Is there a Deck to Deck Transfer in the works?

[Aries Stellar]

As per the title, I recently decided to purchase the OLED model Steam Deck and I was curious if there's such a feature in the works akin to the 3DS or PS4 System Transfer because I'd prefer not to swap SSDs.

[Kysen]

You can clone the SSD. I cloned my 64GB to 512GB SSD and everything worked fine.

[Aries Stellar]

How so?

[Nosferatu]

You can use something like clonezilla or dd if you're a nerd.
To be honest though I think the best move is just copying over your /home/deck folder since the rest is immutable anyway.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by Nosferatu:

You can use something like clonezilla or dd if you're a nerd.
To be honest though I think the best move is just copying over your /home/deck folder since the rest is immutable anyway.

Or if your games all support cloud saves then you can just reinstall them on the new Steam Deck OLED; if you've enabled Steam Local Network Game Transfers it will copy the game files from your other computers that are running Steam and are online on the same network.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8-B012-CE43

[Aries Stellar]

Cool. Thanks for the info. I should be able to just reinstall everything in that case. I might consider moving the Home folder because I did change some of the game art with some stuff I found on SteamgridDB

[MARl0]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Originally posted by Nosferatu:

You can use something like clonezilla or dd if you're a nerd.
To be honest though I think the best move is just copying over your /home/deck folder since the rest is immutable anyway.

Or if your games all support cloud saves then you can just reinstall them on the new Steam Deck OLED; if you've enabled Steam Local Network Game Transfers it will copy the game files from your other computers that are running Steam and are online on the same network.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8-B012-CE43

Does the local network game transfer option also transfer stuff like mods (like how I fixed the stuttery scrolling in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters)? Or do you have to redo all that stuff?

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by MARl0:

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Or if your games all support cloud saves then you can just reinstall them on the new Steam Deck OLED; if you've enabled Steam Local Network Game Transfers it will copy the game files from your other computers that are running Steam and are online on the same network.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/46BD-6BA8-B012-CE43

Does the local network game transfer option also transfer stuff like mods (like how I fixed the stuttery scrolling in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters)? Or do you have to redo all that stuff?

no It is just installing it from the locally available files rather than re-downloading the compressed file and decompressing it again from the Steam servers. You'd need to redo any mods

[OpenBagTwo]

I'd second the recommendation for disk cloning, but I'd also suggest then using the recovery ISO to reinstall the OS (while retaining user data), just in case Valve is shipping slightly modified drivers for each device.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by OpenBagTwo:

I'd second the recommendation for disk cloning, but I'd also suggest then using the recovery ISO to reinstall the OS (while retaining user data), just in case Valve is shipping slightly modified drivers for each device.

They are different drivers; the Steam Deck OLED is shipping with SteamOS 3.5.6; and the recovery image appears to now be for SteamOS 3.5.6 so we should likely see that get pushed out with all the drivers for both Steam Deck LCD and Steam Deck OLED.

Lawrence Yang confirmed that you should be able to update your current installation and move swap it into the Steam Deck OLED and it should work.

[MARl0]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Originally posted by MARl0:

Does the local network game transfer option also transfer stuff like mods (like how I fixed the stuttery scrolling in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters)? Or do you have to redo all that stuff?

no It is just installing it from the locally available files rather than re-downloading the compressed file and decompressing it again from the Steam servers. You'd need to redo any mods

If it's the locally available files, then shouldn't that include the mods? I'm confused. If it was re-downloading the compressed files, then I'd think it wouldn't include the mods (obviously). But if it's using the files already locally on the device, you'd think it would include the mods that are also locally on the device.

[nix]

Originally posted by MARl0:

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

no It is just installing it from the locally available files rather than re-downloading the compressed file and decompressing it again from the Steam servers. You'd need to redo any mods

If it's the locally available files, then shouldn't that include the mods? I'm confused. If it was re-downloading the compressed files, then I'd think it wouldn't include the mods (obviously). But if it's using the files already locally on the device, you'd think it would include the mods that are also locally on the device.

They're different things. The games cloned by local transfer are always kept in consistent places Steam knows about, in /home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/ (and other directories under /run/media for non-built-in-SSD storage); but game state for Proton games is stored in WINE prefixes (fake Windows filesystems) under /home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/,. This could in theory be synced, but game state for Linux native games might be stored more or less anywhere under /home/deck, but usually in dotdirs directly under the homedir or under .local/share and .config: only cloud saves would tell Steam anything about where any of *that* was.

For the purposes of this discussion, more or less all mods are considered "game state", like savegames, not the core game itself. So good luck syncing them :/

[nicoper]

Originally posted by MARl0:

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

no It is just installing it from the locally available files rather than re-downloading the compressed file and decompressing it again from the Steam servers. You'd need to redo any mods

If it's the locally available files, then shouldn't that include the mods? I'm confused. If it was re-downloading the compressed files, then I'd think it wouldn't include the mods (obviously). But if it's using the files already locally on the device, you'd think it would include the mods that are also locally on the device.

AFAIK it does not transfer anything that isn't in the game's depot, and also verifies the checksum of any transfered files to make sure they match what steam provides.
If you want mods to sync between devices, you'd be better off using something like Syncthing[syncthing.net].