Is it possible to format an sd card then transfer roms to it via windows then put back in deck

['till I die]

Brand new deck owner still waiting on it at the moment trying to answer questions i havent found an answer for yet

[ReBoot]

Yes. I suggest WSL to read & write Linux SD card formats on Windows.

[Punkovich]

The card needs to be formated in EXT4 (apparently BTRFS also works though ive not tried it) good luck getting Windows 11 to play well with these file systems. there are some free tools you can find by googling, the expect jank.

[Haruspex]

Yes, it's possible. There's WSL as ReBoot suggested.

It might be easier to just FTP the files over though.

I upgraded the SSD in my OLED to 2 TB, so I took the previous 512 GB drive it came with and installed it in a USB-C enclosure. I use that to transfer files back and forth.

[Zef]

I just transferred everything by setting up a NFS share on my synology NAS to transfer everytrhing between my windows PC & steam deck.

You could use a cheap docking station with portable HDD aswell, or FTP or some cloud based file sharing if WSL is too complicated for you.

[invision2212]

if you have a USB C card reader than you can use EX-fat which is windows default file system to transfer files. it wont work if you insert it directly into the decks card reader for some reason, but it will work using a card reader as thats how i use to transfer files.

[Team Fortress 2]

depending on where the roms are from you could just download them through the desktop mode browser

['till I die]

I caved and bought a 256gb usb drive as i dont have a decent thumb drive anyway cannot wait to get my hands on the deck

[Belva Company]

For FTP, I follow this tutorial and use FileZilla:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/09/transferring-files-from-pc-to-steam-deck-with-ftp/