DON'T FORMAT YOUR SD CARD TWICE ON STEAMDECK OR IT WILL BRICK IT PERMANENTLY

[Wolfman-RIP]

Formatting ANY SD card on Steam Deck twice BRICKS the card permanently. Sometimes formatting a card once will brick it if it has any files on it and you abort the format.
There is nothing you do will fix it. You can't reformat it again on Windows or Steam Deck. It's toast.

This issue has nothing to do with fake cards. We have threads were people tested their cards using H2testw to check if it was fake before using it. H2testw will tell you if your cards fake or its breaking on you as it will show the errors. People have used H2testw proving the cards not faked and ended up with bricked cards after formatting twice on steam deck.

I hope valve takes this issue seriously as 500GB and 1TB cards cost a lot of money.

[my new friend]

I've formatted mine at least a dozen times and had zero issues. Are you sure yours is legit?

[ReBoot]

Formatted mine exactly twice. Worked on the Deck afterwards, still works on desktop & phone.

[BezaoBuilder]

It is nearly impossible for software to damage hardware, especially an SD card. The tools for repairing drives are likely not able to repair the specific kind of corruption the Steam Deck makes.
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Help_Rufus_damaged_my_flash_drive

[Star]

steam deck will not brick ur sd card. unless ur sd card is a FAKE litterly formatted with a steamdeck a sd card over 20 times. no problemos.

[Izeyash]

This is the hardest (X) Doubt moment I have ever had, sorry to say it like this.

[ParasiteX]

Dude... those SD cards you bought are fake.. It is nearly impossible to brick an SD card that way.

[tyb]

lol use macrorit on windows, remove the partition, clean the free space, it will be ok

[Dizzy Media]

Yea this is not possible and probably means your card(s) are fake.

I have formatted multiple cards, multiple times, without issue.

I will say that i thought i bricked my first SD card the first time i formatted it with the deck, however that was because the format threw an error, probably because the card was so old. However attempting another format after taking the card out and putting it back in, then rebooting the deck, resolved that issue and the card worked fine after that.

I formatted that card at least 4 times for various reasons and had no issues after the initial issue i stated.

Now using a new 512gb card and yea, no issues at all formatting.

[D I A B L O]

Maybe his deck has an issue

[Valli]

I've run into an issue like this when screwing around w/ the SD card formatting scripts. Haven't yet found a way to fix it, it's as if the card is completely write-protected. Good to know I'm not alone!

[SlowMango]

Originally posted by Valli:

I've run into an issue like this when screwing around w/ the SD card formatting scripts. Haven't yet found a way to fix it, it's as if the card is completely write-protected. Good to know I'm not alone!

So it wasn't the formatting that caused the issue, it was you messing with scripts.

[Valli]

So defensive! But yeah, in my effort to get SD cards working in Holo-ISO, I did brick an SD card, but it was before I changed the script (and I did verify that the script in Holo-ISO is the same as the one in the Steam Deck's jupiter-main repo.) Looking forward to my deck arriving sometime in the next few days, to see if I can reproduce on real hardware.

I still have no idea *how* what the script does would brick an SD card, since it just tests the card with f3probe, makes a new GPT with parted, and a new ext4 partition with mkfs.ext4.

[bartekmazurekkindle]

Originally posted by D I A B L O:

Maybe his deck has an issue

Maybe he should visit decktologist.

[ba0701]

My 1TB Sandisk Extreme was absolutely not fake, Sandisk is currently replacing it through RMA, and the Deck bricked the card, entirely unrecoverable through any process on any system with any tool I tried. Odd thing is, every surface/sector/cylinder scan I ran on the card found zero errors, just nothing could access it to reformat/partition it. I formatted mine one single time, using KDE from the desktop, when mine happened. I know the process I used worked 100%, because I had previously followed the same steps in formatting a 512GB card I had, and it still works fine.

A second 1TB card I purchased (directly from Sandisk's site), was formatted using the minitool partition wizard, and it is currently in my Deck, and working perfectly. It is a lot faster than my 512 card as well, a lot faster, it will maintain dl's well in excess of 30-50MB, without the constant fading up and down we often see from some cards, including my 512.

[Beef Hammer]

This is not true I formatted my new sd card a few times, it's fine. For ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles I just formatted a different one 2x, it's fine lol.