Valve was quick to push out a remedial fix centering on the Steam Deck’s expandable storage capability. As Gaming on Linux noticed, the recent stable Steam Client Update for desktop and Steam Deck broke the handheld device’s microSD card handling. Valve issued a new client update on Sept. 12 to directly address the issue.
The microSD card jinxing updates were delivered alongside the recent SteamOS 3.4.10 release. Shortly after they brought their systems up to date, Steam Deck owners started to report that their microSD cards weren't being mounted by the system.
According to reports, the microSD card issue was annoyingly inconsistent. For example, users could sometimes get their microSD card readers to work again if they pulled out and reinserted their microSD cards. Some users had to resort to a system reboot to get it to recognize an inserted microSD card.
Valve’s update page offers no background detail regarding the underlying problems fixed, nor any details about how the bug occurred. A single bullet point on the Steam Deck Client Update: Sept. 12 page says “General: Fixed a failure to recognize the microSD card after a system reboot.”
We don’t recall any prior issues with the Steam Deck’s handling of microSD cards. The same cannot be said for the Asus ROG Ally, though. The Asus handheld’s design seems to have located the microSD card reader hardware in a particularly hot area of the PCB — with unfortunate but somewhat predictable results.
To get the best performance from their games, users of these handhelds are steered to get the biggest built-in SSDs they can afford when buying their device. However, sometimes it might make sense to just upgrade the storage yourself — check out our roundup of the best M.2 2230 SSDs for handhelds (such as the Steam Deck).
