Hey folks! So just wanted to add a bit of info to this amazing video! - In some cases when you had a a sd card previously and you formated it, you may or may not have had rename this older sd card. If so to keep the file path to your games the same, you need to rename this new sd card in desktop mode after or before the change mentioned in the video to the same name of your older sd. This is very important! - on latest update of steam deck, when you format a micro sd it creates some file on your new sd card either way. You will require to replace these files with you older sd file but you can't bring your older "Lost+fun". Dont worry tho this doesnt change anything. Hope this helps someone, i was panicking a little earlier!
Thank you, I'm in the process of moving around 200GB of data onto a 1TB SD card using the method you described. I happened to have the very same anker USB C dock to hand, which was helpful!
Bro, your videos have been so unbelievably helpful in getting the most out of my new Steam Deck! Only had it for a few days and I swear I’ve binged your entire channel. Thank you!
Dude that's really great to hear and I can't tell ya how much I appreciate it :) It's seriously encouraging to read comments like this, particularly on those late nights where I'm exhausted from juggling the dayjob and trying to keep content rolling 😛
@@YourPlayer2 I've been there man. Slept an average of 3 hours a night for over a year getting our channel off the ground. Keep doin' what you're doin! When you love it the passion will help push you through the late nights!
Another practical tip/tutorial for something that seems so simple but in fact can be a head scratcher if you don't know how to do it! I'm used of doing these kind of transfers on my PC but since I don't own a Deck, I will certainly go back and watch this again when I get one because yes, Space is always an issue on any devices lol! Great video and keep up the good work!
Right? Like I was surprised (and delighted) that getting things copied over to an upgraded card was so easy. Not readily apparent, but if you have experience with mounting discs for access it makes perfect sense. Appreciate it dude!
Putting this into a playlist just in case they ever release the 2 terabyte micro SD card. It likely won't happen anytime soon because the average consumer doesn't need that much space on a phone (or so I read), but with time file sizes get bigger with increased quality including pictures. So eventually there might be a demand for a bigger card and hopefully it happens sooner rather than later. I'd like to eventually get the upgraded card to double the size of what I have currently with my 1 terabyte and have that much more space to include some of my bigger AAA games rather than mostly older titles and indie games. Thanks for the upload, hope someday I can put it to use.
@@Dorky_Designs Yup, I'm willing to bet because of the size of games and how rapidly they're growing and how much more significant they've become over the years, we'll see a size bigger than the terabyte within the next decade or two. I have a 14 terabyte hard-drive in my computer and I still can't fit half my Steam games onto it, lol.
@@TheBoredDude1000 True, but they weren't yet available when I originally made the comment. They've only been on the market for a little less than a year.
Sometimes the obvious seems too obvious! I have been trying to figure this out for couple days now and your video helped confirm this for me. Thank you so much, I really enjoy everything you have been putting out!
I've had this video in my Watch Later for quite a while, for when I would finally decide to move my 16GB, 32GB and 64GB cards to a new 256GB one. I finally did it! If I knew it was as straightforward as this, I would have done it sooner. Having all my games in one place and not having to constantly swap cards is huge. And in case anyone is wondering, for multiple cards it was just a matter of repeating the copy / paste process 3 times.
My issue may be a bit unusual, I tried copying the entirety of one card over to another and I'm having issues with a lost+found folder on the initial card.
Can't say I encountered that myself unfortunately, but based on this thread it might be safe to delete - www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/w9n41p/sd_card_upgrade_lostfound_folder/
Question about I have a 1tb micro sd card and it’s full. Yes I have AAA games on there mostly. Two questions 1)Can I keep some games on the one I have and put some on the new 1tb micro SD card(which I’m planning to buy at some point)? 2)Would that cause any issues to the steam deck if doing that? As in swapping the card depending on the games on that specific card?
I'm not sure but it looks like it based on this reddit thread! www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/w17l2g/can_you_simply_move_your_micro_sd_card_to_a_new/
Yup, you should be able to just copy everything over to the new card from the root, just make sure to do a copy and not a MOVE at first just to be on the safe side.
@YourPlayer2 just finished. It took about a day. I did a file transfer calculator and it was saying it would take 4 days at the speed the card transfer was doing. 3.5 tb on mine now 😂
What do you mean by "mount"? You mean just open the file manager (dolphin) for both cards side by side and manually copy and paste each folder from the old to the new?
Yup! But when you first go to the icon where the drives show up (not sure what it's called) it has an option to 'Mount and Open' which I'm assuming is a shortcut for how you'd mount a disk in Linux or on Mac OS for example.
I followed this, and I’m not sure if the steps worked initially, but now the games are showing up as “other” content, rather than games. It seems like Steam can’t identify that these were the same games already installed, just on a new SD card. I’ve searched quite a bit for a solution, but no dice - seems like most people have taken the “L” and had to re-download everything. (Which is what I was trying to avoid when I let the files copy as described here for about 2.5 hours… (1/2 TB of games…)
Man i really need your help i got a new sd card but i get an error saying that could not enter folder run media deck and when i try to copy over my files it wont let me at all am and administrator but i still cant move files over
Do someone know if it‘s the same when I saved everything (games for Emu and the Emus) on steam deck and transfer it to sd card? I‘m new in this genre, so I‘m not much into it right now.
I believe it was so simple for 2 reasons steam in general is very straight forward with moving games, but also linux tends to keep everything a game needs with the game and other programs do the rest so things should work out in 99.99% of the cases like this
That makes a lot of sense! I've only dabbled with Linux so I was a little apprehensive about just trying to copy things over but after mounting them just like I would in Mac OS it worked great!
Two thumbs up! One for providing the easy solution of a USB C dock, and the 2nd for the Joust t-shirt! My 128GB filled up fast, so I bought a 512GB. I knew windows wouldn't be able to see the SD card, so I put it into a USB reader and plugged it into my Raspberry Pi OS. It gave some weird error, and wouldn't mount it. That's when I searched the internet and found this video! FYI: my Anker USB C dock did get pretty hot. I don't think I'll be transferring 100GB too often.
