So I learned the hard way today that the Steam Deck is pretty picky about micro SD cards. According to some reading this is because it’s fake and thus I get the failing to validate error in the formatting. It was working, it suddenly wasn’t, I tried to fix it… Now I have a broken SD card lol. It wasn’t an issue in a Switch or an AYN Odin but I guess The Deck is a different beast and when you mess around without knowing what you’re doing you can mess up partitions permanently.
So as someone who has only had his deck in hand for a few days and hasn’t had a good experience yet (issues with using a dock, games not launching, incompatibility with my cellphone hotspots, etc), I wanna do research and make SURE there’s a way to purchase a micro SD that you can install and leave in there permanently without any recurring issues.
Now I got my Silicon Power 256 from New Egg, shipped by them. I see others posting about having issues with SanDisk from Amazon (the 1tb) etc etc.
Where would you go online to get a GUARANTEED working micro sd. Or would you say the only safe bet is going in person to a store somewhere and paying a premium?
I have a SanDisk Ultra 1TB in my Steam Deck that was shipped and sold from Amazon. No problems whatsoever. It stays nearly full. I think I have 90GB of free space. I don’t think I’ve ever taken it out of the slot except when I took apart the Steam Deck to install a 1TB SSD. I’ve probably purchased a dozen SD and microSD cards for normal prices shipped and sold by Amazon and never had an issue.
With that said, I think I would look for the Black Friday sales from Best Buy and get one from them if you’re worried about it. SanDisk certainly isn’t a particular problem with the Steam Deck. Samsung makes the best ones IMO but only up to 512GB. I’ve heard good things about the Amazon Basics 1TB A1 and A2 cards in a Steam Deck. Lots of people have a SanDisk Extreme or SanDisk Ultra without issues.