Steamdeck-formatted Sd card not recognized by windows

[Roger Calbute]

Hi all,
I use a formatted SD card on the steamdeck, the games work fine.
After installing Emudeck, I migrated the SD card to my PC to transfer the roms. But I can not open the card, Windows only offers me formatted (which I do not want since many Steam games are installed).
Do you have a solution to open SD card on windows? Thank you for your help.

[Bratty Patty]

The used Filesystem from Steam Deck/Linux cannot be used by Windows. Vice versa its ok. I use a external Harddrive with a usb c hub to Copy my files.

[Roger Calbute]

It's ok, I used the free version of this program, mentioned in another post :

https://www.paragon-software.com/en/home/linuxfs-windows/#

[Jake Sully]

Originally posted by Roger Calbute:

It's ok, I used the free version of this program, mentioned in another post :

https://www.paragon-software.com/en/home/linuxfs-windows/#

link you given says 404. but yeah like Bratty said linux file system has never worked in windows execpt for FAT32, exFAT. But EXT2, EXT3, EXT4 etc won't appear in windows since windows does not support it.

[Jâbbérwôkkï]

Windows & Steam OS can read exfat file system. If your PC can't read the card now try:
1) insert into pc
2) right-click on start (win 10 /Win 11) & select disc management
3) locate the sd card, right-click & select delete volume
4)right-click the card again & select new simple volume, follow the prompts & when it says format file system type select fat.

It should be readable by deck & Windows now.

[triassic_terrapin]

“3) locate the sd card, right-click & select delete volume
4)right-click the card again & select new simple volume, follow the prompts & when it says format file system type select fat.”

Thank you! I was really struggling trying to figure out how to do this portion. Only issue is I was unable to choose FAT.

[Lyxsm]

I am a bit late to the party, but try formatting it through CMD using the diskpart interpreter. IME using CMD works just as good (if not better) and you run into less issues.

This should help:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10

-Edit-
The aforementioned program allowing you to use the linux fs on windows is available here:
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/linuxfs-windows/

[Wanjia]

Originally posted by Lyxsm:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10

This doesn't really work since FAT apparently has a limited partition size, the quick option part returns errors saying:
Virtual Disk Service error:
The volume size is too big.

Without the quick it works but takes literal ages and don't have the time to sit through a multi day format (let alone leave my pc running through the night) and this doesn't even guarantee that the deck will recognize the sd card.

Formatting without diskpart and just windows (right click > format option) the exFAT on windows also gives problems since only dolphin (file explorer) seems to work, steam itself says I need to format it first and EmuDeck doesn't even detect an SD card.

Any other way to fix this issue?

Originally posted by Lyxsm:

The aforementioned program allowing you to use the linux fs on windows is available here:
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/linuxfs-windows/

This works but only for 10 days and I'm not planning to pay for this