Chdman |work| May 2026
chdman copy -i old_v4.chd -o new_v5.chd -c zstd (zstd = Zstandard compression; others: lzma, flac, huffman) Assume you have a folder of BIN/CUE PS1 games.
Storing raw, uncompressed disc images (like BIN/CUE, ISO, or GDI) for PlayStation, Sega Saturn, or arcade hard drives consumes terabytes of space. Enter (Compressed Hunks of Data MANager). What is CHDMAN? CHDMAN is a command-line tool bundled with MAME. It converts raw disk images into the CHD (Compressed Hunks of Data) format. This format applies lossless compression to disc sectors, often reducing file sizes by 40–60% without losing any data. chdman
chdman extracthd -i harddrive.chd -o extracted.raw Checks the internal hashes without extracting: chdman copy -i old_v4
chdman createcd -i input_file.cue -o output_file.chd What is CHDMAN
chdman verify -i game.chd Older CHD versions (v1–v4) are less efficient than CHDv5 . Convert a v4 to v5: