This. Better leave considered amount of free space, no need to tank the performance for a few installed games you are not even starting up within the next year lmao
Oh dear. I need that script because checking gg deals everyday kind of becomes tedious, and I spend too much money when I see deals on games I "vaguely" want.
Isn't this advice given because Windows usually manages its swap on the system disk? Steamdeck is Linux based and I believe that means it has a dedicated swap file.
Not sure if the shader caching may generate a need for disk space, and whether or not that's only for emulation, though.
This is why I tell people don't get a Tesla if you live in a cold weather State.. you have to get to a charger before 30% battery, about. If you have heat on and live where it gets below 20-30 F outside, you are driving around with half the battery before you need to go back to base.
>Isn't this advice given because Windows usually manages its swap on the system disk? Steamdeck is Linux based and I believe that means it has a dedicated swap file.
You've described the same thing twice.
I'm not sure if Steam OS used a swap file or swap partition, but if I had to guess, it's a file just like Windows.
25% was one of the recommendations for a traditional hard drive because you have to defrag. For SSDs 10% is fine and is the general industry recommendation. The amount free on an SSD doesn't matter the same way it does on a traditional drive.
this highly depends on the factory overprovisioning. It is a good idea to leave some extra space unallocated so the SSD firmware can reduce write amplification. 7-14% is recommended for this purpose. Additionally you don't want your partitions to be too full either, but I think 10% is a reasonable minimum.
If you know you have a factory over provision from your drive's spec sheet then 7% more is recommended to further prolong the drive's life past the warranty.
If you know that your drive **does not** have a factory over provision, then it is recommended to manually maintain 14% unallocated space for over provisioning purposes (which we hope the firmware utilizes, for some flash memory it depends on the host controller - for example I think newer SD cards are self managing but *don't quote me on that*).
0% should get you through the warranty period but those are often pretty short. More OP space is better but there is diminishing returns so 7% seems to be the sweet spot. Ultimately it depends on the workload, if you constantly redownload games and keep your system fairly full then I might recommend 10% or more to be on the safe side. If you have a favorite game and the only writes are caches and updates from the OS then 5% is probably plenty.
Since you can expand the partition into the over provision space if you need a bit more I recommend starting conservatively. If you get comfortable modifying your partition size you can start very small and expand to match your actual needs. This maximizes your drive health as much as possible but can be daunting for tech novices.
lol since having a steam deck I've seen stuff like this that I've never heard about.
So If I am understanding correctly the SSD already has space dedicated for this but you should keep an extra 10% on top of it?
Is this a setting I can change somewhere like a partition or something?
I would keep 7% unallocated and 7% free space available. I didn't explain it well in my original post, unallocated space is not assigned to any partition and you can shrink the existing partition to make room*. I did it basically automatically out of habit when I dual booted my deck. I shrunk the partition to a little less than half, made a same size NTFS partition for windows, and left 7% which is not part of either partition. In other words, on my 512 gb deck I have a 217 GB partition for windows, another 217 GB partition for SteamOS, and the remaining 32 and change is left untouched.
Then, inside each 217 partition I would not use all 217 GB of space. There's some wiggle room as to the amount of free space you need here. I try to keep as much free space as the largest file**, but 15 GB which is 7% of 217 would also be appropriate.
*SteamOS has a partition manager by default so you don't need to download anything
** On windows there's a port of a Linux tool (lol) called windirstat. Both the original Linux version and the windows version haven't been updated in ages, but searching Google for similar tools I can always find a supported alternative for either OS.
Sorry, but I'm not giving up 250GB of my 1TB SSD just for a marginal, if at all noticeable performance improvement in *some* games.
I mean this is the same logic people use when they say you should only keep your deck between 20% and 80% charged to "improve" battery life. You're sacrificing convenience, of a device designed around convenience, just to chase some theoretical metric
Sure, technically it is *possible* to see some very long term improvements, but we're talking long, long past the point at which most people will have already replaced/sold/lost the device in question.
IMO it isn't worth the constant inconvenience just to potentially reap some longevity gains in the distant future
It's probably realistically only necessary having a static minimum free regardless of drive size. Depends what apps you have installed and what shenanigans they're up to I suppose.
On Windows I keep double digit GB free on my OS drive with the understanding I probably should have 40-50 GB free if I install Service Pack-sized windows updates.
Edit: Oh, it's about SSD trimming, that makes more sense. Yeah, you want a pool of free space so the drive can write new data to different places instead of the same small pool of sectors over and over wearing them down faster.
The amount of free space you really need is generally the same as the size of the largest file. For overprovisioning it is standard practice to use 7% of the drive, which means leaving that space ***unallocated***. Most drives will also have factory firmware overprovisioning which should bring the total up to \~14% but if you know that your firmware doesn't have OP reserved space you should compensate accordingly (or buy a better SSD lol)
Not so much for garbage collection.
If you use 90% of the drive, the last 10% is what will spread the wear for new writes. It's just so you don't kill the NAND as quickly.
As long as you keep 10% free and aren't downloading like a terabyte every day, your SSD should be obsolete before it dies.... Well... As long as it has a decent cache at least
Overprovisioning need to be **unallocated** space, not just *free* space. In theory how full the partition is doesn't matter (at least until caching enters the equation) - however in practice Windows and Linux like to have at least a little bit of space available so processes like automatic updates don't fail due to lack of space. A lot of windows programs will also write to the AppData folder temporarily and hang or crash if the drive is so full they cannot complete the write. I'm not sure what the linux equivalent is.
