steam deck micro SD card

[Oiche]

Hey hey.

So yesterday i bought a Micro SD card i bought for my steam deck arrived in the mail, when i tried to get it to format in gaming mode it didn't work, so me and a friend spent about 7 hours yesterday doing a lot of different things to try make it work, but no matter what we tried it didn't work, tried to reformat it on desktop mode didn't work, put it into my PC and used EaseUS partition to help, didn't work, used CMDs to also try it also didn't work, I've tried so many different ways but it just doesn't seem to work, even tried formatting it on my Nintendo switch, it still didn't work, but when i tried the microSD card that was in the Nintendo switch it worked perfectly, the MicroSD card that i have is SanDisk Extreme Pro 1tb microSDXC UHS-I with adapter, but it also worked on my Nintendo switch and my pc, just doesnt seem to be working on my steam deck at all, has this happened to anyone else? or is there something i can do at all the make it work? or should i just refund it and find a smaller MicroSD card for my steam deck?

sorry for posting this here if i shouldn't, I had no idea where I was supposed to

[Omega]

Go in to desktop mode, then try to manually format it, see what it says.

Run the following commands in the terminal;

lsblk

Now take note of the SD card, it should show in the list as mmcblk0, if it doesn't the SD card is not detected and either the card or port is broken.

Lets set a password for you user account, it is required to run sudo later. Do not forget this password, resetting it is a pain in the butt.

# When typing your new password it will not show any output, don't worry, it is typing just fine, it is hidden for security
passwd

!! Danger territory, we are now going to run commands as root, root is the super administrator who is allowed to do everything. !!

Lets first make sure the SD card is properly empty and there is no partition table on the device. This command will zero out the first 64MB of the drive (massively overkil, but details).

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M count=64

Now lets open a disk partitioner and partition the drive. It will ask if you want to initialize it with GPT or MBR, choose GPT.

sudo cfdisk /dev/mmcblk0

Create a single single new partition spanning the entire disk. Make it of the Linux Filesystem type, this should be the default. Once the partition is created write it to the disk.

Now lets check if the partition is actually properly written to the drive

lsblk

Under mmcblk0 there should be an item called mmcblk0p1 listed, that is your new partition.

Now lets format it with Ext4.

sudo mkfs.ext4 -L gamedrive /dev/mmcblk0p1

And mount it, also make sure it mounts automatically in the future.

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/gamedrive

# SUPER DANGER TERRITORY, if this goes wrong your deck may no longer boot
sudo nano /etc/fstab

# Add the following line to the bottom of the file
LABEL=gamedrive /mnt/gamedrive ext4 rw,noatime 0 0

# CTRL + X to quit, Y to save, N to not save

# Reload the fstab
sudo mount -a

[Oiche]

Originally posted by Omega:

Go in to desktop mode, then try to manually format it, see what it says.

Run the following commands in the terminal;

lsblk

Now take note of the SD card, it should show in the list as mmcblk0, if it doesn't the SD card is not detected and either the card or port is broken.

Lets set a password for you user account, it is required to run sudo later. Do not forget this password, resetting it is a pain in the butt.

# When typing your new password it will not show any output, don't worry, it is typing just fine, it is hidden for security
passwd

!! Danger territory, we are now going to run commands as root, root is the super administrator who is allowed to do everything. !!

Lets first make sure the SD card is properly empty and there is no partition table on the device. This command will zero out the first 64MB of the drive (massively overkil, but details).

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M count=64

Now lets open a disk partitioner and partition the drive. It will ask if you want to initialize it with GPT or MBR, choose GPT.

sudo cfdisk /dev/mmcblk0

Create a single single new partition spanning the entire disk. Make it of the Linux Filesystem type, this should be the default. Once the partition is created write it to the disk.

Now lets check if the partition is actually properly written to the drive

lsblk

Under mmcblk0 there should be an item called mmcblk0p1 listed, that is your new partition.

Now lets format it with Ext4.

sudo mkfs.ext4 -L gamedrive /dev/mmcblk0p1

And mount it, also make sure it mounts automatically in the future.

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/gamedrive

# SUPER DANGER TERRITORY, if this goes wrong your deck may no longer boot
sudo nano /etc/fstab

# Add the following line to the bottom of the file
LABEL=gamedrive /mnt/gamedrive ext4 rw,noatime 0 0

# CTRL + X to quit, Y to save, N to not save

# Reload the fstab
sudo mount -a

Thank you, i really appreciate you taking the time to answer and try help me figure out my problem, unfortunately, i just cant get it to work properly think its because of my own incompetence, i can get it all to work fine until i have to format it to EXT4 then i just get some errors

[Omega]

What are the exact errors you are receiving? Sounds like the SD card may be broken.

[Oiche]

Originally posted by Omega:

What are the exact errors you are receiving? Sounds like the SD card may be broken.

Input/output error

[Omega]

Originally posted by Cio:

Originally posted by Omega:

What are the exact errors you are receiving? Sounds like the SD card may be broken.

Input/output error

SD card is either broken or the port is. Does it give similar errors on other machines when writing data to it?

[Oiche]

Originally posted by Omega:

Originally posted by Cio:

Input/output error

SD card is either broken or the port is. Does it give similar errors on other machines when writing data to it?

Only seems to happen on my steam deck, works fine on the switch and my pc port for windows 10

[Omega]

Originally posted by Cio:

Originally posted by Omega:

SD card is either broken or the port is. Does it give similar errors on other machines when writing data to it?

Only seems to happen on my steam deck, works fine on the switch and my pc port for windows 10

May very well be a Steam Deck issue then. Possibly a hardware issue.

Did you actually write some data to the drive and then read it again to test it?

Have any other SD cards on hand to test it with?

[Oiche]

Originally posted by Omega:

Originally posted by Cio:

Only seems to happen on my steam deck, works fine on the switch and my pc port for windows 10

May very well be a Steam Deck issue then. Possibly a hardware issue.

Did you actually write some data to the drive and then read it again to test it?

Yes i did, i think that ill just have to return the SD card and try something else, thank you for all your help and time to answer my questions and try help me figure it out!

[[☥] - CJ -]

Dumb Q
But are you inserting it into the steam deck in the correct orientation?
does the steam deck even recognize it being inserted?

Unless you got a fake card it should work out of the box by default, Steam Deck might be more picky compared to switch or PC regarding what it'll access.

where did you get the card from? post a link if you can