Second formatting BRICKED my SD card on Steam Deck

[Kopilaowu]

Unfortunately I was only found out this issue after my 1TB sandisk microsd card was bricked when format it second time on my steam deck.
It seem like many people are having the same issues on reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/u3ms42/steam_deck_killing_sd_cards/

It was all working FINE until i have decided to format it when trying to reimage my steamOS go get a brand new start. (Problems with Herotic Launcher )
Then I got stuck at formatting screen on setting menu so i have no choice but let it running for few hours,
because i think it might causing TROUBLE if i turn off the deck while formatting the card.
So i plug in the charger and disable the sleep mode while formatting.
Guess what, i still got an Error at the end after 2 hours of formatting and now my microSD is completely GONE.

I have tried to format it again on Window, DiskGenius , SDcardformatter and NONE of them work.
PLEASE FIX THIS !!!!

[chipperh169]

I used this program to format the sd card on the PC to EXT4, https://www.diskgenius.com/download.php. tried many times to use Steam Deck and seams like it bricked to the point the PC could not find it unless I went to disk management and delete volume. then use the program to format to EXT4, put it in the Steam Deck and do not format it again, just use it.

[turtis123]

gothicm3rcy eredeti hozzászólása:

Its actually surprising that people think if a partition is corrupt your card is bricked, when 99% (probably higher) of the time its not true. you need to completely remove all partitions, to "blank" the card, you can use minitool or an app like it, or just do this in windows
(link here also... method 2 https://www.diskpart.com/delete-partition/delete-partition-on-sd-card.html)

To delete partitions on SD card or USB drive in Windows 7/8/10/11 with this program, take the following steps:

1. Click Start and then type “diskpart” in search box.

2. At the diskpart prompt, type list disk

3. Type select disk n ( n means the disk where you plan to delete the partition)

4. Type list partition

5.Input select partition n

6.Type delete partition

Then the partition will be deleted.

card should be fine now, just awaiting a partition.
you can also format in windows as ext4 and put it in your deck (exfat will also read in your steam deck)
there are a lot of free partition programs, minitool, etc)

Thank you!

[ragosta]

Bricking can happen since the current version of SteamOS doesn't have the Eject feature for MicroSD cards, Glenn in his review of the best Steam Deck SD Card[esportsheadlines.com] mentioned it. I sure hope they fix it in the next update and add it.

[Taktloss]

Larvas eredeti hozzászólása:

Bricking can happen since the current version of SteamOS doesn't have the Eject feature for MicroSD cards, Glenn in his review of the best Steam Deck SD Card[esportsheadlines.com] mentioned it. I sure hope they fix it in the next update and add it.

Well it doesnt mention anything about bricking a SD Card only corrupting. A brick would make break the Card completly. I really think some people are mixing up what a Brick really means.

[ILLION_IO]

I think another way that will also make the steam os not recognize an SD card is mounting in desktop mode. I used a 256gb SanDisk card and was in desktop mode when I inserted the card and then mounted the card in desktop mode that then caused the card to not be recognized by the steam os. So just another thing to look out for, not sure the reason why maybe the Linux distro is formating in a way the steam os can't communicate with or whatever but that's what happened to me.

[pdavey751]

gothicm3rcy eredeti hozzászólása:

Its actually surprising that people think if a partition is corrupt your card is bricked, when 99% (probably higher) of the time its not true. you need to completely remove all partitions, to "blank" the card, you can use minitool or an app like it, or just do this in windows
(link here also... method 2 https://www.diskpart.com/delete-partition/delete-partition-on-sd-card.html)

To delete partitions on SD card or USB drive in Windows 7/8/10/11 with this program, take the following steps:

1. Click Start and then type “diskpart” in search box.

2. At the diskpart prompt, type list disk

3. Type select disk n ( n means the disk where you plan to delete the partition)

4. Type list partition

5.Input select partition n

6.Type delete partition

Then the partition will be deleted.

card should be fine now, just awaiting a partition.
you can also format in windows as ext4 and put it in your deck (exfat will also read in your steam deck)
there are a lot of free partition programs, minitool, etc)

Whoever you are, thank you bud. The method you described worked perfectly for me and I have my card back.

[Platinum]

Formatting an SD card won't brick it use windows disk manager and make a new volume of there isn't one. Don't be so quick to give up Google is your friend.

