WARNING: SteamDeck Destroyed My 1TB SanDisk SD Card

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skunkybomont024 23 May, 2022 @ 2:08pm

WARNING: SteamDeck Destroyed My 1TB SanDisk SD Card

WARNING TO ALL STEAMDECK OWNERS / FUTURE OWNERS:

Deck fried my $180 micro SD card on a normal bootup of the deck. Valves repose was that I bought an illegitimate card. I told them it was not illegitimate and worked perfect until one bootup it was unrecognizable, and upon restarting the device it could not be repaired or formatted on the deck.

I then formatted it on PC, no luck repairing on steamdeck. I format it on Mac, still gives the same error that it can't be repaired / formatted.

Moral/TL;DR Steamdeck ruined my $180 micro SD card to the point of no return on any device.

Good luck. I hope it doesn't happen to anyone else, because telling the consumer they bought a fake card and doing nothing is highly unethical. I'm not a haply consumer. Be careful all; I did nothing out of the ordinary to have this happen.

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Showing 1-15 of 119 comments

Fake 23 May, 2022 @ 2:14pm

What's your suggestion?

my new friend 23 May, 2022 @ 2:14pm

Originally posted by skunkybomont024:
WARNING: SteamDeck Destroyed My 1TB SanDisk SD Card
WARNING TO ALL STEAMDECK OWNERS / FUTURE OWNERS:

Deck fried my $180 micro SD card on a normal bootup of the deck. Valves repose was that I bought an illegitimate card. I told them it was not illegitimate and worked perfect until one bootup it was unrecognizable, and upon restarting the device it could not be repaired or formatted on the deck.

I then formatted it on PC, no luck repairing on steamdeck. I format it on Mac, still gives the same error that it can't be repaired / formatted.

Moral/TL;DR Steamdeck ruined my $180 micro SD card to the point of no return on any device.

Good luck. I hope it doesn't happen to anyone else, because telling the consumer they bought a fake card and doing nothing is highly unethical. I'm not a haply consumer. Be careful all; I did nothing out of the ordinary to have this happen.

Chances are, it was either a bad card or a fake (yes, there are fake ones even being sold directly from the companies themselves).
It's not like this hasn't been discussed in the correct forum yet.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/1675200/discussions/0/3273566073552857852/
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/1675200/discussions/0/5135803832918716625/
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/1675200/discussions/0/3269059787443854260/
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/1675200/discussions/0/3269059787419215060/

Last edited by my new friend; 23 May, 2022 @ 2:31pm

davidb11 23 May, 2022 @ 2:30pm

Have you tried to repair the MicroSD with Fdisk, or any repair tool yet?
And yeah, bad cards can fail, good cards probably won't.

Last edited by davidb11; 23 May, 2022 @ 2:31pm

my new friend 23 May, 2022 @ 2:31pm

Originally posted by davidb11:
Have you tried to repair the MicroSD with Fdisk, or any repair tool yet?

I gave the op all the decent threads with potential fixes IF the card is not a fake.

davidb11 23 May, 2022 @ 2:33pm

Originally posted by my new friend:
Originally posted by davidb11:
Have you tried to repair the MicroSD with Fdisk, or any repair tool yet?
I gave the op all the decent threads with potential fixes IF the card is not a fake.

Right. My bad.

Clifton Suspension Bridge 2 Jun, 2022 @ 5:37pm

Originally posted by skunkybomont024:
WARNING TO ALL STEAMDECK OWNERS / FUTURE OWNERS:

Deck fried my $180 micro SD card on a normal bootup of the deck. Valves repose was that I bought an illegitimate card. I told them it was not illegitimate and worked perfect until one bootup it was unrecognizable, and upon restarting the device it could not be repaired or formatted on the deck.

I then formatted it on PC, no luck repairing on steamdeck. I format it on Mac, still gives the same error that it can't be repaired / formatted.

Moral/TL;DR Steamdeck ruined my $180 micro SD card to the point of no return on any device.

Good luck. I hope it doesn't happen to anyone else, because telling the consumer they bought a fake card and doing nothing is highly unethical. I'm not a haply consumer. Be careful all; I did nothing out of the ordinary to have this happen.

Are you sure that the SD card isn't formatted as ext4 or ext3? The SteamDeck disk formatting utility I believe formats all external devices to ext4 which is the file system used on most Linux distros including Android and SailfishOS. Ext4 is not yet readable in Microsoft Windows or macOS (despite being around since ~2008) BUT you can read ext4 drives in Windows using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) using any of the userlands from Ubuntu to Debian to Fedora userland. You can download the Ubuntu Subsystem for Linux here: https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9PN20MSR04DW but I won't get into how to use the WSL as guides already exist...

retrogunner 2 Jun, 2022 @ 8:28pm

Regarding the EXT4 formatting of the SD Card, from one of my other posts elsewhere -- I formatted my SD Card this way before placing it into my Steam Deck:

And remember, when the Steam Deck formats an SD card, it's using "mkfs -t ext4 -O casefold /dev/sdcard" -- the case fold option is super important because it must accommodate mix-case Windows files like ignorant-NTFS.

That casefold option is recent kernel option which must be enabled when its built. For example, current Mint Linux supports casefold. Two major revisions back of Mint do not. And, 'gparted' doesn't have a obvious toggle for that formatting option.

I only mention that some folks have reported issues of the Deck destroying their SD Cards. So some of us (like me) just used our linux laptops. (booting a Live DVD/USB stick and you could do the same without installing Linux.)

Izeyash 3 Jun, 2022 @ 2:43am

I'm doubting so hard that my X button is broken.

Clone303 3 Jun, 2022 @ 2:55am

still going to buy one XP i mean 1TB SD Card

ParasiteX 3 Jun, 2022 @ 9:03am

Sound a lot more like you bought a defective or fake SD card. I suggest you contact whoever you bought the SD card from instead.

#10

my new friend 3 Jun, 2022 @ 9:05am

I have 3 1TB Sandisks, reformatted many times on the Deck for various (mostly my own stupidity) reasons and not a single one has had any issues.

#11

Delistd 13 Jun, 2022 @ 6:26pm

I removed my SD card after installing several games, only to put it back in and have it not detected and having to re-format. Anyone have the same issue?

#12

Dr Megaman 15 Jun, 2022 @ 9:32pm

Could you try popping in a cheap-o 1GB card or something super old and tiny you don't care about, and seeing if it fries that card too?

#13

Star 16 Jun, 2022 @ 5:55am

i doubt that the steamdeck fried the card. very very very much. first of all You cant really fry a sd card unless ur sd card reader is litterly pushing bucket loads of current onto the card wich litterly mean that any other failsafe mosfet must be out of whack and hotwired xD just simply wont happen.

most likely you got a faulty sd card or a knock off

Last edited by Star; 16 Jun, 2022 @ 5:56am

#14

BezaoBuilder 16 Jun, 2022 @ 9:50am

It is nearly impossible to physically damage a sd card with software, or even damage its microcontroller.
See https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Help_Rufus_damaged_my_flash_drive
The Steam Deck likely formatted incorrectly and is now complaining it can't read it. Many repairing tools assume there is a valid partition table or no partition table and valid filesystems on the card. Thus, even a tool meant for repairing may get confused by a corrupted filesystem and partition table.
On Linux, you can try "dd if=/dev/zero of=sdcard_device". (filling the sd card with zeros) And then reformat it.

#15

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Date Posted: 23 May, 2022 @ 2:08pm

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