LoL glad you liked the shirt and PRETTY sure I got that from Target a while back :p Oh yeah, especially if you've got a bonkers library you can burn through space QUICK. Glad to hear it was helpful, Ken :)
@Your Player 2 no I have the sd card I couldn't find it when I connected the external sd card on the steamdeck after a bit of head scratching I did find it in the end
Very nice video! My question is.. If I want to transfer my emulator and roms from the SSD to an SD Card, can I do it like that? Just copying the whole emulator folder with everything indide, does it work?
This didn’t work for me for ROMs. Broke links to EmuDeck’s non-steam content in gaming mode. Instead use EmuDeck’s “Migrate your installation.” An annoying quirk of this other method (for me): I first had to migrate the 128GB to Internal Storage, then you can unmount the original SD Card, insert the new larger SD card and repeat the migration but from Internal Storage to SD Card.
Just a quick question. Can u just transfer all the folders over or do you have to build the same folder structure on the new micro sd card first, then transfer the files into each folder?
Hmmm, you might be able to just plug in an external drive with a usb-c adapter but I haven't tried it myself so not sure. I would THINK so, but if you try this out and it works lemme know :)
Do you know how to get steam deck to play Philips cdi games that utalise the cdi video card? When I try abs play one that uses it I get a message saying please install video cartridge. The guide transfering roms on steam deck was very helpful ty.
Only question I have is how long did it take.. I have a 1tb micro sd card and it took me forever to get like 40 gbs of gamecube games on to it. I like to make a backup card but I really don't want to sit through all the time again lol. Just over 12 hours for that download haha
@@YourPlayer2 I think I have a bad sd card because after all that.... it deleted everything in the emulation folder... idk what happened. I exchanged it for another so we shall see.
I am upgrading to the Steam Deck Oled model and I am curious if I need to do anything to my micro sd before switching it to the Oled model. I downloaded my emulated games and emudeck on the micro sd as well and I do not want to lose the data on there. Thanks.
I did this for 256 to 512 upgrade and had no issue, but for some reason there's an issue with decky cloud saves now as I'm trying to upgrade from 512 to 1tb. Can anyone guide me to the fix because now the games won't load off the new 1tb card
How can I do this after the latest update? I just bought a 1.5tb SD card and want to transfer my 512gb card that's in my steam deck to my new SD 1.5tb? Any help would be amazing!😅
Not sure! I would assume it still works and haven't heard anything to the contrary, but definitely take a backup of your system if you're able before attempting to err on the side of caution.
@@YourPlayer2 no it won't work, the file path will not be the same and even tho all the data is there, apart from changing the file path on every app and game but still wouldn't want to do it this way.
@@turpac1in the same boat. Transferred over the information, tried to name the card and the path the same, didn’t work. Unfortunately, it looks like we could manually move over roms, however for game installs we’re looking at manually installing again. I have about 900gigs of info on that card so I’ll probably just format, and wait to see if Valve implements an easier process without me having to go and re-install like 20hrs of games.
Hmmm, not sure since I didn't encounter myself, but if you do get it going again I'd use the new Emudeck functionality to make a backup of your setup to try and prevent it in the future. Sorry I can't be more help!
I copied the 256gb card to a new 512gb card as per your video But when I went to play all my roms the emulator via emudeck went back to the front screen when I clicked on the rom I wanted to play This happened for all the roms in every emulator All the bios etc were copied as well In the end I had to do all fresh installs and re install emudeck It took forever and was well stressful Any help would be appreciated please in what may of gone wrong Steam deck all up to date as of 25/11/2023
Oh weird? I'm sorry you had a rough go of it and that's the first I've heard of someone having the issue :\ Hard to say what exactly went wrong since I don't know all of the steps and technical details like what file system your cards were using and whatnot unfortunately.
I intend to have one sd card for emulation and another for Steam games. What’s the hot swapping of cards like in practice? If you remove a card does all the artwork for those games on it vanish from the steam os interface?
@@davidvenables3735 Ok so update- for native Steam games if you swap cards the 'Installed' section that displays games will update dynamically. So if you take the card out the games disappear and if you put it back they re-appear. However it does NOT do this for ROMs that have been sorted into collections by Steam ROM Manager. So for those you'd likely need to re-run ROM Manager to generate a fresh listing of non-Steam apps (in this case ROMs) to be re-placed for whatever ROMs are on the newly inserted card. Hope this helps!
I do have a quick question, I moved all my roms and stuff from a 512 SD to a 1tb SD card, when I moved everything to my new SD card I had to reinstall all the games, my question is does it save all my game data when I moved everything?
@@YourPlayer2 Thanks! I was able to get it to work and I didnt have to reinstall all my games and all the save data was there as well, Thank you again for the video!
Sorry I won't be much help on this one and hopefully someone else can weigh in. I'm pretty sure mine were preserved using this method, but if you're dicey on it and have some saves with LOADS of progress might be worth looking into further.
I want to transfer also my games to a bigger 1tb microSD card, so thx for your video! After formatting the new 1tb card in my steamdeck i can see a file named "libraryfolder.vdf" on my new formatted card. This file exists also on my old smaller sdcard, but it is not the same, which I can see when I open it in a text editor. So my question is: Shall I overwrite the new libraryfolder.vdf with the old one or shall I keep the new libraryfolder.vdf file?
I BELIEVE I just overwrote anything on the destination card. That being said it can't hurt to just rename the existing libraryfolder.vdf file on the destination card and if it exhibits problems restore it :) WORST case you'll have to re-copy/download some thing so it should be pretty low risk but backups are always a good idea!
@@YourPlayer2 fixed it. Oled steam deck gives each sd card a unique path number. You need to manually change the label on every sd card to the same name. Then it works.
Not sure if doing it right or no, but my folders do not look as detailed or data intense as yours does - but it is transferring the files like you mentioned
Wouldn't Apex data be tied to your account login? I can't say for sure unfortunately since I don't really play Apex but if it's like other online games I'd think that you'd just pull those things down regardless of the device you play on.
@@xinsor1265 No problem and can't say I blame ya! If possible I'd try to login to Apex on another machine entirely just to see if they're still there if you're able :)
@@YourPlayer2 it says that emu deck mounting path is different. I have wiped the 1.5tb card again and started over. Thanks for your response. I'll let you know if I'm successful and let you guys know why it's happening.
