Kingston 512gb microSD card bricked after Steam OS Beta Update

[M.G]

I had my second Kingston 512gb microSD bricked today.

Unlike most cases I've read, both of my cards were bricked during reboot after updating the Steam Deck OS to Beta.

The first card was being used on my Switch OLED for years, and it worked fine on Deck for a month. One day, after updating to Beta, Steam Deck just stopped recognizing my SD.

I thought it was a faulty card and bought another one, that's what I've been using since November.

The first thing I did was do the authenticity test and it passed.

It was working fine until yesterday, I installed and uninstalled games frequently on it and no problems.

Then I decided to leave OS Stable for OS Beta again, when I restarted after the update it no longer recognized my card...

I took the card and put it on my Windows Desktop and nothing, it simply isn't recognized as if nothing was plugged into the computer.

I'm honestly leaning towards not using SD cards in the Deck anymore, I'm tired of losing progress in games that don't have cloud saves and spending so much money on expensive high speed cards for them to simply be randomly murdered by the Deck

[M.G]

To be more specific, both SD cards were official Kingston Canvas Select Plus 512gb cards

[Paper Angel]

Go into disk management and see if it shows up.

[Jâbbérwôkkï]

If Windows makes it's tell tale ding noise on inserting a flash drive/card, do as PA said & go into disk management. Once there you will have to delete the sd card's partition & create a new simple volume. Format it as ex fat when prompted & it should be recognized by the steam deck when you reinsert it into it's sd slot. What happened is it's allocation table got corrupted upon the os update.The only way if the card is not a fake sold as a real card or is a faulty card to use it in any device would be to create a new one as instructed above. That's why you can't take a sd card used in a switch for instance & use it in the Deck without doing the above.

[Mahjik]

There was another semi-recent person with a Kingston card that died. I do not know the reason why, but it does seem Kingston cards fail quite often on the Deck. I'm not screaming "fake card". I think there is something about the Deck that exposes some lack of quality with certain SD card makers. In the thread I was talking about, the poster switched to a Samsung SD card.

[shadowboy813]

Windows will not see the card. The Steam Deck formats it as ext4, which is a filesystem windows does not recognize. Try re-mounting the sd card in desktop mode.

[M.G]

Someone told me to try using "sudo dmesg" on the Deck and see what it will say about the SDCARD.

It gave me "error -110 whilst initialising sd card"

A little research about this error and:

"Your micro SD card is dead. It could have been killed by over-writing (ie, swap) or heat, or simply by failure. The card should not be used again for data."

So its really dead...again...

Since both were Kingston Canvas Select Plus 512gb cards, I think that its safe to say that they aren't recomended for the Deck...

[M.G]

Originally posted by Mahjik:

There was another semi-recent person with a Kingston card that died. I do not know the reason why, but it does seem Kingston cards fail quite often on the Deck. I'm not screaming "fake card". I think there is something about the Deck that exposes some lack of quality with certain SD card makers. In the thread I was talking about, the poster switched to a Samsung SD card.

I will give Samsung a try...

[Hughjanus]

Originally posted by MG4M3R:

Originally posted by Mahjik:

There was another semi-recent person with a Kingston card that died. I do not know the reason why, but it does seem Kingston cards fail quite often on the Deck. I'm not screaming "fake card". I think there is something about the Deck that exposes some lack of quality with certain SD card makers. In the thread I was talking about, the poster switched to a Samsung SD card.

I will give Samsung a try...

Samsung 512 gb pro plus SD cards on sale right now through best buy for 50 bucks

[M.G]

Originally posted by Hughjanus:

Originally posted by MG4M3R:

I will give Samsung a try...

Samsung 512 gb pro plus SD cards on sale right now through best buy for 50 bucks

Bought one, thanks!

