ISO to CHD

[Zero_X]

Hey everyone, how's it going? I wanted to ask if it's worth converting a PS2 ROM to CHD format, and what the advantages are besides saving space. Do most people do it? Do you?

 

[JustLooking123]

I do it for the games that i often play, or for those that chd compress them close enough to 7-zip.
For the other ones, i use 7-zip, and extract them only when i want to play them.

 

[Kremiso]

yes for the PS2 you'll gain a lot of space and the emulation will be great the same;
recently i'm doing the same for the GDI Dreamcast images

 

[KamakoKamako's icon]

I recently did it and saved 80GB of space and have noticed no change to the speed or quality of the emulation so yes, I recommend it! :]

 

[Scotty Scotty]

Even though not a lot of emulators support CHD format, it's recommended for those who want to store a ton of games while also being mindful of storage space left over. And since CHD is a lossless format, the emulation quality will be identical to a standard ISO file.

 

[Rocket2049]

for PS1 and PS2 ABSOLUTELY, i cut just about my whole PS2 iso folder in HALF
and they LOAD faster in chd! or least the same if you got really strong hardware

the games i converted to chd and still work well (to my knowledge, i tested extensively)
Ps1 (using duckstation), ps2 (pcsx2), dreamcast (reDream or flycast) , PSP (ppsspp)

NOTE: IN TINY FEW CASES THE CHD WON"T WORK TEST THE CHD BEFORE DELETING THE ORIGINAL ISO/BIN/CUE FILES!!

sega saturns are VERY IFFY, depending how the rom was created and if it uses many track/music files you gotta make sure it still works (ingame music and all!)
but i've tried and in MOST cases it'll work, far as i know only Ymir emulator runs CHD

i never used Retroarch so check that yourself if it supports CHD or not.

don't bother chd'ing gamecube/wii games, dolphin itself can compress games into RVZ files, much more smaller, you do it INSIDE dolphin (right click game, convert) i always did maximum compression the games work just fine with barely additional load times (as stated in emu, i never noticed)

 

[gabbooo]

converting to CHD saves a lot of space and I do it a lot when putting PS1 games to my retro handheld

 

[Mal]

it also helps organizing if its something like pink panther for ps1 that has like a trijillion tracks, just compressed into 1 file, works the same.
its really nice.

 

[CheesyExplosive]

CHD is worth it if you have plenty of emulators that support CHD like:

ymir,ppsspp,duckstation,sff,pcsx2,flycast and so-on... which is why everyone goes COO-COOOOOOOOOOO!!! for CHD PUFFS!

 

[mangamannn]

CHD have multiply versions (v1, v2, v3,v4, v5) and different compression library (ogg, flac zdeflat, etc) only V5 IS LOWLESS FOR AUDIO.

To be good use chdman from the last version of mame (old frontend and script released in the net have whatever version are packed).

not all emulator support chd, with exception of mame, support all the versions chd...

 

[MajesticSiN]

It's well worth it. Just do it.

 

[Psychonara]

converting to CHD saves a lot of space and I do it a lot when putting PS1 games to my retro handheld

Sometimes I can only get PS1 games to work on Anbernic's stock OS by converting them to CHD.

 

[SoThankful]

I recently did it and saved 80GB of space

 

[Zero_X]

I recently did it and saved 80GB of space and have noticed no change to the speed or quality of the emulation so yes, I recommend it! :]

But is it a lot of work to do it? I downloaded several PS2 games and none of them are below 4.5, haha.

 

[Psychonara]

But is it a lot of work to do it? I downloaded several PS2 games and none of them are below 4.5, haha.

It can take some time to convert stuff. I'm doing a massive conversion of my PS1 games for an external RetroBat HDD and I can say depending on how many games you already have in .bin/.cue format it's one of those weekend projects sort of deals, but if you have multiple devices that emulate PS1 or PS2 stuff and you want to be easily able to swap games between them, it's worth the time. It's a shame though that this site and others don't already offer .chd as a download option, especially for games like Rayman that are multiple tracks.