Steam deck running out of memory

[sygys]

Can someone please fix the issues where a 64GB steamdeck storage is filling up when games are installed on the sd card...

Why are shaders and all related data not stored on the same medium as the game itself?

I have a 64 GB Steamdeck which runs out of memory on every update i do or game i install. There is not one game installed on the internal storage and still i cant install any games on my 512 GB sd card because the internal memomry is full. This needs to be fixed.

I installed the cache remove tool and this clears up 6 GB but this fills up again in no time. This is not a permanent fix... Shaders and updates should be stored on the sd card allong with the game they are for.

[Zack the Legendary Super Saiyan]

I think most people are gonna tell 2 to do these 2 things 1 go to game mode settings system scroll down to run storage device maintenance tasks & 2 just look for a larger SSD & put it in the deck otherwise this problem will never be solved. Probably not the answer you want but 64GB isn't a lot nowadays so nothing you can do about that.

I bet the model you bought was mostly intended for people who buy games with small install sizes or play things like emulators & people on a really tiny budget.

[full bladder]

As someone who is looking to buy the 64GB as my second Deck I would like to know if someone finds a solution to this. Sounds like an oversight to be honest, or maybe a realistic issue due to games being so big nowadays.

[CJM]

Originally posted by Zack the Legendary Super Saiyan:

otherwise this problem will never be solved.

Linux supports a means to layer folders on top of each other. So one could hypothetically purge all of the existing shaders from the 64GB drive. Then, hypothetically, remap that using a virtual file system overlay to the SD card. This is typically used for Live CD implementations, since the existing CD cannot be written to.

Wikipedia calls this a "union mount filesystem", and "OverlayFS" seems to be the most current implementation.

A lot of very technical stuff I never went through the effort to implement myself, but something that should be very much doable. One should probably start by creating a "sudoers" password on the Steam Deck for proper administrator (root) access.

Linux also support mount points so you can map entire drives to any folder, but unfortunately there is only one SD card, and SD Cards seem to be slow for simultaneous access... So mount points are not likely a solution.

The next consideration should be given to whether all of this work would be overwritten during an OS update for the Steam Deck, given how much of it would likely require access to the "immutable file system".

I might recommend putting in a request to Valve to implement an option to remap the shader folder within the Deck UI. Or at least get them on board with it so that things don't go sideways during an update.

[Zack the Legendary Super Saiyan]

Originally posted by CJM:

Originally posted by Zack the Legendary Super Saiyan:

otherwise this problem will never be solved.

Linux supports a means to layer folders on top of each other. So one could hypothetically purge all of the existing shaders from the 64GB drive. Then, hypothetically, remap that using a virtual file system overlay to the SD card. This is typically used for Live CD implementations, since the existing CD cannot be written to.

Wikipedia calls this a "union mount filesystem", and "OverlayFS" seems to be the most current implementation.

A lot of very technical stuff I never went through the effort to implement myself, but something that should be very much doable. One should probably start by creating a "sudoers" password on the Steam Deck for proper administrator (root) access.

Linux also support mount points so you can map entire drives to any folder, but unfortunately there is only one SD card, and SD Cards seem to be slow for simultaneous access... So mount points are not likely a solution.

The next consideration should be given to whether all of this work would be overwritten during an OS update for the Steam Deck, given how much of it would likely require access to the "immutable file system".

I might recommend putting in a request to Valve to implement an option to remap the shader folder within the Deck UI. Or at least get them on board with it so that things don't go sideways during an update.

My bad didn't know about that new to Linux & didn't see any youtube videos about that when regarding the storage or anyone online talking about it when talking about the Decks storage. I've only seen people talking about upgrading the storage to a larger size regardless of model to like at least a 1TB SSD, the only time I see people saying they intend to buy the model the TC has is if they want to save money & buy a affordable SSD of larger storage capacity.

[madisonsaunt05]

What about Cryoutilities? I think it has something to automatically move shaders to the sd card.

[invision2212]

I had to swap out the 64gb drive for a 512gb for the same reasons. After having the deck for about a month I was quickly using all the space up even tho I’ve installed nothing on it besides system updates and updates from desktop mode.

[sygys]

This needs to be fixed by valve not by me doing all sorts of technical linux stuff i have no idea of how to do it.

Its rediculous that when installing games on the SD card the internal storage fills up to the point where the Deck becomes unusable. I cant even start a game anymore. i have to factory reset the damn thing to get the storage back i guess. At the moment i have more then 40 gigs of shaders on the internal storage? the rest is consumed by the OS itself.

I really hope this is fixed soon... because removing games isnt really doing much. Im afraid even when removing games the shaders stay on the internal storage or atleast a fair amount of it...

An even bigger problem is that you can swap sd cards. so you install games on an sd card and swap it with another one. in the background these shaders from the games on another sd card are still on the steam deck somewhere. and god knows what more... If you use the sdcard for other purposes it seems that there is no way anymore to remove the additional data from the internal memory unless you are a linux fanatic... Which im absolutely not...

[Haruspex]

You can use Cryoutilities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KynHCZdqpKY
https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities

With it, you can make the Deck save the shader cache data to the SD card instead of the internal storage. It also allows you to clean up any unused cache data.

Longer term, it might be a good idea to invest in a replacement SSD.

[Exever]

Seconding the opinion that this should be addressed in a software update to Steam OS. I love the Deck, and I haven’t really touched my Switch much since buying the Deck, but this is certainly not the type of thing that would happen on a Switch, and if it did, Nintendos advice wouldn’t be “hey, take your Switch apart and buy a 3rd party SSD / dive into the file structure / download a 3rd part app to clean out your storage”

Steam OS should be a complete package, and right now it’s not. To me, games run acceptable on the MicroSD cards, so I would rather have my entire library divided into a bunch of cards and keep my internal storage “clean,” which means I should have no reason to have more than 64 gigs.

I still love the Deck, but if they really want to compete with consoles, this type of thing will turn many away.

[retrogunner]

yup. ditto on the CryoByte33 steam-deck-utilities. What you want is under the Storage tab to move prefixes/compdata to where the game lives (on the SD Card).

Just remember, if you go to Settings > Storage, be sure to leave Proton and Steamworks on your internal storage. All games can live on the SD Card. Those however are used by all games and if you switch around SD Cards, you'll have to deal them being re-downloaded all the time. Each Proton download is 1+GB each.

The Cryo Utils can also now clean up prefixes of games uninstalled to help reclaim space.