''Warning'' SD card download/install speed is very slow!

[StoneOcean]

Samsung EVO plus A2 V30 512GB
After around 20 sec the install speed will go down to around 5-8mb/s
So 100gb download of a game will take around 4 hours.

Is this only happening me? V30 card should offer a minimum of 30 mb/s

[Majestic 12]

I think small SD cards have some sort of "fast cache" - when that's full, the reading speeds slow down massive. If you look at the download speeds, it goes fast and drops down, then goes fast again, etc. which looks to me like a buffer being filled and then emptied. Reading speeds are very good though.

[Clone303]

already know that for anything there use SD cards but cards are alright fast now so it's fine also 100GB is alot dude

[darrenphillips666]

I’ve flashed OS’s on A1/A2 MicroSD cards
They will pretty much sustain 25-30MB/s all day.
That shouldn’t to be that slow

[Rieve Nailo]

Have you verified the card is what it claims to be? A lot of fakes sd cards out there.

[Papy Pitch]

Escrito originalmente por Majestic 12:

I think small SD cards have some sort of "fast cache" - when that's full, the reading speeds slow down massive. If you look at the download speeds, it goes fast and drops down, then goes fast again, etc. which looks to me like a buffer being filled and then emptied. Reading speeds are very good though.

It seems to be exactly that.
Limiting the download speed to avoid the issue seems to work.

[RoyalMetalKnights]

I have a SanDisk "up to 100MB/s" microSD card that I formatted using the built-in Deck format utility. When I would download games to the card it throttle at 5-10MB download and disk usage, then completely stop, then start again. I finally decided to format it using GParted from a bootable flash drive and now it works fine. Getting ~30MB/s sustained disk usage and much faster downloads. The SteamOS SD format option was screwing up the SD so it ran like junk.

[UnHoly]

I have a Samsung evo A2 v30 512gb sdcard, and every time it overheats the download speed will slow down to a crawl, it will hang in about 10-12mb until the download is done. And no i did not format it with my steam deck, i used my computer.

[ugafan]

I have a Samsung Evo and a SanDisk Extreme. I'm able to maintain higher download speeds with the SanDisk. I don't notice a difference playing games, but the SanDisk downloads them faster.

[applemop2000]

Escrito originalmente por ugafan:

I have a Samsung Evo and a SanDisk Extreme. I'm able to maintain higher download speeds with the SanDisk. I don't notice a difference playing games, but the SanDisk downloads them faster.

Same

[亜双義一真]

Escrito originalmente por RoyalMetalKnights:

I have a SanDisk "up to 100MB/s" microSD card that I formatted using the built-in Deck format utility. When I would download games to the card it throttle at 5-10MB download and disk usage, then completely stop, then start again. I finally decided to format it using GParted from a bootable flash drive and now it works fine. Getting ~30MB/s sustained disk usage and much faster downloads. The SteamOS SD format option was screwing up the SD so it ran like junk.

Hey bro, I'm having the same problem as you, the SD card will overheat when downloading games and then the speed becomes 0 or very slow, could you please guide me on how to use GParted to make the SD card work better, I'm a complete newbie, thanks.

[RoyalMetalKnights]

Escrito originalmente por 亜双義一真:

Escrito originalmente por RoyalMetalKnights:

I have a SanDisk "up to 100MB/s" microSD card that I formatted using the built-in Deck format utility. When I would download games to the card it throttle at 5-10MB download and disk usage, then completely stop, then start again. I finally decided to format it using GParted from a bootable flash drive and now it works fine. Getting ~30MB/s sustained disk usage and much faster downloads. The SteamOS SD format option was screwing up the SD so it ran like junk.

Hey bro, I'm having the same problem as you, the SD card will overheat when downloading games and then the speed becomes 0 or very slow, could you please guide me on how to use GParted to make the SD card work better, I'm a complete newbie, thanks.

I don't think it's an issue with overheating, I think the built-in Format option on the Deck Game Mode messes up the partition on the SD card.

I had GParted on a bootable USB flash drive as parted of the process of setting up dual-boot for Windows. I also have a USB-C hub to plug it into the Deck along with a keyboard.

