I got a larger SD card, should I reinstall everything or clone it?

[minas6907]

Hello all,

As the title says, I got an SD card initialled when I got my Deck, a 256gb. I realized that I underestimated the amount of space I'd use, so I just got a 512gb.

My question is, should I just reinstall steam games/retransfer roms for use with emudeck, or if I use cloning software, would I just be able to pop in the SD card and have it work like nothing was changed? I'm inclined to set everything up again, but just wanted to ask. Thank you!

[peepo]

If you have decent internet speeds I would suggest just re-downloading. Might seem counter-intuitive, but it is the safer bet.

With the speeds of typical microSD cards imaging or simply transferring the content over would already take a pretty significant amount of time. If it were to fail in the middle of imaging all that time would be wasted and you'd have to try again.

[minas6907]

Makes sense, and sounds good, thank you!

[darrenphillips666]

Sack that, either keep both & hotswap them with different games on each, or plug an external drive in, copy the games over to the external drive in desktop mode and then back to the new SD card

[V𝐢𝐧𝐢gas Ba𝗸𝗸 🫎]

Insert SD card into SteamDeck and let it format it. Then copy all files from old SD card to new using Linux PC or if you have Dock with SD card slot.

[BGZ]

Originally posted by darrenphillips666:

Sack that, either keep both & hotswap them with different games on each, or plug an external drive in, copy the games over to the external drive in desktop mode and then back to the new SD card

Problem is... you can't really do this when you are placing games such as emulators on the SD card, Using Emudeck, youd have to refresh whats on your card in the manager each time you swap, requiring to at least go to desktop mode.

[MJ711]

I personally would clone it and later on just extend the usable storage in system.

[hanzô]

Incase someone stumbles upon this thread this is the guide I found.
https://handheld.quest/posts/steam-deck-copy-microsd-card-contents-to-larger-drive/#i-bought-a-larger-sd-card-for-my-steam-deck---how-to-transfer-everything-without-breaking-apps--games

[PsyBlade]

Since this thread is going to be locked anyway I'm going to use the opportunity.

Dear Mods:

You should either lock threads when they hit an age limit or not lock them at all. Waiting for new replies in order to lock old threads is the worst of both worlds. Old threads get pulled to the front (which seems to be what you dislike) but people can't reply to whatever new post got added.