external SSD

[invision2212]

before i buy one is it going to be plug and play? or will i have to do some black magic and voodoo to be able to use it?

[Bee🐝]

Depends by what you mean by “voodoo”?

It’s has to be formatted correctly and you need to able to connect it to the deck but it’s just like any external drive.

[Clone303]

well i only used one SD card but so i dont know about SSD for im not going to used that

[invision2212]

Originally posted by Bee🐝:

Depends by what you mean by “voodoo”?

It’s has to be formatted correctly and you need to able to connect it to the deck but it’s just like any external drive.

Basically I just want to format it, set it to always mount when connected, and work as it should in gaming mode.

I’ve played around with the disk partition manager before so I know how it works and how to format drives.

I don’t really want to go through a lot of hoops and not have it work if I unplug it or put the deck to sleep and have it unmount.

[invision2212]

So I got the external SSD today along with a USB-c hub and Ethernet adapter. Got all it hooked up and installed a 75gb game in 5min.

This beats playing games off the sd card for sure.

[tfk]

There is a tiny bit of voodoo required to set it up. It works though.

This is a good tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMP62KCErDU

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by tfk:

There is a tiny bit of voodoo required to set it up. It works though....

This is an old video and it shouldn't be needed any more after SteamOS 3.4.2 IIRC. It should auto-mount the disk and if you've added a library to it the games should show up like it does with a microSD card.

[tfk]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Originally posted by tfk:

There is a tiny bit of voodoo required to set it up. It works though....

This is an old video and it shouldn't be needed any more after SteamOS 3.4.2 IIRC. It should auto-mount the disk and if you've added a library to it the games should show up like it does with a microSD card.

Nice! A little bit less voodoo definitely increases usability. Good that Valve took the time to address this.

[invision2212]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Originally posted by tfk:

There is a tiny bit of voodoo required to set it up. It works though....

This is an old video and it shouldn't be needed any more after SteamOS 3.4.2 IIRC. It should auto-mount the disk and if you've added a library to it the games should show up like it does with a microSD card.

it still doesnt auto mount in game mode if you put the deck to sleep

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Originally posted by tfk:

There is a tiny bit of voodoo required to set it up. It works though....

This is an old video and it shouldn't be needed any more after SteamOS 3.4.2 IIRC. It should auto-mount the disk and if you've added a library to it the games should show up like it does with a microSD card.

Folks have reported it doesn't work. There was a rollback just after the initial release that rolled back some updated disk features. It was never officially said the auto-mount was rolled back but it seems it was.

[tfk]

I couldn't get it to auto mount either. I know it is technically possible as you can do so in KDE so whether or not it is implemented now, it will eventually come to game mode.

[invision2212]

It’s just a minor annoyance really. All I have to do is open desktop mode and go right back into gaming mode for it to work again.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by invision2212:

It’s just a minor annoyance really. All I have to do is open desktop mode and go right back into gaming mode for it to work again.

Did you use the Format option in Game mode or did you manually partition and format it in desktop and create a library in Desktop mode? I don't have a spare/free one available atm to test with but IIRC it works if you use the format option in Game mode and add it as a library there.

[tfk]

I had to do the partitioning and formatting in desktop mode as my drive wasn't visible in game mode. I think that the reason was that I added a m.2 ssd into an enclosure and therefore it wasn't partitioned yet.

[invision2212]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Originally posted by invision2212:

It’s just a minor annoyance really. All I have to do is open desktop mode and go right back into gaming mode for it to work again.

Did you use the Format option in Game mode or did you manually partition and format it in desktop and create a library in Desktop mode? I don't have a spare/free one available atm to test with but IIRC it works if you use the format option in Game mode and add it as a library there.

it wasnt visible in gaming mode so i did it all in desktop mode.

[Kitt 🌟 Stargazer]

I'm actually interested in getting an extra 2 TB SSD added through my Jsaux Dock myself. Going through the steps Chinballs Gaming provided I did actually get it to recognize the SSD and work briefly. But it gave me a lot of trouble as well. The SSD would disappear, the internet connection to download the games would drop to 0 instantly, games would lock up trying to run, aspects of the deck seemed to stop working. Going to Desktop mode would start up properly.

Eventually, I just said screw it and factory reset the device to get everything back to how it was, and which I'm still using it now as well. The SSD seems to still be reformatted, but I'm kind of afraid of trying to do it again as I'm worried I'll get stuck where I was and have to factory reset the device again and redownload everything.

I also noted that some of these problems happened when I tried to do that Cyro piece too for better performance. I'm kind of wondering if it has something to do with using Konsole or something else could be the cause perhaps.

I would absolutely love to get it up and running though so I can pretty much just move every game to the SSD's and, for the most part just stop using the Micro USD altogether.

If I can't get this working, I'm hoping down the line Valve will make it easier to install external SSD's in the future. At least for now, I have a second dock as well so I can have one to carry around if I want to use it over at other peoples houses or what not.