How to Fix Slow SD Card Downloads on SteamOS

When you’ve got a Steam Deck, otherwise you’ve put in SteamOS on one other model of handheld just like the Lenovo Legion Go or ASUS ROG Ally, you may need encountered a difficulty the place recreation downloads to your SD card are painfully gradual. Like pre-broadband gradual. So what provides?

Whereas I can not let you know precisely why this occurs, it appears you and I are usually not the one ones which have this downside. Fortunately a repair has been lurking on the market on varied boards for years now, and I believe it is time to carry it out into the sunshine.

It’s Not Your SD Card

Once I see this kind of gradual SD writing efficiency, my first suspicion is that the cardboard itself is on the best way out. That is precisely how certainly one of my SD playing cards began to behave on my ASUS ROG Ally simply earlier than the console utterly fried the cardboard. Thanks ASUS, by the best way.

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However on this case, I had actually simply wiped my Lenovo Legion Go and changed Home windows with SteamOS. The SD card was working usually minutes prior, however after Steam had reformatted it on SteamOS, downloads turned so gradual that they had been principally unusable. Likewise, transfers from the inner SSD to the SD card needs to be quick, in extra of 100MB/s, however as a substitute it is kilobytes a second, and quick bursts of affordable speeds.

Clearly, one thing went fallacious when Steam formatted my SD card, and that is key relating to fixing the difficulty.

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Be Ready to Lose Your Information (It’s Value It)

Earlier than we go forward, you need to be completely clear on the truth that we’re going to erase all the information that is at the moment in your SD card. So long as you have allowed Steam to sync with the cloud, your save information needs to be high-quality, however your video games and all the things else on that SD card shall be toast.

Nonetheless, if the reformat works, then it is best to be capable of redownload these video games a lot sooner than earlier than.

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Change to Desktop Mode

As a way to manually format the SD card to repair the efficiency points, we’ll have to modify to desktop mode. That is fairly simple. Simply use Menu>Energy> Change to Desktop.

It will take you to the usual KDE desktop expertise for SteamOS.

Open KDE Partition Supervisor

Utilizing your touchscreen, or the emulated mouse controls, activate the launcher button on the underside left of the display screen and go to System>KDE Partition Supervisor.

It will launch the partition supervisor, which is how we’ll reformat the cardboard.

Rigorously Reformat the SD Card

In KDR Partition Supervisor, you will see a number of units listed within the left-hand pane. Assuming your gadget has just one SD card slot, then “mmcblk0” needs to be the SD card. Click on on it and you will see particulars about it within the right-hand pane. Double verify that the reported dimension matched what you count on.

The way in which the partition supervisor works lets us arrange a sequence of actions with out altering something on the precise card till we click on on “Apply”.

Proper-click on the SD card’s partition within the right-hand pane, after which choose “Unmount” from the context menu.

After this, right-click on the the partition once more, and choose “Delete”.

Now right-click on the deleted house the place the partition was once, and select “New” from the context menu.

Within the dialog field that pops up, open the “File system” dropdown menu and choose “ext4”.

As soon as that is performed, click on “OK” after which choose “Apply” on the prime left of the partition supervisor’s window.

You may see a affirmation pop-up asking in the event you actually wish to apply the pending operations. Click on “Apply Pending Operations”. As soon as the operation completes, you will see this popup indicating {that a} new disk has been inserted. Click on on “Mount and Open”.

Now you possibly can exit out of all the things and return to the desktop. Right here double-click the “Return to Gaming Mode” icon on the desktop.

Head Again to Steam, and Format Once more

As soon as again in gaming mode, return to the Storage web page through Menu>Settings>Storage, then choose the SD card. You may see a immediate to format the cardboard once more. Simply press “Y” in your controller and await the format to finish after confirming you wish to go forward. This will take some time relying on how huge your SD card is.

If the method was successful, you will see a gold star seem subsequent to the SD card’s entry on the Storage web page.

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Get Prepared for Blistering Obtain Speeds

Now strive putting in a recreation to the SD card, and if all went nicely it is best to see it hit the utmost velocity of your connection, or SD card velocity, whichever is decrease.

I can not assure that this can assist enhance your downloads, nevertheless it’s labored on each SD card I’ve tried. Steam’s formatting of the cardboard causes the poor efficiency, a guide reformat fixes it. I do not know why, nevertheless it labored for me. Hopefully, sooner or later, Valve will repair it in order that Steam simply does it proper from the get-go, however here is hoping your individual SD card is now blazing-fast.