[alenjenny]

I also purchased a Kingston Canvas Select Micro SD card 512gb specifically for Steam Deck's use last December 2022. It's confirmed genuine and authentic because I bought it directly off Kingston's official store in my country Malaysia (because I am worried about fake SD cards). Upon arrival, I used it solely for my Steam Deck alone. Did a clean format with Steam Deck and use it as usual. I must say, I seldom utilize the SD card though because most of my games are installed on my Deck's 512gb internal storage. It is when I ran out of storage that I would install on the SD card. The SD card never exhibited any signs and symptoms of faulty card or issues. Everything works perfectly as I installed, uninstalled and played a couple on games on it, sometimes almost filling up the entire SD card. The last game I played on it was "Brutal Legend" and I played around 30 hours on it without issues. Then one day as I booted it up, it suddenly stopped working and steam deck notifies that some game files could not be found. I kept trying but it just could not work. I did not realize the SD card has died (the thought did not even cross my mind), so I proceed to restart my Steam Deck. After restart, Brutal Legend disappeared from my library completely. After checking here and there, only then I realized the SD card is no longer shown (like I dont have any SD card at all). So the next logical step is to take out the SD card and reinsert it. Still nothing. I check the card and the SD card slot. All seems fine. I kept trying and restarting Steam Deck. Didnt seem to help at all. In the end, I proceed to test the card on a PC. Absolutely nothing, as if I had not insert a SD card at all to the card reader. I tried on multiple PC and multiple SD Card reader, all showing the same result. The SD card is completely dead and unrecognizable. Quite saddened by this. I just contacted Kingston and is now on my way to RMA the card. This happened early February 2023 and at the time, I googled and did not find anyone else experiencing this other than me alone (with Kingston Canvas Select). Fortunately I did another search just now and found out that I'm not alone in this. On a side note, I am using stable OS only. Never ventured into beta OS before. No idea what causes the SD card to malfunction. I hope Valve will get notified and look into this.

[Neith Coldspark]

Originally posted by MG4M3R:

Someone told me to try using "sudo dmesg" on the Deck and see what it will say about the SDCARD.

It gave me "error -110 whilst initialising sd card"

A little research about this error and:

"Your micro SD card is dead. It could have been killed by over-writing (ie, swap) or heat, or simply by failure. The card should not be used again for data."

So its really dead...again...

Since both were Kingston Canvas Select Plus 512gb cards, I think that its safe to say that they aren't recomended for the Deck...

Got the same card, died for the second time few minutes ago. Yay

[NettoX]

I bought the same card (Kingston Canvas Select Plus - 512GB - UHS-I, U3, V30, A1), just waiting to arrive. But now I see I'll have to return it because it's apparently not compatible with Steam Deck, which is very very strange, since the manufacturer itself recommends this product for use with Steam Deck: https://www.kingston.com/en/blog/personal-storage/valve-steam-deck-storage-microsd.

[Mr Cook]

I've been using this card since October 22, I think. I have partitioned and formated manually for windows boot, windows storage, and steamos storage (3 partitions in total, 2 ntfs, 1 ext4, GPT partition table). So far it's working fine. I hope it stays that way.

[NettoX]

Originally posted by Mr Cook:

I've been using this card since October 22, I think. I have partitioned and formated manually for windows boot, windows storage, and steamos storage (3 partitions in total, 2 ntfs, 1 ext4, GPT partition table). So far it's working fine. I hope it stays that way.

Good to know! I think I'll keep mine, since the manufacturer's warranty is for life. Does Windows work well on it?

[Mr Cook]

Originally posted by NettoX:

Originally posted by Mr Cook:

I've been using this card since October 22, I think. I have partitioned and formated manually for windows boot, windows storage, and steamos storage (3 partitions in total, 2 ntfs, 1 ext4, GPT partition table). So far it's working fine. I hope it stays that way.

Good to know! I think I'll keep mine, since the manufacturer's warranty is for life. Does Windows work well on it?

Yeah, Win 10 work fine. Haven't played any games on windows yet though, as the ones I'm into right now play well on steamos. I mostly use windeck as a mobile desktop for work. I used to carry my laptop from home to work, now I carry the deck. I got the docking station at my office so I can work properly on a big screen. Then when I get home I switch to steamos to play something before I get to sleep. It's quite handy that way :D

As for Kingston, I've been using their products for 20+ years. MicroSD / SD cards, Compact Flash cards, USB sticks, RAM modules, never had anything go bad. AFAIC Kingston is top brand. Of course I may have been lucky, but then there's the warranty to save the day, if you ever come across a defect.