SD card becoming unformatted suddenly on the steam deck with no reason why

[FLAMINGCLAW]

I was just downloading games to the steam deck typically emulated games when suddenly my SD card becomes unformatted. This isn't the first time that this has happened either and the only reason why I'm asking help now is because I have very big games on it and if I format again they all go down the drain so I really need a fix to get this working or I have to start right back over. I have a 512gb samsung sd card and I don't know why this happens.

[PopinFRESH]

How did you originally format it? Did you use the Steam Deck format in game mode?

[FLAMINGCLAW]

Yeah I went to the settings in game mode and formatted it there already. It was already previously working with a bunch of games on it alot of it was emulation but I know worked properly when suddenly today it just clicked off with no reason why.

[MJ711]

how do you know that the SD card became "unformatted" ?
what does that even mean?

A storage device cannot magically become "unformatted" unless it is damaged on hardware level or software level.

I have Samsung PRO Plus 512GB and my card is always full up to 90%.
It is in that state for last 5 months now. No issues.

So the question is, what are you doing to make it behave like that?

Are you sure that you got the real card and not a fake one?
There are some software that can help you find out if your card is legit or not.

Maybe this is happening to you:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/0/5057002258672548404/

[FLAMINGCLAW]

Here is what happened. I was about to play some games on the steam deck mainly Silent hill 1 since I like to start from the beginning of every series. I was just about to play when the SD card notification on the top right of the steam deck in game mode popped up. I have a Samsung Pro 512gb SD card as well and for a while this SD card has worked for a while since maybe before last December. This isn't the first time this has happened and when I check the SD card itself I have to reformat it again in order for the steam deck to read it again. I plugged it into another computer, windows 10 for example, and that couldn't even find the SD card. If not unformatted something happened during the time of about to play on the steam deck where it corrupted the SD card. I'm more tired of this happening because of the emulated games I have lots of storage built up on it which takes forever to get back and none of the saved data. Lost all my data for the completed games as well.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by FLAMINGCLAW:

Here is what happened. I was about to play some games on the steam deck mainly Silent hill 1 since I like to start from the beginning of every series. I was just about to play when the SD card notification on the top right of the steam deck in game mode popped up. I have a Samsung Pro 512gb SD card as well and for a while this SD card has worked for a while since maybe before last December. This isn't the first time this has happened and when I check the SD card itself I have to reformat it again in order for the steam deck to read it again. I plugged it into another computer, windows 10 for example, and that couldn't even find the SD card. If not unformatted something happened during the time of about to play on the steam deck where it corrupted the SD card. I'm more tired of this happening because of the emulated games I have lots of storage built up on it which takes forever to get back and none of the saved data. Lost all my data for the completed games as well.

This does sound like the behavior of a fraudulent microSD card. Are you sure you didn’t get a warning message when trying to format the card in game mode on the Steam Deck and then do some workaround like formatting it on your windows PC?

You can check your microSD card on your Windows PC using H2testw which is similar to what f3probe does to validate the storage on your microSD card. It does take a while to complete testing it and it will wipe all data on the card, which at this point from your description is likely already lost. f3probe and H2testw both write a known data pattern to the flash storage for the total capacity which is being reported to the operating system (e.g. it would write 512GB of data to your card). Then they will attempt to read back the data sequentially to validate that the data is in fact stored and hasn’t been cyclically overwritten as a fake card will do.

https://h2testw.org/

It could also just be a failing microSD card but either way the validation tools like f3probe or H2testw will verify the flash capacity is accurate to what is reported to the OS.

[FLAMINGCLAW]

I get no error message or anything. I was just on the game mode home screen when suddenly I see the SD card icon on the top right of the screen showing that the SD card needs to be formatted and the second I press the button to format no error message or anything just allows me to format the SD all over again. I have never formatted it any other way. Not in desktop mode nor on a different computer, just plug it in the steam deck and format it from game mode. Now I did check the SD card on a Windows 10 computer to see if I could save my data but couldn't and gave up and just reformatted it again for the second time. If it is an issue regarding the SD card itself I might as well buy a new one just hate that I keep losing data on SD card especially for emulated games and losing everything I worked for.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by FLAMINGCLAW:

I get no error message or anything. I was just on the game mode home screen when suddenly I see the SD card icon on the top right of the screen showing that the SD card needs to be formatted and the second I press the button to format no error message or anything just allows me to format the SD all over again. I have never formatted it any other way. Not in desktop mode nor on a different computer, just plug it in the steam deck and format it from game mode. Now I did check the SD card on a Windows 10 computer to see if I could save my data but couldn't and gave up and just reformatted it again for the second time. If it is an issue regarding the SD card itself I might as well buy a new one just hate that I keep losing data on SD card especially for emulated games and losing everything I worked for.

Yeah it could also be failing flash like I mentioned. Id recommend installing H2testw as noted above and test the microSD card just to validate it to verify. 512GB card will take about 12-18 hours to validate so just start it and let it run overnight.

[Sampersand]

I also just booted up my steamdeck after perfectly playing from my SD card the past months. When booting it said my game needed to be installed, which I found curious, only having to notice the card was showing as unformatted and without games installed on it... I'll have to go through a few hours of downloading the games again 😭

[FLAMINGCLAW]

That was the same issue I was having but then an update happened on steam deck which was for that issue and I haven't seen it since. Before the update I was constantly having this issue but I had the issue for my emulated games which simply downloading those are a pain especially when getting down to the PS3 games I have on there.