Okay so I have my steam deck running on Windows OS do I do the same process when it comes to transferring my windows information to the new SD card or do I have to go to steamos first
I saw yo u showed SSX tricky playing on the deck. I have mine setup with emudeck using a gamecube core but it runs bad on some of the other graphically intensive stages. Is this the same experience you have?
I only tested it briefly but I'll see if I can try some later stages and report back! I HAVE heard that the GC runs better than the PS2 version, however.
I just did the same thing this weekend. I upgraded from a Gamestp 128GB to a Sandisk Extreme Pro 1TB, so not only should I have way more space, but everything should also be a bit faster, right?
May I clarify, is it to copy everything in the old card and just paste over to the new? Just everything, right? No specific folders or paths we should navigate to, hidden folders. I have both emulators and STEAM games so doing this will copy everything? Thanks!
That's how I did it! I didn't do any specific hidden folders or paths, but in retrospect I SHOULD have probably now that you mention it. Can't hurt :) And yes, for me it brought over my agmes and ROMs without issue, though in my case the emulators themselves were installed on the SSD as I recall. Ironically just TODAY I put out a new video about redoing my emulation setup though XD
@@YourPlayer2 Will check your new video in a bit. I had my emus installed via EmuDeck all kn my microSD 512 GB. So, it's better to just show hidden files and copy everything?
Do you need a Usb-c dock? I have a micro sd card reader and a laptop. Is there a way to transfer the data to the laptop and then transfer it from there?
Thanks so much! I had the same worries about things like EmuDeck and whatnot possibly not carrying over properly, super glad to learn transferring/upgrading is as easy and it seems here!
can i transfer all the files to the steam deck (i have the 512gb) instead and then transfer them to the new SD card so i don't have to buy a card reader dongle?
Hey, great video! I noticed that you are using Anker USB C Hub. Can you use one of its two USB C ports to connect the charger, so you can charge it at the same time, plus use the remaining USBC port to connect type c headphones?
Appreciate it, Pavlina :) You can indeed! It has passthrough charging, though I'm not sure about type C headphones as I don't have any of those unfortunately
I know you said you had all your roms on the microSD but when you first set up emudeck did you have it installed to the microSD or the internal storage?
Would it be as straightforward if you had your roms in the internal memory on your Steam Deck and wanted to migrate those to an sd card? I'm wondering as I don't fully understand if I'd need to reinstall emudeck via said sd card. I imagine I could just copy over my existing roms folders and bios files.
I'm not sure but I would THINK so, only because once OpenEmu (or your own manual process) gets the folder structure in place for the SD card, then as long as your emulators are configured to look at that directory structure and you've copied them over it should be the same :)
@@YourPlayer2 I managed to do it, but seems I lost some configurations or preferences for some of the emulators. More specifically seems the L3+R3 shortcut to get retroarch menu and other emulator menus no longer worked. For some reason in some of the emulators it became Select+R3. But once I got these menu to open again I managed to change these back. All good now.
Glad you were able to get it sorted! I just had a problem where I forgot HOW to get back to the Retroarch menu but that makes sense I guess hopping through a ton of different games/emulators all the time for videos :p
this is great news as i got the model with the least storage, and currently only have a spare 64 gb sd card. two questions tho; 1. can you use a windows pc to do the file transfer? 2. is there a way to do this for an internal storage upgrade? i want to eventually upgrade my internal storage to 2 tb, and it would be awesome if there was a way to transfer the data in a similar fashion to the sd card method in the video. thanks!
I don't think you can natively but there's gotta be a 3rd party app out there that can read the file system in Windows! As for internal, I'm really not sure- I mean in theory I guess if you could get a housing for the old SSD after you remove it to connect via USB MAYBE? But I just don't know enough about the nuances of Linux's file systems to say for sure. Sorry I couldn't be more help, dude!
This is the way I'm doing it but it is taking so long. trying to copy from my 512GB sd to my new 1TB sd so far its taken over 9 hrs and it's still only half done. both my sd cards are a2 and have a speed rating of over 100 MB/s so I don't understand why it is taking so long.
That's odd? Did you mean to do a move or a copy? Also if you delete the games from the original card while it's mounted are you still able to play on the new one you copied them to? Maybe just try deleting one at first :p
I'm planning to buy another micro sd card on my steam deck,do I need to be online when I swap my micro sd card?or it works even offline.Thanks for this video,Im new on your channel sir.
I think I WAS online when I did the swap but I'm pretty sure you don't need to be since you're just copying data locally :) You're most welcome and thanks for watching, dude!! :)
@@YourPlayer2 im transfering my old sd card to my external ssd just copy and paste the files.Im not sure this one works coz i dont have a hub for the other micro sd...i really like your videos sir and i enjoy more my steamdeck.
Thank you! I just started this and it is super slow. It's been about20 minutes and I'm only at 1k/135k files, does that seem right? Also, I had some folders in my new SD card - I assume from the formatting - I just merged these with the copy, is that correct? Thank you!
@@YourPlayer2 I ended up system restoring and going through the whole process again from scratch. everything works great now.. not as confident on linux as windows. thanks for your upload!
Hey man great video! I noticed that your 1TB sd card is the “slower” grey model. Do you notice any difference in terms of loading speed? Or any difference at all?
Quick question: I'm upgrading from a 128 GB card to a 1TB card. I just wanted to ask if your Steam Deck was able to survive the transfer despite the long waiting time? I'm worried my SD's battery will die before the transfer is completed since my card card is taking up that charging slot. lol
@@YourPlayer2 nice! was thinking on changing the card for a while but was afraid of starting everything over, specially the emulators. Thank you so much!
I was naive and got a 64 gb at first because I didn’t think I’d want that many emulations and I thought they’d all be a few mb… yeah no I was wrong lmao, upgraded to 1tb and were solid now 😂 thank you for confirming this for me, I wasn’t sure if it’d be as simple as copy pasting but Im thankful it is!
Thank you!!! This worked. I found various reddit posts that wanted to use kernal commands to clone the card. This resulted in the larger card being stuck in SteamOS with the old, smaller card's size. Long story short, just copy the contents from one to the other and walah. I had an issue trying to copy the "lost+found" folder on the sd card since this was locked. Everything was fine by skipping that folder when copying data from the old sd card to the new one. I too have tons of games and emulation set up on the sd card, so can confirm this method works with those kinds of set ups.
