this video

Harder Drive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJSW7Rprio

[-] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 days ago

Wtf did I just watch

[-] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 days ago

What happens when a genius gets bored

[-] Whooping_Seal@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Whatever file format I use them in is also how I back them up, I backup my entire desktop's and laptop's data to an external hard drive and an online service provider. I'm sure a compressed format would be more space efficient but that would take much more time given my use case.

In the case of my laptop it runs Linux and the filesystem I use supports "transparent compression" (almost all contents of the drive are compressed with zstd), so I'm guessing any of the ROMs on there will have already been compressed as nuch as they can (but I'm not knowledgeable enough on the file format specs)

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago

Your backup is probably already compressed. Why do both, have the risk of corruption and being un-unpackable, work of doing it vs just hsving ine backup and be done.
Only upside would maybe be local space storage

[-] Outtatime@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 days ago

If anybody has a good option let me know. I tried using one drive to back up my entire lunchbox install (about 780GB) and Microsoft said nope. Apparently they give you 1 TB of storage but if you upload too much they cut you off. Pretty lame.

[-] Mountain_Mike_420@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah just buy a 1tb (or more) drive and backpack everything to it. Keep it in a safe place and it should be fine for 5 to 10 (maybe more) years.

[-] Outtatime@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah I do that. I just like a cloud option also. I was thinking of zipping it all and uploading to Usenet 😂

[-] Mountain_Mike_420@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

Nice. Yeah I hear that. I saw someone else’s comment here that they have a torrent of all their games as their backup. As long as you had an offsite torrent copy of your files that seems like and excellent idea.

[-] petrescatraian@libranet.de 2 points 3 days ago

@Outtatime probably they have an upload quota per each week/month. Just wait for a while and see if you still have the issue. Or just archive the full thing.

@hellisfulloftacos

[-] LordPassionFruit@lemm.ee 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I have terrible but defined habits for my ROMs. I use the same folder structure for all of them.

./[platform]/[game]/[game].zip

./[platform]/[game]/[game].iso

./[platform]/[game]/saves/...

If it's a series, using Pokémon as an example, I also have:

./Pokemon/Backups/[game].zip

./Pokemon/[generation]/[game]/[game].iso

So it's not that good of a backup, mainly there in case the iso corrupts, but I think it's better than nothing.

[-] petrescatraian@libranet.de 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

@LordPassionFruit wouldn't it be easier to go with something like ./[game]/[platform]/ and then in the platform folder to add all the game specific files for each platform?

@hellisfulloftacos

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

I go for full libraries. This would never work for me! Haha

[-] n3m37h@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

Send them to me! I have 30+ Tb of storage

[-] celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago

I would have thought that the vast majority of people who download ROMs download them individually based off of their preference, not downloading the entirety of the PS1 or PS2 library.

To answer your question, it doesn't matter other than compression. Backups are backups.

[-] Whooping_Seal@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

Some older consoles have very negligible size libraries in modern day terms, and who knows what sources of ROMs will be taken down by lawsuits in the next few decades. I feel like there is some sense in making a complete archive of a systems game library, but for my personal use I usually just download / dump / rip what I need specifically.

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

If the emulator can't run games from archive files, then I store what I play unarchived, and what I don't play stays as archived as it was.

Unless they're small files, then I'd probably back then up extracted. But I haven't had a case where the files were small enough for me to store extracted but the emulator couldn't run from archives.