Got my 64GB model in

[Rosenthal]

-Edit
I was going to modify for an internal 1tb later, guess sooner than expected. I wasn't surprised by the cache, I was really expecting caching to occur on the sdcard. Basically the same behavior in Windows where Steam makes a local filetree for related mods and saves on a per-drive basis.
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I like it a lot. It might be tinkering/beta testing for half of my time, and actually playing games the other.

Right now I have a 1tb microsd card , about 700 GB installed right now. I'm staring at the storage management, there's only 3 GB left on the internal storage, and this is after disabling Vulkan pre-caching.

From what I understand various games will still write and cache their own files. If this is the case, is there anyway to have games entirely write to the sd card and not the internal storage? This is defeating the purpose of the 64gb model if this isn't something that can be dealt with

[Framuga]

sorry but need xp

[NuLife]

u can buy storage upgrade from ifix if ur confident enough to take ur deck apart and change the Nvme ssd, they have a complete tutorial on the site too

[retrogunner]

Search the forums here (I recommend Google vs native search) for some posts I replied to. They cover space saving and storage items like:
* "proton_dist.tar" (search on that - they are a 1GB each)
* cache/shader-cache
* how the SteamOS storage keeps its read-write data given its two rootfs are read-only. /home/ stores a lot.

If you need to drop in a 256GB NVMe, the youtuber "Deck Ready" has videos on how they did it to their 64GB model.

[Man's Best Friend]

Originally posted by Insignia:

You bought the 64GB deck and are shocked the space is gone with just a few installs?

Color me surprised.... Most people buy that version and drop a new ssd in it. You might wanna do the same.

You seem to have missed the part where he's installing everything to his SD card, it's only the caching that's bizarrely forced to go to the internal storage.

[Xedhadeaus]

you can move the games in settings / storage if I recall.
I think you can set a default install folder too.

[AceHercules1196]

Originally posted by Rosenthal:

I like it a lot. It might be tinkering/beta testing for half of my time, and actually playing games the other.

Right now I have a 1tb microsd card , about 700 GB installed right now. I'm staring at the storage management, there's only 3 GB left on the internal storage, and this is after disabling Vulkan pre-caching.

From what I understand various games will still write and cache their own files. If this is the case, is there anyway to have games entirely write to the sd card and not the internal storage? This is defeating the purpose of the 64gb model if this isn't something that can be dealt with

I got the 512GB model because 64GB of storage is not enough for me and I don’t have a spare SD card anywhere

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by Xedhadeaus:

you can move the games in settings / storage if I recall.
I think you can set a default install folder too.

Like HTTP Error 418: I'm a teapot pointed out in the post just above yours... you missed the point where they are installing the games to the microSD card and not the internal 64GB eMMC storage.

Their issue is they have a fairly large amount of games they've installed on their microSD card and the games / proton will store the pre-cache and shader caches in system directories which are located on the internal eMMC storage.

@OP, depending on where the data that is filling up the internal drive is located you could, in theory, make that a symbolic link to your microSD card. There are some large caveats with doing something like this and imo I'd probably lean toward clearing out some of your games and only installing a smaller selection of games until you decide to upgrade the M.2 drive to a larger SSD (which I'd definitely suggest trying to hold out for at least a little bit since there are more options coming to market in the relatively near future).

Micron is expected to launch a new 2TB M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD soon-ish. With both the Steam Deck and Microsoft Surface systems using M.2 2230 SSDs there are a fair amount of new options becoming available for SSDs in that form factor.

[Ranko]

That's good to be aware of, was debating getting one down the line for my sibling's graduation gift. They at least go away once the games they're attached to are uninstalled right? if so it's not a -huge- issue. If so I may wanna tinker with the one I get for my sibling some myself first

[Rosenthal]

Originally posted by Ranko:

That's good to be aware of, was debating getting one down the line for my sibling's graduation gift. They at least go away once the games they're attached to are uninstalled right? if so it's not a -huge- issue. If so I may wanna tinker with the one I get for my sibling some myself first

So that's my problem. I've looked around it largely depends on the game and whether proton successfully installed a game. Sometimes files do actually left behind, and other times it has to do with installers being present to avoid outright re-downloading a game. Linux isn't something I've messed with, trying to figure out filesystems isn't a hurdle I'm ready for.