Just a quick question: did u just move the entire folders over or did u have to create new, identical folders in the new sd card then transfer the data inside each folder to the new one?
Hey folks! So just wanted to add a bit of info to this amazing video!
- In some cases when you had a a sd card previously and you formated it, you may or may not have had rename this older sd card. If so to keep the file path to your games the same, you need to rename this new sd card in desktop mode after or before the change mentioned in the video to the same name of your older sd. This is very important!
- on latest update of steam deck, when you format a micro sd it creates some file on your new sd card either way. You will require to replace these files with you older sd file but you can't bring your older "Lost+fun". Dont worry tho this doesnt change anything.
Hope this helps someone, i was panicking a little earlier!
Good insights! :)
@@YourPlayer2appreciate you making this video, it was really helpful!
Glad to hear it! Always nice to get some encouraging feedback :)
Actual hero. Thank you for posting a straight forward, succinct, easy to follow tutorial.
LoL you're most welcome! Glad it was helpful and hope you're digging the Steam Deck! :)
Thank you, I'm in the process of moving around 200GB of data onto a 1TB SD card using the method you described. I happened to have the very same anker USB C dock to hand, which was helpful!
LoL it's a good dock! Glad you were able to get it sorted, Rob, and thanks for checking out the video :)
Bro, your videos have been so unbelievably helpful in getting the most out of my new Steam Deck! Only had it for a few days and I swear I’ve binged your entire channel. Thank you!
Dude that's really great to hear and I can't tell ya how much I appreciate it :) It's seriously encouraging to read comments like this, particularly on those late nights where I'm exhausted from juggling the dayjob and trying to keep content rolling 😛
@@YourPlayer2 I've been there man. Slept an average of 3 hours a night for over a year getting our channel off the ground. Keep doin' what you're doin! When you love it the passion will help push you through the late nights!
Oh yeah, then you already know the struggle! Appreciate the kind words and take care, dude :)
To anyone who's wondering just move the steam files over don't worry about the other two folders. You're welcome
Thanks for the heads-up!
Thanks a lot! I was wondering about the Lost + Found folder, because it wouldn't copy over.
Another practical tip/tutorial for something that seems so simple but in fact can be a head scratcher if you don't know how to do it! I'm used of doing these kind of transfers on my PC but since I don't own a Deck, I will certainly go back and watch this again when I get one because yes, Space is always an issue on any devices lol! Great video and keep up the good work!
Right? Like I was surprised (and delighted) that getting things copied over to an upgraded card was so easy. Not readily apparent, but if you have experience with mounting discs for access it makes perfect sense. Appreciate it dude!
Guys can I delete some switch games to make room for more psp and c64 games without messing things up.
Putting this into a playlist just in case they ever release the 2 terabyte micro SD card. It likely won't happen anytime soon because the average consumer doesn't need that much space on a phone (or so I read), but with time file sizes get bigger with increased quality including pictures. So eventually there might be a demand for a bigger card and hopefully it happens sooner rather than later. I'd like to eventually get the upgraded card to double the size of what I have currently with my 1 terabyte and have that much more space to include some of my bigger AAA games rather than mostly older titles and indie games. Thanks for the upload, hope someday I can put it to use.
I sure wouldn't mind a 2TB! Thanks for watching, Turkey and hopefully there's some other videos here you'll dig :)
Hey I remember when they said you'd never need more than a 1GB hard drive. 1TB will be nothing soon enough
@@Dorky_Designs Yup, I'm willing to bet because of the size of games and how rapidly they're growing and how much more significant they've become over the years, we'll see a size bigger than the terabyte within the next decade or two. I have a 14 terabyte hard-drive in my computer and I still can't fit half my Steam games onto it, lol.
1.5TB SD Cards exist
@@TheBoredDude1000 True, but they weren't yet available when I originally made the comment. They've only been on the market for a little less than a year.
Sometimes the obvious seems too obvious! I have been trying to figure this out for couple days now and your video helped confirm this for me. Thank you so much, I really enjoy everything you have been putting out!
Glad to hear it was helpful, dude! And appreciate the kind words, Cody :)
Same here!! Seems so simple on a larger PC but something had me nervous about games, mod folders, etc.
I've had this video in my Watch Later for quite a while, for when I would finally decide to move my 16GB, 32GB and 64GB cards to a new 256GB one. I finally did it! If I knew it was as straightforward as this, I would have done it sooner. Having all my games in one place and not having to constantly swap cards is huge. And in case anyone is wondering, for multiple cards it was just a matter of repeating the copy / paste process 3 times.
Glad to hear it went smoothly, dude!
My issue may be a bit unusual, I tried copying the entirety of one card over to another and I'm having issues with a lost+found folder on the initial card.
Can't say I encountered that myself unfortunately, but based on this thread it might be safe to delete - www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/w9n41p/sd_card_upgrade_lostfound_folder/
ironically got my 1tb sd card yesterday and did the exact same thing lol I love youtube recommended
LoL glad to see I'm not the only one who burned through their space and came to that eureka sort of moment! :p
can i just tranfer the whole folder? or go inside each folder and move them all entirely
Question about I have a 1tb micro sd card and it’s full. Yes I have AAA games on there mostly. Two questions
1)Can I keep some games on the one I have and put some on the new 1tb micro SD card(which I’m planning to buy at some point)?
2)Would that cause any issues to the steam deck if doing that? As in swapping the card depending on the games on that specific card?
Yup, that should work and no, I don't think it would cause any issues? Always good to have backups just in case though!
Could u also drag the sd files to an empty file and after swapping the two sd then drag the empty file into the new sd without buying a second sd slot
As long as you have the space absolutely!
Stupid question but what if i wanted to just swap my SD card to a new steam deck. Would i be able to simply remove and install?
I'm not sure but it looks like it based on this reddit thread! www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/w17l2g/can_you_simply_move_your_micro_sd_card_to_a_new/
Do you copy the steam folder for your steam games?
Yup, you should be able to just copy everything over to the new card from the root, just make sure to do a copy and not a MOVE at first just to be on the safe side.
