Steam Deck / Factory Reset / SD Card

[terrybun]

​I want to reset my Steam Deck to factory settings, because of a constant crashes. I hope it will help, but I'm a bit worried that there will be problems with the SD Card. I don't really need games on the SD Cards and I can delete them.
1) Do I need to remove SD Card while factory reset?
2) If yes, will there be any problems with Steam Deck "recognizing" it after factory reset? Do I need to format card after factory reset?
I hope somebody can help me)

[terrybun]

Also, I have Proton 7.0 on my SD Card and I can't move it back to internal drive. If i leave my SD Card in Steam Deck while factory reset will it help?

[Jâbbérwôkkï]

The sd card slows down the boot of the device. As far as having proton on it, I believe Valve recommends you keep proton versions on the deck's internal drive for best performance. Personally I'd remove the card before the reset just to be sure it doesn't mess up the card during the process. The deck sometimes tends to accidentally corrupt the partition table & the cards end up having to be fixed by deleting their partitions, creating a new one & reformatting to make it usable again. I am not sure if it will be recognized by the deck after reset (it should be) but there is the possibility you may have to wipe the card anyway if that happens even if you do remove it so for a chance not to have to do that, removing it is your best choice.

[invision2212]

Re-image the deck instead of factory reset. That way everything is wiped clean to start over new.

Your SD card will be fine. Just remove it and and re-image the deck. Then insert it after you set it up and all your games will be there ready to play.

[terrybun]

Summarizing. I removed SD Card and did factory reset. After reset was done, I inserted SD Card back and formatted it. All Proton Files automatically downloaded to Internal Drive. Now I haven’t detected any bugs or crashes, but if I do, I think I will re-image the Steam Deck.