Can you simply move an SD card from one Steam Deck to another?

[MARl0]

Got my order in for the OLED, and now I'm curious if you can just move your SD card from your old Deck to the new one and have it work? I have all my emudeck stuff on my SD card, and would love to not have to mess with all that again!

[MassiveCalves]

Yes and no. Steam won't automatically detect that there's a Steam library on that card, but by moving some files around you can point Steam at everything on the card without having to redownload things. I haven't done this before on the Steam Deck so steps might be a bit different, but I've moved drives with steam libraries between PCs and you should be able to do something similar to the following:

Move the card. Then go into desktop mode, launch Steam, go to Settings > Storage > dropdown menu > Add Drive. Point it at your microSD card's Steam library folder. If Steam doesn't like that the folder already has a library set up, then rename the existing folder, add the new Steam library folder, and then move all the contents of the old library folder to the new one. Now when you click "Install" for any of the games present in the folder and choose to install them to the library on the microSD, Steam will discover the existing files instead of redownloading things. For any non-Steam apps, you can just add references to the executables again like you did before.

Hope this helps.

[zBeeble]

I was able to move a card around. Inserting a card on a deck does seem to bring up the library. I bought a 64G for my niece last year ... and moving my SD card over brought up the library.

[Gilligan]

I just tried moving my sd card to my new oled and it just wants to format it right away.
I switched to desktop mode and looked in the sd card and found that in the card is a steamapps folder plus a libraryfolder.vdf. The .vdf file stays with the steamapps folder its next to so remember to move it with the steamapps folder. Also, exit steam before every file move. Ok, I added the drive in steam in desktop mode and then there is a steamlibrary folder with the steamapps folder inside. I moved the steamapps (with the vdf file) folder into the steamlibrary folder then steam see's the games. I switch back to game mode and then it see's 2 library's, so I went back to desktop mode and moved the steamapps folder back out of the steam library folder and deleted the steamlibrary folder and now all seems well.
Apparently game mode puts a steamapps folder at the top of the drive. Desktop mode puts a steamlibrary folder at the top with steamapps in it. This all seems so convoluted.
Why at this point does Steam not simply see a drive with games on it and validate it and add it and all the games? Many people would have simply formatted it and then proceeded to re-download a TB of data (its a TB sd card). Seems to me that valve would not want that to happen.

[brenswald]

I had a problem with steam os 3.5.4 where the windows partition completely failed along with the steam os partition. After a complete factory reset, i inserted sd cards and to my surprise all games installed were ready to play.
Irregardless to say this is probably the last time i will attemt a dual boot, windows can suck it!

[FEBTOBER83]

what if the SD card ONLY has EmuDeck ROMs and data on it? No Steam game installs? Then, would just moving it from the LCD steam Deck to the OLED steam deck have it recognized and work correctly with the OLED deck? That's after the SSD card is moved from the LCD deck to the OLED deck.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by FEBTOBER83:

what if the SD card ONLY has EmuDeck ROMs and data on it? No Steam game installs? Then, would just moving it from the LCD steam Deck to the OLED steam deck have it recognized and work correctly with the OLED deck? That's after the SSD card is moved from the LCD deck to the OLED deck.

No, you'd need to use the new tool Emudeck created to dump your configurations and saves; then run Emudeck on the new Steam Deck OLED to install the emulators you're using and then use the import tool to reimport the dump you created previously on your Steam Deck LCD. Otherwise, yes the roms will work fine if you just move the microSD card over to the new deck once you've got the same emulators and configurations/saves setup on the new Steam Deck.

[Shoryureppa]

Originally posted by Gilligan:

I just tried moving my sd card to my new oled and it just wants to format it right away.
I switched to desktop mode and looked in the sd card and found that in the card is a steamapps folder plus a libraryfolder.vdf. The .vdf file stays with the steamapps folder its next to so remember to move it with the steamapps folder. Also, exit steam before every file move. Ok, I added the drive in steam in desktop mode and then there is a steamlibrary folder with the steamapps folder inside. I moved the steamapps (with the vdf file) folder into the steamlibrary folder then steam see's the games. I switch back to game mode and then it see's 2 library's, so I went back to desktop mode and moved the steamapps folder back out of the steam library folder and deleted the steamlibrary folder and now all seems well.
Apparently game mode puts a steamapps folder at the top of the drive. Desktop mode puts a steamlibrary folder at the top with steamapps in it. This all seems so convoluted.
Why at this point does Steam not simply see a drive with games on it and validate it and add it and all the games? Many people would have simply formatted it and then proceeded to re-download a TB of data (its a TB sd card). Seems to me that valve would not want that to happen.

that sounds like madness, trying to work with the steam deck in a console type environment is proving impossible 😤 i'm wanting this to be quick so i can do other things and get my data off the LCD model but i can see there is a obstacle that won't be solved, i'm frustrated on how to move foreword with this

[Shibby]

I put my SD card in and it worked fine and downloaded all the shader caches like normal. I didn't have any emulation files and the like on it so that is always going to be different than just having Steam games on there. I was pleasantly surprised that it "just worked". It's a cheapo Amazon basics card as well so nothing high end.

[MARl0]

I ended up having to redo all my mods and fixes for games that require tinkering to work on the Steam Deck. Moving all my emudeck stuff was also a massive pain even with their migration tool. The deed is done, but this was easily the worst upgrade experience I've ever had with a gaming platform in my entire life.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by Shibby:

I put my SD card in and it worked fine and downloaded all the shader caches like normal. I didn't have any emulation files and the like on it so that is always going to be different than just having Steam games on there. I was pleasantly surprised that it "just worked". It's a cheapo Amazon basics card as well so nothing high end.

For games purchased via Steam and support Cloud Saves, this should be the experience. Anything outside of that will increase the migration effort.

[Gilligan]

Originally posted by Shoryureppa:

that sounds like madness, trying to work with the steam deck in a console type environment is proving impossible 😤 i'm wanting this to be quick so i can do other things and get my data off the LCD model but i can see there is a obstacle that won't be solved, i'm frustrated on how to move foreword with this

Meh, I have dealt with just as many problems with windows. No it isn't as seamless as a Switch, but a switch can't do half the stuff that the steam deck can.
Did you have the same problem moving to the oled? Did it want to format the sd card?