How do I know what size SD card to get

mitu

@a12c4 said in How do I know what size SD card to get:

had to add an external bluetooth dongle, which would use another extra usb slot.

If you go via Bluetooth, you'll not be needing the USB controller port, plus you'll be able to use more than one controller wirelessly. But we kind of drifted from the poster's intentions here. For the games desired, a normal 32 Gb card would be enough.

A12C4

@mitu I will still need it to recharge my controller.

EDIT : regarding this topic. Well, just clic on the tag "SD CARD" right under last message and you will get 50 other topics asking the exact same question with the exact same answers.

sublim21

the size of the card you'll need is entirely dependent on the systems you wanna emulate.

'older' system, (nes, snes, genesis, basically anything 'older' than dreamcast and ps1) won't take much space. its when you wanna emulate 'newer' systems, that the file sizes increase dramatically.

For example, the entire nes library should only take up about 80 - 100 mbs, whlie a single ps1 game can take anywhere from 400mb to a gig. PSP and Dreamcast games (which run marginally well on an un-clocked pi 3 b) take up the most space. dreamcast games take AT LEAST 700mb per game (regardless of what game you choose).

as such, the size of the sd card you'll need is dependent on what systems you wanna run. If you're trying to run just basic games, then I'd suggest you get AT LEAST 16gb, and most likely wanna get 32gb. Personally I use a 64gb card, and with that, i can get every freaking game i would want to play, (dos games, dreamcast, ps's etc.)

please note that, the SD CARD will need to be formatted into a FAT32 partition. Most operating systems will NOT allow you to format an sd card bigger than 32gb into FAT32 natively. You'll have to download a third party program to format an SD card bigger than 32gb into FAT32.

As such, it would seem the recommendation for you is to get a 32gb sd card. this way, you'll definitely fit all the 'old school classics' and will not have trouble formatting the card into fat32.

hope that helps.

-Pete

quicksilver

@sublim21 just a side note but Dreamcast .gdi ROMs can be converted to .chd and they take up a lot less space.

sublim21

@quicksilver

hmmm. i did not know that. i'll have to check that out. i thought gdi and chd take the same space. its a little insane that ikaruga is a 15mb download, but 700mb when extracted.

quicksilver

@sublim21 yea I converted my copy of that game to chd. I'll check how big it is an report back.

sublim21

@quicksilver

that'd be awesome of ya. I use a chromebook so running windows exe's is a huge problem for me. I do have ubuntu running through a crouton, so it is possible to run the chd convertor through wine in ubuntu, but its gonna be a pain.

So knowing the actual size savings in converting would really help me out, cause it'd dictate whether or not i should bother with the hassle of converting the files.

quicksilver

@sublim21 it's 71mb when converted to chd. You don't have access to a windows computer to use chdman?

sublim21

@quicksilver

wow. 71mb, thats quite a savings. totally worth the hassle. i'll have to get working on that tonight.

ummm, i might be able to use my brothers machine, but he's very finicky with his electronics, so i'll probably try using wine in ubuntu first.

Thanks for reporting back and for letting me know about this 'chd' thing. it'll free a bunch of space on my machine, making me squeeze a few more games on the machine. its really appreciated.

quicksilver

@sublim21 if you haven't converted Dreamcast gdi to chd before make sure you use the right chdman converter. Has to be version 4 I believe. The latest version will not work.

sublim21

@quicksilver

heya. yeah. havin no luck getting this chd convertor to work. i'm gonna keep trying, but so far, no dice. i can't even tell which version im running because the thing just crashes in wine.

*EDIT

just got it to work. finally found a chd converter that worked in wine with gdi files. first one tested was ikaruga which came out to 73 mb (as you said). this is insane. just converting the 4 dreamcast games on my retropie to chd should free about 2 gigs.

thanks again