Now, I'm probably an edge case scenario, but it's still a little concerning since people with much smaller sd cards having similar issues.

Still, I'm not worried. For now it's just mostly getting in the way of playing with emulation

[Rosenthal]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

@OP, depending on where the data that is filling up the internal drive is located you could, in theory, make that a symbolic link to your microSD card. There are some large caveats with doing something like this and imo I'd probably lean toward clearing out some of your games and only installing a smaller selection of games until you decide to upgrade the M.2 drive to a larger SSD (which I'd definitely suggest trying to hold out for at least a little bit since there are more options coming to market in the relatively near future).

Micron is expected to launch a new 2TB M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD soon-ish. With both the Steam Deck and Microsoft Surface systems using M.2 2230 SSDs there are a fair amount of new options becoming available for SSDs in that form factor.

I've looked into symlink. Not going to bother for now, as I don't understand Linux structure yet, and I'm betting symlinks happen per game. Even then, with the beta-nature of the deck, I don't want the headache of an OS update throwing it all out.

The 2tb 2230 sounds fun, if eye watering. I think an 1TB 2230 might be satisfactory for now.


I should stress, the "Other Files" taking up space is annoying, and unless the lack of space literally prevents me from updating the OS as they release patches, or just being able to use the Desktop mode, it's currently not critical. I have some faith Valve will address this eventually

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by Rosenthal:

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

@OP, depending on where the data that is filling up the internal drive is located you could, in theory, make that a symbolic link to your microSD card. There are some large caveats with doing something like this and imo I'd probably lean toward clearing out some of your games and only installing a smaller selection of games until you decide to upgrade the M.2 drive to a larger SSD (which I'd definitely suggest trying to hold out for at least a little bit since there are more options coming to market in the relatively near future).

Micron is expected to launch a new 2TB M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD soon-ish. With both the Steam Deck and Microsoft Surface systems using M.2 2230 SSDs there are a fair amount of new options becoming available for SSDs in that form factor.

I've looked into symlink. Not going to bother for now, as I don't understand Linux structure yet, and I'm betting symlinks happen per game. Even then, with the beta-nature of the deck, I don't want the headache of an OS update throwing it all out.

The 2tb 2230 sounds fun, if eye watering. I think an 1TB 2230 might be satisfactory for now.

I should stress, the "Other Files" taking up space is annoying, and unless the lack of space literally prevents me from updating the OS as they release patches, or just being able to use the Desktop mode, it's currently not critical. I have some faith Valve will address this eventually

"everything in Linux is a file", so you can symlink entire directories (since a directory is just a special type of file). As such you could symlink the parent directory where the system is doing the caching, however, as you've noted this would get broken every time there is a system update. There are also some other aspects of the core system that may be negatively impacted as well; and it would cause problems with "swapping" out microSD cards with different ones if you eventually choose to do so for other things.

In regards to the 2TB Micron SSD, I was primarily noting that as an example of new products coming to market because of fairly popular products that are making use of M.2 2230 form factor storage such as the Steam Deck & Surface. There are several 1TB options already and the Micron 2400 series will have models at 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB so there will be some more price competition soon which should bring down some 1TB options into the $130-$160 price range.

[Ranko]

Originally posted by Rosenthal:

Originally posted by Ranko:

That's good to be aware of, was debating getting one down the line for my sibling's graduation gift. They at least go away once the games they're attached to are uninstalled right? if so it's not a -huge- issue. If so I may wanna tinker with the one I get for my sibling some myself first

So that's my problem. I've looked around it largely depends on the game and whether proton successfully installed a game. Sometimes files do actually left behind, and other times it has to do with installers being present to avoid outright re-downloading a game. Linux isn't something I've messed with, trying to figure out filesystems isn't a hurdle I'm ready for.

Now, I'm probably an edge case scenario, but it's still a little concerning since people with much smaller sd cards having similar issues.

Still, I'm not worried. For now it's just mostly getting in the way of playing with emulation

my guess is that it's likely something good to send feedback to valve over. So far the deck's REALLY impressive, but the software's still a bit of a work in progress at some points. So if they're aware of it it'll probably get fixed up with an update sometime.