MicroSD Card recommendations and what is max size that Steam Deck can support?

[VRtopian]

I am seeing a lot of chatter about the challenges with the MicroSD Cards. Does anyone have any recommendation on which MicroSD card make/model has better success? And I have looked through all of the documentation I can find but I do not see anything on the maximum storage size that is supported by the Steam Deck. I am sure it is there somewhere but I have not stumbled upon it yet.

[....]

From what ive heard and read its pretty simple - as long as you dont buy a "normal" quality sd card you wont notice the difference while gaming.

But you will notice the difference in download speed and when moving/installing games a lot.

I dont know if there is a limit but 1 TB works without a problem - are there even bigger sd-cards?

[Mat.W]

The Sankdisk Ultra cards seem to do the job fine. I have the 512GB one for my 256GB Deck and things run on it just fine.

[....]

Just one tip - dont buy a small one if you have a lot of games and dont want to uninstall/install games all the time.

Switching SD-Cards works but isnt that great - i wouldnt trust hotswap and its just too small for it to be switchable in a pleasant way.

[VRtopian]

Thanks. I just ordered a Sandisk Extreme 1tb card. Figured go big or go home. lol

[imbrock]

I picked up one of the Lexar play sd 1tb cards. Apparently they're designed for the switch / gaming and media consumption. I'm hoping that gives me a bit more read write durability than ones made for photography or whatever.

[OGNocturnal]

Ive bought three SD cards to try out: a Samsung 256Gb Evo, a 512Gb DSP brand and a 1TB Sandisk Ultra which im waiting on today.

Sandisk Ultra ive heard are really good SD cards for the deck and not too overkill (i read somewhere it was used in a steam deck presentation or video).
So i'm going to put them through their paces over the next two weeks once ive filled them to 3/4.

Rather than make a new comment il leave this here....

As for the max capacity - the decks MicroSD slot is SDXC. So 2TB is the max it will take currently.

[zBeeble]

So... on SD cards... I had previously bought a Sandisk Ultra 200G for my nVidia Shield tablet. This reformatted and worked fine. During prime day, I upgraded to a Sandisk Extreme 1T. I had trouble formatting it (see other posts), but now it works well.

For microSD, the U rating (and, I believe the V rating) talk in various ways about contiguous read and write speed. IIRC, U1 is _required_ by specs. I have not tested non U1 cards, but U1 is a pretty low spec.

The Sandisk Ultra was U1/A1. Looking at it, it doesn't have the V specification.

The Sandisk Extreme is U3/A2/V30.

I created (using a shell) a file of 10G from /dev/random and then copied it. The 512G drive (stock) got 150MB/s write and the Sandisk Extreme got 79.5 MB/s. Interestingly, my workstation (while testing it) only sustained 74 MB/s.

A special note: copying /dev/zero to the internal disk got 1.3 GB/s write --- so compression must be turned on somewhere.

The 'A2' certification is something you'll want if you can afford it. While it's a bit hazy ... like any standard on fungible things, it talks about the small random IOPS that are common with games.

[Bene]

Originally posted by Mat.W:

The Sankdisk Ultra cards seem to do the job fine. I have the 512GB one for my 256GB Deck and things run on it just fine.

Can confirm that, no problems at all so far.

[PopinFRESH]

Steam Deck supports microSDXC which the standard goes up to 2TB. I don't believe there are any commercially available microSD cards that are larger than 1TB however.

[Selt3Z]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Steam Deck supports microSDXC which the standard goes up to 2TB. I don't believe there are any commercially available microSD cards that are larger than 1TB however.

SanDisk Ultra SDSQUAC-1T50-GH3MA

[Riblet aka Rib]

If I’m getting. A 512gb steam deck can I use a 1tb sd card?

[soldudeguy2004]

Sans disk extreme 1tb is if you have alotta games it as A2/U3/V30 apparently there are 1.5T and 2T PNY A2 cards (they usually make ssds and custom nvidia) but they are expensive if your getting one second hand and if you get one second hand it may be a fake so just stay with sans disk extreme