External Drive Library

[SoldierOfChr1st]

I am putting this here for someone else who might be trying to figure this out. If you try to add a steam library on an external drive you will need to do these steps first.

- attach device, though a usb c dock or direct, however you will connect it in the future.
- Go to desktop mode
- click on the drive symbol to the left of the Wifi symbol
- top right of that window is the configure removable devices
- Check Enable automatic mounting of removable media
- Apply
- Click drive symbol again and make sure it's mounted
- Click steam deck symbol(bottom left)
- Click steam symbol next to Steam Deck User
- change password(what ever you want this to be)(this will be your root password for this OS)
- open your file manager and go to your removable drive
- Create new folder steam(has to be all lower case and you have to create it)(steam creates an invalid folder through steam)
- Run Steam on the desktop
- Go to Steam - Settings - Downloads - Steam Library Folders
- Click + symbol next to Internal Drive
- Select Choose my own location(Do not select the drive through this drop down menu as it will not work)
- scroll down to run - media - deck - "name of drive" - steam(this is the folder you created)

You should now be able to install games on your external drive. You may need to check your permissions on your drive properties and folders if you have any issues with this.

[tyb]

It works great thanks

[PaisleyHere]

thank you so much!

[Kovacs]

Great shout out on this, needed it, much appreciated

[pupplemupple]

thank you very much. I thought my 1TB sd card was bricked. Turns out that was an unrelated issue after all. Works great now. Thanks!

[Milkman]

right after i did this i started running into huge issues with my steamdeck

[BaldFat]

Originally posted by sasakure.UK:

right after i did this i started running into huge issues with my steamdeck

This didn't have anything to do with your Steam Deck having issues. There is something else going on. All you did was format a drive, mount it, make a folder and point to the folder.

[SoldierOfChr1st]

Originally posted by VinguinoDX:

Thank you so much it took me so long to figure this out until i saw this. Thnak you

Glad this is still helping people out. Honestly, I thought that Valve would have fixed this by now so we didn't have to do this anymore, but glad this info is still available for you guys

[SoulFire]

you da man

[nix]

As of the latest steam client much of this might no longer be necessary. I found that I could just do an add from the desktop settings storage page, and the gaming mode client picked it up fine. No need to manually create anything, just get the external drive mounted and you're fine. And steam has of course long supported multiple intermittently connected drives, and that still works, for those games that are so huge they probably need an SD card of their own (MS Bandwidth, uh I mean Flight Simulator, I'm looking at you).

[SoldierOfChr1st]

Originally posted by nix:

As of the latest steam client much of this might no longer be necessary. I found that I could just do an add from the desktop settings storage page, and the gaming mode client picked it up fine. No need to manually create anything, just get the external drive mounted and you're fine. And steam has of course long supported multiple intermittently connected drives, and that still works, for those games that are so huge they probably need an SD card of their own (MS Bandwidth, uh I mean Flight Simulator, I'm looking at you).

Thanks for the update. I'm gonna leave this up just in case something changes in the future but glad that it seems to have been corrected.

[「CAPPYTALYSM」]

commenting for later

[NimrodX]

This doesn't seem to be necessary anymore. Inserted an sdcard not formatted on the deck recently and the ext4 partition was automounted even though I didn't want it automounted in that case.

[「CAPPYTALYSM」]

even so, having similar issues with external drives and support basically told me to ♥♥♥♥ off so i gotta try something lol

[Deadpool]

I am having this issue still on a new steam deck that's fully updated I just the last Christmas. I got the steamdeck oled. i followed the instructions until "Go to Steam - Settings - Downloads - Steam Library Folders" the problem is there is no option under "downloads" that even remotely resembles "steam library folders"

[Deadpool]

Originally posted by element109:

Originally posted by Deadpool:

I am having this issue still on a new steam deck that's fully updated I just the last Christmas. I got the steamdeck oled. i followed the instructions until "Go to Steam - Settings - Downloads - Steam Library Folders" the problem is there is no option under "downloads" that even remotely resembles "steam library folders"

You have to go into Desktop Mode first.

I am in desktop mode the option is not there