[Nathonius]

Using DiskPart worked for me, though in my case there were NO readable partitions on the card. I think the partition table was just totally messed up. So for me I put in the SD card in my computer (took a few tries before windows would even recognize it), selected it in diskpart, then used the diskpart 'clean' command. After that I was able to format it on the steam deck.

[Batkonha]

my 512gb sd card just got stuck on an exFat partition, can't change it to anything else, tried formatting, filling it up with zeroes, using a blank .img, nothing works. can't use it on the deck, switch or anything that doesn't use exFat.

[Ethorbit]

"Formatting an SD card won't brick it" - Yes it will - when done inside the Steam Deck UI apparently.

I'm tech savvy and familiar with Linux and disk management (so don't condescendingly disregard this with "you just don't know how to fix a partition" or whatever, because I definitely do). I watched someone in real-time kill their brand new SD card; they took their SD card out of its packaging and attempted to format it for the first time inside the UI where it threw an error and just killed it. They handed me the deck and I went into the terminal and used fdisk where it does not show at all, the disk label for it also does not exist and it will not show on any other system either. After rebooting, dmesg shows that the card "Failed to initialize" as well as some nonsensical errors. The Steam Deck recognized it before formatting and now it doesn't anymore.

I've never seen this issue occur on a distro as much as I've seen it happen with Steam OS. Either Steam Deck's format is killing people's SD cards (and given just how many posts I've seen about this, that's very believable), or the cards themselves are simply arriving faulty and are only discovered to be faulty during a format and this is all just a massive coincidence.

I hope Valve addresses this either way, I will never and will never let anyone I know format anything inside Steam OS again until then.

[Fierman]

You are not tech savvy, you just think you are. Formatting an SD card using standard linux tools will not brick them period, no matter your anecdotic 'evidence'

[Insomnia1999]

chipperh169 eredeti hozzászólása:

I used this program to format the sd card on the PC to EXT4, https://www.diskgenius.com/download.php. tried many times to use Steam Deck and seams like it bricked to the point the PC could not find it unless I went to disk management and delete volume. then use the program to format to EXT4, put it in the Steam Deck and do not format it again, just use it.

I too used diskgenius and after many attempts, it not being recognised by my PC anymore, I tried to reformat back to EXT4, I've spent the last 7 hours straight (no word of a lie, I'm pulling my hair out at this point) trying to just get my steam deck to take an SD card. Disk genius won't let me format to EXT4, it gets 3/4 of the way through and just stops that last 1/4. I've tried this way, I've tried just plugging the SD card in, going to system on game mode and hitting format SD (validation message comes up on one card, my other 2 cards just fail to format) and I've tried in KDE/KDP (can't remember what it's called but the partition manager in desktop mode) and still nothing. I'm genuinely lost for words thoughts and hope at this point. I was going to upgrade the 64GB internal to a 1tb too, but based off the SD card issues alone, I'm not even going to attempt to swap that over and install new OS after the swap too. I'm stuck to a £349 device that I can play 2 games on. Idk what to do with it

[Mr Cook]

Can u use "parted" in a desktop terminal to delete the partition? Can u then create a new one? Either gpt or mbr partition scheme. Can u then format that partition to ext4?

[Insomnia1999]

Mr Cook eredeti hozzászólása:

Can u use "parted" in a desktop terminal to delete the partition? Can u then create a new one? Either gpt or mbr partition scheme. Can u then format that partition to ext4?

I've tried to format a partition, I've deleted and remade partitions then tried to format them too, and still no luck. I've used 3 SD cards and been talking to steam support (useless as ever) and I've just decided to bite the bullet and buy a 4th card. If that doesn't work I'm giving up completely

[NuLife]

Insomnia1999 eredeti hozzászólása:

Mr Cook eredeti hozzászólása:

Can u use "parted" in a desktop terminal to delete the partition? Can u then create a new one? Either gpt or mbr partition scheme. Can u then format that partition to ext4?

I've tried to format a partition, I've deleted and remade partitions then tried to format them too, and still no luck. I've used 3 SD cards and been talking to steam support (useless as ever) and I've just decided to bite the bullet and buy a 4th card. If that doesn't work I'm giving up completely

Really 3 cards, what you doing buying cheap knock offs or something..