I have a 1tb card almost full and its taking hours to transfer these files over. Its probably faster to just redownload.
Just maybe!
@YourPlayer2 just finished. It took about a day. I did a file transfer calculator and it was saying it would take 4 days at the speed the card transfer was doing. 3.5 tb on mine now 😂
This really helped me today! Cheers bro
LoL glad to hear it and hope you've been well, dude :D
I’m getting an error that says “could not enter folder /run/media/deck lost+Found
That's odd? Logged in as admin I take it?
Thanks for the info. That was a lot easier than I thought.
You're most welcome and glad to hear it!
What do you mean by "mount"? You mean just open the file manager (dolphin) for both cards side by side and manually copy and paste each folder from the old to the new?
Yup! But when you first go to the icon where the drives show up (not sure what it's called) it has an option to 'Mount and Open' which I'm assuming is a shortcut for how you'd mount a disk in Linux or on Mac OS for example.
There's a folder called lost+found it has a little lock on it. Is that important to transfer over? Because it won't just transfer.
Nope, you shouldn't need that I don't think
I followed this, and I’m not sure if the steps worked initially, but now the games are showing up as “other” content, rather than games. It seems like Steam can’t identify that these were the same games already installed, just on a new SD card. I’ve searched quite a bit for a solution, but no dice - seems like most people have taken the “L” and had to re-download everything. (Which is what I was trying to avoid when I let the files copy as described here for about 2.5 hours… (1/2 TB of games…)
Oh weird? Not sure I've encountered that myself but sorry you had to deal with that :\
Man i really need your help i got a new sd card but i get an error saying that could not enter folder run media deck and when i try to copy over my files it wont let me at all am and administrator but i still cant move files over
Hmmm, haven't encountered that myself but you might try re-formatting the card
Do someone know if it‘s the same when I saved everything (games for Emu and the Emus) on steam deck and transfer it to sd card? I‘m new in this genre, so I‘m not much into it right now.
Should still work (or at least mine did) but good to take a backup before transferring if you're able!
Dude, thank you so much, extremely helpful and informative.
You're very welcome! Glad to hear it was helpful, dude :)
I believe it was so simple for 2 reasons steam in general is very straight forward with moving games, but also linux tends to keep everything a game needs with the game and other programs do the rest so things should work out in 99.99% of the cases like this
That makes a lot of sense! I've only dabbled with Linux so I was a little apprehensive about just trying to copy things over but after mounting them just like I would in Mac OS it worked great!
Two thumbs up! One for providing the easy solution of a USB C dock, and the 2nd for the Joust t-shirt!
My 128GB filled up fast, so I bought a 512GB. I knew windows wouldn't be able to see the SD card, so I put it into a USB reader and plugged it into my Raspberry Pi OS. It gave some weird error, and wouldn't mount it. That's when I searched the internet and found this video!
FYI: my Anker USB C dock did get pretty hot. I don't think I'll be transferring 100GB too often.
LoL glad you liked the shirt and PRETTY sure I got that from Target a while back :p
Oh yeah, especially if you've got a bonkers library you can burn through space QUICK. Glad to hear it was helpful, Ken :)
Hiya was trying to do this but for the life of me I can't find the external sd card please help thanks
Oh I mean most you'd find at Best Buy or Amazon should work :)
@Your Player 2 no I have the sd card I couldn't find it when I connected the external sd card on the steamdeck after a bit of head scratching I did find it in the end
lesson one just get a 1tb micro sd card
Bwahaha yes, that's always helpful :p
Definitely the lesson I learned 😅
Underrated comment…😅
For me its taking too long to download
Very nice video! My question is.. If I want to transfer my emulator and roms from the SSD to an SD Card, can I do it like that? Just copying the whole emulator folder with everything indide, does it work?
Thanks so much, Shandy! As far as I know it should, but maybe do a copy rather than a move at first just to err on the side of caution!
This didn’t work for me for ROMs. Broke links to EmuDeck’s non-steam content in gaming mode. Instead use EmuDeck’s “Migrate your installation.” An annoying quirk of this other method (for me): I first had to migrate the 128GB to Internal Storage, then you can unmount the original SD Card, insert the new larger SD card and repeat the migration but from Internal Storage to SD Card.
Gah, sorry to hear it didn't work well for you, but appreciate the tip on the migration!
Just a quick question. Can u just transfer all the folders over or do you have to build the same folder structure on the new micro sd card first, then transfer the files into each folder?
I just copied all of them over as they were as I recall :)
do you need to run again the emudeck install on the new card or you can just copy from the original smaller drive?
I was able to just do a straight copy without issue, but worst-case scenario re-running emudeck doesn't take that long :)
Is there any other way to do it because I don’t want to buy a adapter I’m only going to use once
Hmmm, you might be able to just plug in an external drive with a usb-c adapter but I haven't tried it myself so not sure. I would THINK so, but if you try this out and it works lemme know :)
Will my PS1 saves get copies over too?? I don't know where they are stored
They SHOULD as my state saves were in tact, but I'd say to do a copy rather than a move initially and test it before wiping the original card.
I am running into issues just copying stuff over to new the card. Emulation folder is being a nuisance.
That's unfortunate- hopefully you got it sorted out?
@Your Player 2 Yeah I figured it out.
Can you use multiple sd card at the same time? Like one in the stream deck an other one in a card reader?
I'm....not sure? In theory yes? But I can't confirm this myself :p
Do you know how to get steam deck to play Philips cdi games that utalise the cdi video card? When I try abs play one that uses it I get a message saying please install video cartridge.
The guide transfering roms on steam deck was very helpful ty.
Glad it was helpful! Not sure about CDI games as I never tried to emulate them unfortunately :\
Only question I have is how long did it take.. I have a 1tb micro sd card and it took me forever to get like 40 gbs of gamecube games on to it. I like to make a backup card but I really don't want to sit through all the time again lol. Just over 12 hours for that download haha
LoL well it's been a while since I performed the copy so I can't really remember. A few hours I think? Don't think it took overnight though.
@@YourPlayer2 I think I have a bad sd card because after all that.... it deleted everything in the emulation folder... idk what happened. I exchanged it for another so we shall see.
