steam deck cloning

[Drones]

I'm planning on getting a steam deck and I was going to get the the 64gb model. I'm also planning on getting a 512gb SSD for it. my question is is it possible to clone the steam deck onto a USB thumb drive(i have a 64gb thumb drive) and load it into the steam deck once the SSD swap was finished. If it is possible could someone tell me how to do it?

[XBGoofBall]

Why would you need to clone it? All of your game saves should be on The cloud and reinstalling the OS is as simple as an internet connection.

[Drak3]

You’ll need to be able to have both drives hooked up to a PC at once for direct cloning, which means two NVMe slots (USB to NVMe enclosures will work but won’t be as fast). Tools like Macrium Reflect will make a 1:1 clone, then all you have to do is pop the new drive in.

You might need to go to desktop mode and use the partition editor to make the full 512GB usable.

The important thing is to go slow, double check everything you click, and if you need to, follow guides.

Originally posted by XBGoofBall:

Why would you need to clone it? All of your game saves should be on The cloud and reinstalling the OS is as simple as an internet connection.

Cloning is substancially faster.

[sunspark]

If cloning, use this: https://clonezilla.org/

[Armida]

After a couple of months fighting shader caches and the like with a 64GB SSD plus 512GB SD setting, I finally gave in and took the PC Gamer's upgrade route. Cloned directly to the new SSD (via sudo) and swapped afterwards. Worked like a charm, done in less than an hour (took my time carefully).

[oliwek]

The advantage of a small drive to clone, cloning the 512GB model took me 65 minutes... Yours takes probably only 8 minutes or so.