Writing Fixdats

"Fixdats" are DATs that contain only ROMs that are missing from your collection. Fixdats are derived from some other DAT (see the DATs introduction docs for how to obtain DATs), containing only a subset of the ROMs. Fixdats are specific to the state of each person's ROM collection, so they aren't necessarily meaningful to other people.

Fixdats help you find files missing from your collection, and they can be used to generate a collection of those files once you've found them. This sub-collection of files can then be merged back into your main collection.

The fixdat command creates a Logiqx XML DAT for every input DAT (the --dat <path> option) that is missing ROMs. When writing (copy, move, and link commands), the fixdat will be written to the output directory, otherwise it will be written to the working directory.

For example:

Windows macOS Linux

igir copy zip fixdat ^
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy.dat" ^
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Advance.dat" ^
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Color.dat" ^
  --input ROMs\ ^
  --output ROMs-Sorted\ ^
  --fixdat

igir copy zip fixdat \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy.dat" \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Advance.dat" \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Color.dat" \
  --input ROMs/ \
  --output ROMs-Sorted/

igir copy zip fixdat \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy.dat" \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Advance.dat" \
  --dat "Nintendo - Game Boy Color.dat" \
  --input ROMs/ \
  --output ROMs-Sorted/

may produce some fixdats in the ROMs-Sorted/ directory, if any of the input DATs have ROMs that weren't found in the ROMs/ input directory:

ROMs-Sorted/
├── Nintendo - Game Boy (20230414-173400) fixdat.dat
├── Nintendo - Game Boy Advance (20230414-173400) fixdat.dat
└── Nintendo - Game Boy Color (20230414-173400) fixdat.dat