I am upgrading to the Steam Deck Oled model and I am curious if I need to do anything to my micro sd before switching it to the Oled model. I downloaded my emulated games and emudeck on the micro sd as well and I do not want to lose the data on there. Thanks.
Well, I didn't take the leap on the OLED so I'm not sure unfortunately
How does one do this on PC, I have a SD card reader but it has USB and not USB C
I'm currently doing all this with the dock that has the USB card reader port if that helps you
Yeah, a dock would probably be your best bet
What if I’m using a ssd to transfer and can’t put some dll files to the ssd
Sorry I don't think I've encountered this?
I did this for 256 to 512 upgrade and had no issue, but for some reason there's an issue with decky cloud saves now as I'm trying to upgrade from 512 to 1tb. Can anyone guide me to the fix because now the games won't load off the new 1tb card
Sadly I don't have any experience with decky but if I learn anything I'll try to reply here!
How can I do this after the latest update? I just bought a 1.5tb SD card and want to transfer my 512gb card that's in my steam deck to my new SD 1.5tb? Any help would be amazing!😅
Not sure! I would assume it still works and haven't heard anything to the contrary, but definitely take a backup of your system if you're able before attempting to err on the side of caution.
@@YourPlayer2 no it won't work, the file path will not be the same and even tho all the data is there, apart from changing the file path on every app and game but still wouldn't want to do it this way.
@@turpac1in the same boat. Transferred over the information, tried to name the card and the path the same, didn’t work. Unfortunately, it looks like we could manually move over roms, however for game installs we’re looking at manually installing again. I have about 900gigs of info on that card so I’ll probably just format, and wait to see if Valve implements an easier process without me having to go and re-install like 20hrs of games.
I copied everything from my sd card across to another, Emulation station isnt opening anymore, any ideas???
Hmmm, not sure since I didn't encounter myself, but if you do get it going again I'd use the new Emudeck functionality to make a backup of your setup to try and prevent it in the future. Sorry I can't be more help!
EmuDeck has a built-in Migration function, maybe you could give that a shot?
Still so relevant. Thank you so much.
Glad to hear it and you’re most welcome, Big!
I copied the 256gb card to a new 512gb card as per your video
But when I went to play all my roms the emulator via emudeck went back to the front screen when I clicked on the rom I wanted to play
This happened for all the roms in every emulator
All the bios etc were copied as well
In the end I had to do all fresh installs and re install emudeck
It took forever and was well stressful
Any help would be appreciated please in what may of gone wrong
Steam deck all up to date as of 25/11/2023
Oh weird? I'm sorry you had a rough go of it and that's the first I've heard of someone having the issue :\ Hard to say what exactly went wrong since I don't know all of the steps and technical details like what file system your cards were using and whatnot unfortunately.
I intend to have one sd card for emulation and another for Steam games. What’s the hot swapping of cards like in practice? If you remove a card does all the artwork for those games on it vanish from the steam os interface?
I’m not sure since I haven’t tried it but I’ll test it here in a bit and let you know what happens!
@@YourPlayer2 thank you. I'd prefer if it all disappeared and only shows the current card, just so I know what's available!
@@davidvenables3735 Ok so update- for native Steam games if you swap cards the 'Installed' section that displays games will update dynamically. So if you take the card out the games disappear and if you put it back they re-appear. However it does NOT do this for ROMs that have been sorted into collections by Steam ROM Manager. So for those you'd likely need to re-run ROM Manager to generate a fresh listing of non-Steam apps (in this case ROMs) to be re-placed for whatever ROMs are on the newly inserted card. Hope this helps!
@@YourPlayer2 good information thank you. An interesting little nuance to note!
You're most welcome and no doubt!
I do have a quick question, I moved all my roms and stuff from a 512 SD to a 1tb SD card, when I moved everything to my new SD card I had to reinstall all the games, my question is does it save all my game data when I moved everything?
I mean it SHOULD, but also I'd check the status of your cloud saves before moving it just to be safe :)
@@YourPlayer2 Thanks! I was able to get it to work and I didnt have to reinstall all my games and all the save data was there as well, Thank you again for the video!
Tremendous! Glad it went smoothly for ya and enjoy your increased capacity :D
hey bro, did you notice significant difference performance between sandisk ultra compare to the extreme one?
Is the ultra good enough for the deck?
Not at all! So far the one I've used has been perfectly fine :)
Does anyone know how to transfer a sd card with emudeck with saves on it, to new steamOS(i broke mine).
Sorry I won't be much help on this one and hopefully someone else can weigh in. I'm pretty sure mine were preserved using this method, but if you're dicey on it and have some saves with LOADS of progress might be worth looking into further.
I want to transfer also my games to a bigger 1tb microSD card, so thx for your video! After formatting the new 1tb card in my steamdeck i can see a file named "libraryfolder.vdf" on my new formatted card. This file exists also on my old smaller sdcard, but it is not the same, which I can see when I open it in a text editor. So my question is: Shall I overwrite the new libraryfolder.vdf with the old one or shall I keep the new libraryfolder.vdf file?
I BELIEVE I just overwrote anything on the destination card. That being said it can't hurt to just rename the existing libraryfolder.vdf file on the destination card and if it exhibits problems restore it :) WORST case you'll have to re-copy/download some thing so it should be pretty low risk but backups are always a good idea!
@@YourPlayer2 I copied all over but I didn`t overwrite the existing libraryfolder.vdf. This worked good 🙂
Underrated channel vid helped me so much thank you
Thanks a bunch, Goku!! Glad to hear I could put out something useful for ya :)
This doesn't work anymore with my new Steam Deck OLED. Does anyone know what changed?
Oh that's unfortunate to hear :\
@@YourPlayer2 fixed it. Oled steam deck gives each sd card a unique path number. You need to manually change the label on every sd card to the same name. Then it works.
@@MarvTube87 appreciate the heads-up and will keep this in mind!
Hi, how did you do that?@@MarvTube87
Not sure if doing it right or no, but my folders do not look as detailed or data intense as yours does - but it is transferring the files like you mentioned
Well I'm glad to hear it still worked for you!
If I have apex and I transfer my data from one SD card to another will my skins and data still be there?
Wouldn't Apex data be tied to your account login? I can't say for sure unfortunately since I don't really play Apex but if it's like other online games I'd think that you'd just pull those things down regardless of the device you play on.
