Thanks to another poster here, it came to light that a new Steam Recovery OS image is available for OS 3.5.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1B71-EDF2-EB6D-2BB3
For those uninitiated, this image can be burned to a recovery USB or microSD card and used to rescue your Deck in the case of misfortune or idiocy (yes, people actually DO try to delete the .local folder).
Everyone should have a recovery media in their toolbox and they should have it BEFORE misfortune hits - not scrambling to make/get one after the fact. Especially if you don’t have a Windows PC on ready hot standby.
While we’re talking about this … don’t burn the image to a device and tuck it away without testing it first. Based on this sub, 8 out of 10 people are using devices that do NOT show up in the Steam boot menu. One individual had to go through 5 different USB drives to get one that “worked”. Can’t know for sure unless you test it. Just make sure you can boot the device up to the desktop - then shutdown, take it out and put it away for that proverbial rainy day.
My recommendation has been - and shall continue to be - buying a dedicated, known working flash drive for this purpose. This is what I use (I have five of them and they all work):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EZ0X3L8/?th=1
Sandisk 64GB - $11 - Amazon Prime - Sold and Shipped by Amazon. You could get the smaller one, but the price is the same, so might as well go for the bigger one.
For those of you tech heads that have a IODD ST400, you can actually use it for Steam Deck recovery - as outlined in my video here:
Please spare me the Ventoy rhetoric, please. I love this solution - and it can be used for so much.
I warn you with peace and love that if you have one of these and you already set it up for Steam Recovery - there is no way (no easy way anyway) to update the recovery partitions - I had to write the Steam Recovery image over top and rebuild my exFat partition of tools (but like a good technophile - I keep a backup - so no big deal).
Your ability to recover from catastrophe is directly proportionate to your efforts in readiness. :)
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I have an IODD 2531. I like your out-of-the-box idea of writing the Steam Deck Recovery Image to the device and making a separate partition to store other bootable images in. But for me, that kinda defeats the purpose of the device if I write a recovery image to it and do that workaround to make everything else work again.
Granted, the Steam Deck Recovery Image may not change all that often, but still… Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, it is a goober work around - but the base image doesn’t change often, fortunately.
Interestingly, Valve actually has separate recovery images in zip archives next to the bz2 ones. Inside the zip archives are regular
.imgrecovery images. Thanks to your tip, I was able to get it to boot on my IODD 2531 simply by renaming.imgto.imaand selecting it as the boot image on my device. SteamOS Recovery boots on my Deck!I don’t know why, but Valve doesn’t restrict browsing their SteamOS Recovery repository. And that’s how I found out about the
.ziparchives. Interesting, huh?Give it a shot on your IODD ST400. You probably don’t have to use that ‘goober’ workaround anymore. :)
Ironically I have the exact usb in your link, but I got mine for $8. Used it when I swapped out my 64gb hard drive and figured I’d hang onto it just in case lol. Always better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it
Been without a PC for 2 years (Really hoping to purchase a 512GB SD OLED along with all the necessary accessories before Black Friday), what is the difference between a Recovery OS image and an installation image (and do we need separate flash drives or can both be put on the same drive)?
Can you use the recovery image on a different deck? Like going from an LCD deck to the OLED?
I believe for the OLED you will want to use the 3.5.x available now - not the 3.4 one that was out there before.
But the 3.5.x one should effectively work for BOTH units.