Is there an easy way to delete MAME Roms?

[Kustom Kid]

So I've been looking online for a bit, and I've even found a post on here regarding the topic, but it was about 8 years old. Is there an easy way to delete MAME Roms from the hard drive without breaking everything?

I currently have a split romset, and only the CHD files for the games I want. I've "deleted" the games in GameEx, but I would like to permanently remove them from my hard drive if possible to save space. Does anyone have a quick and fairly easy method to do this? I'm not opposed to switching to a merged set either if that helps things. Thank you in advance!

[tthurman]

Have you looked at romlister?

RL homepage

I would think you have a distinct advantage with the split set, as you should have more complete individual games vs. shared files found in the merged sets. It sounds as if you've already hand selected your chd's, so trimming your current set should result in the desired effect. Whether you do it in place or start with a fresh directory and slide it into place once finished, it would seem pretty straight forward, just remember to update when done.

The downside to this will be when it comes to staying current with MAME releases, as this will become cumbersome additonal step that could easily prove aggravating over time with all the other varibles involved with this hobby.

Tempest did a tuturial on this that you may want to check out too.

[Kustom Kid]

Awesome. Thank you. I don't plan on doing much updating. I recently went from .147 to .159 Everything I want to play works. It's just a small SNES PC build I did that will most likely end up being given to my son. Once everything "works" I'm hot gluing the case shut and giving it to him. With only a 240GB SSD every bit of space saved counts. I know he's going to fill it up with Minecraft mods as well. Thanks again!

[DazzleHP]

Have you looked at romlister?

RL homepage

+1 to tthurman's advice. And an extra step you can do to make sure your set is fully functional is to use an auditing tool after snipping your roms. Romcenter and clrmamepro are the big hitters (Romcenter being slightly more user friendly). They will scan your set and alert you to potential problems, such as missing support files (ie bios roms, sound files etc) and dependencies like missing parent roms. Both will also have a means to "fix" everything provided you have the missing files somewhere on your system.

It's a peace of mind precautionary, that will guarantee every rom will work before you try to run it. Not mandatory but it's a step i never fail to utilize - anymore

It sounds like your MAME set is particularly exclusive though and you may very well not need it. But if you run into MAME problems i certainly would consider it - i never skip it these days, no matter how small a set i think i'm creating.