@@YourPlayer2 Thank you, I’m just really paranoid since I’ve spent a lot of money on this game.
@@xinsor1265 No problem and can't say I blame ya! If possible I'd try to login to Apex on another machine entirely just to see if they're still there if you're able :)
I did exactly this, I even named the new card primary but nothing launches.
Oh weird? Don't think I've seen that happen before. Any error messages or anything telling?
@@YourPlayer2 it says that emu deck mounting path is different. I have wiped the 1.5tb card again and started over. Thanks for your response. I'll let you know if I'm successful and let you guys know why it's happening.
@@Gorilla_Jones No problem dude and hope you get it sorted! Sorry I couldn't be more help on this one.
I followed this tutorial and none of my SD card games will launch now - is there a fix? Any help appreciated!
That's odd? Not sure as I haven't heard of anyone else having that problem but if I find anything I'll reply here!
Having that same problem rn
@@rynechia Emudeck games or non-steam games?
@@CoolRanchLoco emudeck games
Did you ever fix your issue ? If so how ?
Okay so I have my steam deck running on Windows OS do I do the same process when it comes to transferring my windows information to the new SD card or do I have to go to steamos first
I really don't want to have to go through the process of reinstalling the windows software on a new SD card
Hmm, I mean I would THINK so but honestly I haven't experimented with windows so I can't say for certain, unfortunately :\
Will the save game from Emudeck transfer over too
As far as I know but I'd do a copy rather than a move initially just to be safe!
I saw yo u showed SSX tricky playing on the deck. I have mine setup with emudeck using a gamecube core but it runs bad on some of the other graphically intensive stages. Is this the same experience you have?
I only tested it briefly but I'll see if I can try some later stages and report back! I HAVE heard that the GC runs better than the PS2 version, however.
I just did the same thing this weekend. I upgraded from a Gamestp 128GB to a Sandisk Extreme Pro 1TB, so not only should I have way more space, but everything should also be a bit faster, right?
I would imagine!
May I clarify, is it to copy everything in the old card and just paste over to the new? Just everything, right? No specific folders or paths we should navigate to, hidden folders.
I have both emulators and STEAM games so doing this will copy everything?
Thanks!
That's how I did it! I didn't do any specific hidden folders or paths, but in retrospect I SHOULD have probably now that you mention it. Can't hurt :) And yes, for me it brought over my agmes and ROMs without issue, though in my case the emulators themselves were installed on the SSD as I recall. Ironically just TODAY I put out a new video about redoing my emulation setup though XD
@@YourPlayer2 Will check your new video in a bit. I had my emus installed via EmuDeck all kn my microSD 512 GB.
So, it's better to just show hidden files and copy everything?
Do you need a Usb-c dock? I have a micro sd card reader and a laptop. Is there a way to transfer the data to the laptop and then transfer it from there?
I don't see why not, although I haven't tested it myself so if you go for it just make sure you have a backup if you're able!
Hello!, you MICRO ssd cart 1Tb ULTRA work good with games like GTAV or cyberpunk 2077 ???
It should! I haven't had any issues yet with more taxing games stored on SD :)
Thanks so much! I had the same worries about things like EmuDeck and whatnot possibly not carrying over properly, super glad to learn transferring/upgrading is as easy and it seems here!
You're most welcome and glad it was helpful, Pipo!!
Awesome this is exactly what I wanted to know specially with non steam deck games 👌🏼
Glad it was helpful, JD! SO glad it wasn't a complicated process because I really didn't wanna have to re-do all of my ROM artwork 😂
can i transfer all the files to the steam deck (i have the 512gb) instead and then transfer them to the new SD card so i don't have to buy a card reader dongle?
I THINK that would work but I'm not 100% certain
Hey, great video!
I noticed that you are using Anker USB C Hub. Can you use one of its two USB C ports to connect the charger, so you can charge it at the same time, plus use the remaining USBC port to connect type c headphones?
Appreciate it, Pavlina :)
You can indeed! It has passthrough charging, though I'm not sure about type C headphones as I don't have any of those unfortunately
@@YourPlayer2 Thank you 😁
@@pavlinadrakou3317 no problem!
I know you said you had all your roms on the microSD but when you first set up emudeck did you have it installed to the microSD or the internal storage?
At this point I can't remember! I'm pretty sure I did the sd card
Would it be as straightforward if you had your roms in the internal memory on your Steam Deck and wanted to migrate those to an sd card? I'm wondering as I don't fully understand if I'd need to reinstall emudeck via said sd card. I imagine I could just copy over my existing roms folders and bios files.
I'm not sure but I would THINK so, only because once OpenEmu (or your own manual process) gets the folder structure in place for the SD card, then as long as your emulators are configured to look at that directory structure and you've copied them over it should be the same :)
@@YourPlayer2 I managed to do it, but seems I lost some configurations or preferences for some of the emulators. More specifically seems the L3+R3 shortcut to get retroarch menu and other emulator menus no longer worked. For some reason in some of the emulators it became Select+R3. But once I got these menu to open again I managed to change these back. All good now.
Glad you were able to get it sorted! I just had a problem where I forgot HOW to get back to the Retroarch menu but that makes sense I guess hopping through a ton of different games/emulators all the time for videos :p
this is great news as i got the model with the least storage, and currently only have a spare 64 gb sd card. two questions tho; 1. can you use a windows pc to do the file transfer? 2. is there a way to do this for an internal storage upgrade? i want to eventually upgrade my internal storage to 2 tb, and it would be awesome if there was a way to transfer the data in a similar fashion to the sd card method in the video. thanks!
I don't think you can natively but there's gotta be a 3rd party app out there that can read the file system in Windows! As for internal, I'm really not sure- I mean in theory I guess if you could get a housing for the old SSD after you remove it to connect via USB MAYBE? But I just don't know enough about the nuances of Linux's file systems to say for sure. Sorry I couldn't be more help, dude!
@@YourPlayer2 honestly, this is a better answer than i thought id get, so thank you. no need to apologize!
Does this usb-c hub charge the steam deck as well whilst its being used for external displays?
Yup it does indeed!
