MAME CHD Manager Help
WARNING: If you screw up which PHYSICALDRIVE number is your arcade hard drive, you may do irreversible damage to your computer's hard drive (data loss).
Download:
Setup:
1. Open up Windows Disk Management (START search "Create and format hard disk partitions").
2. Take note of present physical disks (Disk 0, Disk 1, ect).
3. Plug in your arcade hard drive you want to dump or write to.
4. If Disk Management pops up asking if your want to Initialize Disk and set the Master Boot Record, SELECT CANCEL!!!
5. Take note what physical disk number is assigned to your arcade hard drive. In my case it's Disk 2 (MAKE SURE TO USE THE DISK NUMBER FOUND IN YOUR DISK MANAGEMENT!)
*Depending on the game, there may be visible partitions. eg. Big Buck Hunter & Golden Tee will show three partitions.*
6. Open up Command Prompt and run as administrator (START search "CMD", right click, "Run as administrator".
7. Navigate to the chdman directory using the "CD" command (I use C:\arcade\chd).
8. To Create a CHD image from hard drive proceed to "Dumping". To Write a CHD image to hard drive proceed to "Writing".
Dumping:
A. Coming from Step 8 from above, you are ready to create a disk image!
B. The chdman command formatting for dumping an image is:
chdmanxx createhd -o yy.chd -i \\.\PHYSICALDRIVEzz
xx is the chdman version, yy is the name of the chd file you want to create, and zz is your physical drive number.
C. Using the latest CHDman, saving to a CHD file called new, and reading from physical disk 2 - the command would look like this:
chdman221 createhd -o new.chd -i \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
Extracting a disk image will take some time (30m - multiple hours) as chdman compresses the files on-the-fly, using whichever compression algorithm it finds best (per sector chunk).
Once extraction is complete, you may power down and unplug the hard drive from the computer.
Writing:
A. Coming from Step 8 from above, there are a couple more steps to prepare your hard drive for writing.
B. Make sure your hard drive is Online and empty of partitions. Use Disk Management to Initialize and delete volumes (right-click).
C. When done correctly, the drive should report Online and be entirely Unallocated:
D. We are now ready to write to the drive.
E. The chdman command formatting for writing an image is:
chdmanxx extracthd -i yy.chd -o \\.\PHYSICALDRIVEzz -f
xx is the chdman version, yy is the name of the chd file you want to write to hard drive, and zz is your physical drive number.
F: Using the latest CHDman, writing a CHD file called sfrush.chd, and writing to physical disk 2 - the command would look like this:
chdman221 extracthd -i sfrush.chd -o \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2 -f
Writing a disk image takes a fraction of the time extracting an image does. The sfrush.chd (~45MB) took only a few minutes. Big Buck and Golden Tee hard drives take 15 - 30 minutes.
Once writing is complete, you may power down and unplug the hard drive from the computer.
NOTE: If Windows asks about Initializing the disk (Master Boot Record) after extraction is complete, you must select cancel!