I can run you through all that, but first you should try formatting using KDE Partition Manager that's built into Steam Desktop Mode(aka KDE Plasma). I just tried it out on my card, and the speeds seem fine when I downloaded Left 4 Dead 2. Took about 10min to download, then another 2-3min to verify. That whole process would have taken hours when I used the Deck format option previously and my card was behaving weirdly.

Here's the process:
1. Turn on your Steam Deck
2. Hit the 'Steam' button and go to 'Power' and select 'Switch to Desktop Mode'
3. In Desktop mode, click the Start button in the bottom left corner(Steam logo)
4. Select 'System', then off to the right select 'KDE Partition Manager'
5. Off to the left under 'Devices' it will show 2 options: 1 will be 'mmcblk0' and the other will be your internal SSD(named after the drive manufacturer. Mine says "KINGSTON")
6. By default the SD card(mmcblk0) should be selected. If not, select it.
7. In the middle area of the program it will show your partitions. It will show the SD card partition and it should have a little blue box next to 'ext4' under type, a lock icon under mount, and the size and used space.
8. Using the right trackpad hover over it, then using the left trackpad click it. A drop-down menu will appear.
9. Select 'Unmount'
10. Click it again with the left trackpad and select 'Delete'. In the bottom of the program in the 'Pending Operations' box make sure it says "Delete partition". At this point you can undo this if it doesn't. Make sure it doesn't say "Shred", it should say 'Delete'.
11. If it says "Delete Partition", then in the top left of the program just below 'File' there's a button for 'Apply'. Click 'Apply'.
12. A pop-up will appear asking if you want to apply the Delete partition operation. Select 'Apply Pending Operations' button.
13. Operation will finish. Press 'OK'.
14. In the middle box it will now say 'unallocated', 'unknown', and the drive size.
15. Use the left trackpad to click it, and select 'New' from the drop-down menu.
16. In the pop-up, change the 'File System' option to 'ext4' and click 'OK'.
17. Press the 'Apply' button in the top left of the program
18. A pop-up will appear. Press the 'Apply Pending Operations' button.
19. It will take about 50secs to create a new ext4 partition. After it's done, the Desktop will pop-up a Disk & Devices alert showing a new SD was inserted. Just shrink this using the down-arrow in the bottom right corner.
20. Hit 'OK' on the box in KDE Partition Manager then close it.
21. Click the 'Return to Game Mode' button on the Desktop
22. Once you're in Game Mode, eject your SD card and re-insert it.
23. Click the Steam button and go to 'Settings'
24. Scroll down to 'Storage' and click it. It should show your 'Internal Drive' and 'MicroSD Card'. The MicroSD Card should have a gold star next to it, meaning it's the default installation drive. If not, select it and hit 'X' to 'Make Default'.
25. Install a game then hit the Steam menu button and go to 'Downloads' to watch the progress, download speed, and disk usage speed.

I downloaded Left 4 Dead 2 and it starts off really fast and has high disk usage(around 70MB/s). Then it as it installs it will drop down to around 20MB/s for most the install, then speed up again at the end. The download took about 10min to download 8GB and install 14GB, then it took another 3-4min to verify the installation. It never went to zero like before. Before it would take hours to install a game. For bigger games like God of War I was having to leave the Deck on overnight. Now it should be normal again. A 10-14GB game like Left 4 Dead 2 should take ~15min total. A bigger game like God of War should take maybe an hour.

Let me knew if you have any questions about the process.

[#CuteFaceJay]

SD card heating up and throttles?

[~Senpai]

How can you guys tell it's the SD card that is overheating?

[Rosenthal]

Just to chime in here, sd card slowing down is fairly normal. Assuming the card doesn't overheat, and it will, everycard has a minimum sustained read and write speed. This is why it's so important to have a ram cache on larger drives like with M.2 NVME, especially with random reads/writes vs sequential loads. My 1tb Sandisk Ultra can burst to ~130MB/s but immediately bogs down ~10MB/s - 20MB/s after a few seconds. Depending on game size it downloading might stop entirely since the card can't keep up, and I'm used to my desktop sustaining my gigabit connection just fine.

I have a FLIR camera handy so it was pretty cool to see the sd card become a hotspot against the chassis.

[River]

I have the exact same issue with my Samsung Evo 512 card.