This is the way I'm doing it but it is taking so long. trying to copy from my 512GB sd to my new 1TB sd so far its taken over 9 hrs and it's still only half done. both my sd cards are a2 and have a speed rating of over 100 MB/s so I don't understand why it is taking so long.
Hmmm, are you sure you're not getting bottlenecked by a USB 2.0 port or something? I've had that happen before accidentally.
this method takes 5hours for me to transfer 490gb worth of games to my 1tb sd card, is it normal?
Probably depends on the speed of the cards but not out of the realm of possibility!
How was it transferring your saves? Also all the bios’s
No issues when I performed the copy!
Thank you, very much. Just the facts, not too much fluff. Great video.
You're most welcome, Marcus! I do my best to trim the fat and keep things on point :)
It didn’t work for me, I was able to get both sd cards mounted, and I copied something but the games still stayed on my original sd card
That's odd? Did you mean to do a move or a copy? Also if you delete the games from the original card while it's mounted are you still able to play on the new one you copied them to? Maybe just try deleting one at first :p
@@YourPlayer2 I think it was doing a copy, how were you able to get both sd drives side by side on your deck? Mine for some reason couldn’t do that.
Exactly what I needed. Thanks!
Glad it was helpful, dude! I figured there had to be a straightforward way to accomplish this and luckily there was!
You solved exactly my problem! Thanks for helping out 😊
Oh that’s tremendous! Glad to see this video is still helping out and that you were able to get migrated without issue, Kelper :D
I'm planning to buy another micro sd card on my steam deck,do I need to be online when I swap my micro sd card?or it works even offline.Thanks for this video,Im new on your channel sir.
I think I WAS online when I did the swap but I'm pretty sure you don't need to be since you're just copying data locally :) You're most welcome and thanks for watching, dude!! :)
@@YourPlayer2 im transfering my old sd card to my external ssd just copy and paste the files.Im not sure this one works coz i dont have a hub for the other micro sd...i really like your videos sir and i enjoy more my steamdeck.
Here's hoping it does! Glad to hear you enjoy the videos and hope you're having a blast with it :)
Thank you! I just started this and it is super slow. It's been about20 minutes and I'm only at 1k/135k files, does that seem right? Also, I had some folders in my new SD card - I assume from the formatting - I just merged these with the copy, is that correct? Thank you!
You're most welcome! Hopefully it finally finished for you :p As for merging I think I just overwrote everything but always keep a backup to be safe!
Do I need to setup emudeck to the new card or can I just move all the files over without doing anything else
I didn't! Just moved it over and it worked though to be fair I haven't tried the more recent Emudeck update yet.
Do I have to redownload my BIOS for ROMS?
Nope, those files should copy over as well as long as you grab them :)
I did this and dolphin was removed from emulation station. Amy ideas?
Mine was unaffected so I can't say for sure but if I find anything out I'll reply here!
@@YourPlayer2 I ended up system restoring and going through the whole process again from scratch. everything works great now.. not as confident on linux as windows. thanks for your upload!
Glad to hear you got it sorted out! Can't say I blame you but still, at least you're functional once more :)
Thanks big time! This really helped!
Oh that's awesome, glad to hear it dude :D
Hey do you think a 512 can still be good for gaming?
Most definitely! That's what I have :)
What if your games are installed onto the Steam deck itself? Can I copy those games onto a SD card?
Yup! You can go to Settings -> Storage -> highlight the game you want to move and then hit 'Y' to confirm the location you'd like to move it to :)
@@YourPlayer2 Thank you so much. I really needed to know how it worked.
You’re most welcome!
Hey man great video! I noticed that your 1TB sd card is the “slower” grey model. Do you notice any difference in terms of loading speed? Or any difference at all?
You will in open world titles
Nothing severely noticeable so far but I'll definitely go for a quicker card in the future just for the peace of mind!
How do you do this if you want to upgrade the ssd?
I'm not sure! I haven't done that one myself, unfortunately
Dam my 1tb won’t let me transfer any files can only download games through steam no roms transfers
That's odd? Try a different card maybe?
Does this work on a regular pc ?
It should!
Would this work if i did it in ubuntu do you think?
Sadly I'm not familiar enough with Ubuntu to say for sure. You could always do a test copy rather than a move initially for safety though :)
Jeez i was stuck! Thank you!
I've been there! You're most welcome and glad it was helpful, Ashveer :)
Quick question:
I'm upgrading from a 128 GB card to a 1TB card. I just wanted to ask if your Steam Deck was able to survive the transfer despite the long waiting time? I'm worried my SD's battery will die before the transfer is completed since my card card is taking up that charging slot. lol
Yup, it survived just fine but if possible it would be better to find a pass-through dock so you can keep power connected :)
Do you need to reinstall the steam games?
Nope! At least I didn't :)
@@YourPlayer2 nice! was thinking on changing the card for a while but was afraid of starting everything over, specially the emulators. Thank you so much!
You’re most welcome! Emulators MIGHT need re-pointed as I only remember confirming Steam games still worked but good luck!
I was naive and got a 64 gb at first because I didn’t think I’d want that many emulations and I thought they’d all be a few mb… yeah no I was wrong lmao, upgraded to 1tb and were solid now 😂 thank you for confirming this for me, I wasn’t sure if it’d be as simple as copy pasting but Im thankful it is!
LoL well hey, at least you upgraded! Glad this was helpful for you and thanks for watching :D
Thank you!!! This worked. I found various reddit posts that wanted to use kernal commands to clone the card. This resulted in the larger card being stuck in SteamOS with the old, smaller card's size. Long story short, just copy the contents from one to the other and walah.
I had an issue trying to copy the "lost+found" folder on the sd card since this was locked. Everything was fine by skipping that folder when copying data from the old sd card to the new one. I too have tons of games and emulation set up on the sd card, so can confirm this method works with those kinds of set ups.
Glad to hear it was helpful, Fox! I think I had a similar issue with lost+found but it didn't cause any issues I don't think so I didn't sweat it :p
Just a quick question: did u just move the entire folders over or did u have to create new, identical folders in the new sd card then transfer the data inside each folder to the new one?
game at 2:40?
SSX Tricky I believe emulated on GameCube :)
Oh thank goodness. You saved me!
Glad to hear it!