Generating DAT Files

The Generate DAT tab creates a new No-Intro compliant DAT file from a folder of ROMs. Every file is hashed with CRC32, MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256, and duplicates are detected automatically.

Step by step

  1. Click Select Folder and choose the folder that contains your ROMs.

  2. Optionally fill in the DAT header fields:

    Field Description
    Name Name written to the DAT file header
    Description Description written to the DAT file header
    Author Author written to the DAT file header
  3. Click Start Hashing. The progress bar and the file counter show the current state, and the results grid is filled in as files are processed.
  4. Click Stop at any time to cancel; results collected so far are kept.
  5. Click Export DAT to save the generated .dat file. The suggested file name contains the sanitized DAT name and a timestamp.

Use Reset to clear all results and start over.

Results grid

Each processed file is listed with its file name, size and the four hashes:

Column Meaning
Filename Name of the hashed file
Size File size in bytes
CRC32 CRC-32 checksum
MD5 MD5 hash
SHA1 SHA-1 hash
SHA256 SHA-256 hash

Hover a hash cell to see the error message when a file could not be hashed.

Duplicate detection

Files that share the same SHA-256 hash but have different file names are grouped as duplicates. When duplicates are found, a Duplicate Files window lists every group so you can clean up the input folder before exporting the DAT file.

Export

The exported file is a No-Intro XML datafile containing one game entry per hashed file with its size and hashes. If the file was read from an archive, the archive name is preserved in the DAT so the entry maps back to the container.

Tip

Remove duplicate files before exporting. Duplicate entries with the same hashes but different names make the DAT harder to use for validation.