PS1 games are small by modern standards — a CD is at most ~700 MB uncompressed, and CHD compression shrinks that substantially — so storage for emulation is a reliability question, not a capacity arms race. This guide covers sizing, the one specification that matters, and why the cheapest card is a false economy.
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How much space do you actually need?
- A focused library of 30 favourite games: under 25 GB even as raw BIN/CUE masters.
- The same library as working CHD copies: often half that, title-dependent (our CHD guide explains the conversion).
- A serious 200-game collection with masters and CHDs: still comfortably inside 128 GB.
- Conclusion: a quality 128 GB card serves almost everyone; 256 GB is generous headroom, not a requirement.
The specification that matters
Buy for endurance and authenticity, not headline speed. Emulation reads are light (a PS1 CD streamed at 2x is nothing), but handhelds and phones write saves and logs constantly, and counterfeit cards — endemic in marketplace listings — corrupt exactly the files you care about: your rips and your .mcr memory cards. A name-brand card from the brand’s own storefront (our link: SanDisk microSD on Amazon) is the entire advice. This is also why we exclude bargain-marketplace storage from our recommendations entirely — a fake-capacity card and a trustworthy emulation library cannot coexist.
Organisation that saves pain
- One folder per system (PS1), one subfolder per game for multi-disc sets — your future self swapping discs (guide) says thanks.
- Keep masters (BIN/CUE) and working copies (CHD) in separate trees; the card holds working copies, the masters live on the PC and in your backup.
- Back up the memcards folder specifically and often — it is a few hundred kilobytes holding hundreds of hours. Our cloud save guide automates the important part on Android.
- On phones, remember Android’s scoped storage: the folder you grant ePSXe is the folder it can see (Android setup).
For PC users
Any modern SSD or hard drive is beyond sufficient; the only PC-side rule is to keep the library out of cloud-synced folders that lock files mid-session, and to keep the emulator itself out of Program Files (Windows 11 guide). Speed was never the constraint — provenance and backups are.