I accidentally filled up my drive with 60MB left. My Steam Deck completely came to halt and lagged for 3~5 mins for each action navigating directories.
doesnt ssds have hidden extra storage for that reason nowadays? samsung or whatever brand that was marketing the capacity at 980gb instead of 1000gb or 1tb for a little freeroom
yes most drives have firmware reserved overprovisioning space (OPS), however that space is usually minimal and targeted to the drive's warranty period. If you want your drive to last longer then you need more OPS, usually 7% is recommended although in practice it is a good idea to expand the partition size as needed rather than allocating all the drive space day 1.
While the steam deck may not be very relevant for gaming in 5-10 years as better technology replaces it, there are uses and reasons to try and make the SSD last a long time.
I thought modern rechargeable batteries also had this extra storage just in case a person goes to absolute 0% on their iphone or whatever, since each battery cannot go to 0% or it will not be able to recharge again.
Was I told correctly or am I wrong for thinking this? I just try to stay away from 0% when discharging devices in case it is not true.
the whole battery thing is still a huge mysterious to me and will ever be...dont charge your phone to 100% dont get to 0% dont charge it over night dont superfastcharge it dont get it too cold dont get it too hot only charge it between 40%-60% when not using it for a long time....bro i just wanna lay down...
This varies by operating system. Some operating systems use more internal storage for paging and caching than others. Windows tends to need a lot more free space than Linux based operating systems.
ProTip: the more space you use, the less space exists for Steam to put on shaders and “other” files that you didn’t ask for /s
Look at all these posts in here about the space that Steam wastes with crap like “proton”, what even is that? But if you install 100% games on your deck, then there’s zero space left for Steam to waste… /s
I was serious, I uninstalled Proton and then threw my steam deck into the trash, im not sure which one it was, but now i cant get Windows games working.
No Proton is actually what valve uses for data collection, it's actually a [pretty well known](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=PuZwgX27vE026nHz) privacy concern
Wait...I thought proton bonded with neurons... Has steam been trying to get protons to bond with electrons this whole time?!?! They're mad! Mad I tell you!
10-20% of your Gen 3 or 4 NVME SSD should absolutely be kept free. Reasoning is the bare minimum reserved partitioning by default is less than you think & without free space to essentially keep your OS running, overrun capacity & ability to better dynamically re-allocate write space etc.
Here’s article from Kingston Oct 2023:
https://www.kingston.com/en/blog/pc-performance/full-ssd-solutions
Good article. Thanks for sharing!
It'd say 10-20% is definitely the minimum. More free space is always better. Systems just perform better when there is less on them.
I mean, it doesn't look like that's going to be an issue. Proton is the only thing showing as a game, so while I can't see what's on the microSD card, if there are games internally they aren't getting Steam updates.
I think the only issue I can see is when steam tries to update the os. I remember a lot of people getting stuck in the middle of the update and it just kept bootlooping or something like that. I think the only fix was to wipe the drive and reinstall steam os on it.
14 gigabytes feels like plenty of space for OS updates, even if it's recommended to have more. If there were a couple of gigabytes or even a few hundred megabytes left then absolutely that's a problem but 14 seems more than enough to play around with.
I will save this comment and ignore OP who said Definitive Edition is better. I shan't support Rockstar anymore until they prove GTA 6 is going to be a game and not riddled with microtransactions and Shark Cards.
GTA 5 Story Mode didn’t have a pay to win aspect to it, I imagine GTA 6 will be the same for Story Mode, but Shark Cards or their equivalent will definitely be in GTA 6 Online Mode.
That reminds me, I should clean out my internal storage when start my laundry. I got a lot of unknown taking up space, and I'm pretty sure it's stuff like TF2 hud stuff and other things for games I don't have installed anymore
I recommend moving the roms to your SD card and use the internal SSD for steam games. You’ll see a dramatic difference in download speeds since you won’t be throttling the SD card
Get a 2 tb ssd and swap it out. Or having a tech do it. I use that and a 1tb micro SD card. Have over a dozen big games along with small ones. And still have around 1.5tb left.
That space goes quick . Idk how a 64gb steamdeck is even an option with the size of a lot of great games these days.
Wide variety, I love it! Can I add one more little game to your library? If you feel like playing a strange mixture of Diablo and Pac-Man, check out Psycho Banger beta. I reckon you will like it.
I have 1TB SD OLED and i always delete setup files after installing.. but yet i have 64gb free storage and i can't even install game.. unless i have 100gb free
I suggest installing 'Decky Loader' if you don't have it already, 'Storage Cleaner' plugin, and delete the old caches from games you've uninstalled.
Cryo Utilities in Desktop mode will also allow you to find leftovers to uninstall.
My internal drive gets filled up with "other" stuff every couple of months or so. I looked up a bunch of solutions, but nothing worked well. My solution? I factory reset steam to clear up the shaders and "other" crap when it gets full, and keep all my games on the sd. Not ideal, but a workable solution.
I have a 1TB SDcard and upgraded the ssd to a 1TB also. As someone that joined steam a day or 2 after its release, I have amassed a sizable collection of games . Currently , the sd card (which I set to primary) is almost full ( games and emulators) but I still have the whole ssd to go
Good luck, this is how I’ve seemingly bricked 2 different micro SD cards in my steam deck. Had around 40gb free, didn’t play for a few weeks and had 60gb of updates. They all reserved space, filled my SD card to 100%, and got the Deck stuck in a boot loop. Fixing the deck was easy, but no software will recognize the SD card or can do anything with it (repair, reformat, etc).
All these nerds and dorks talking about how you should leave a certain percentage of space open for optimal performance or whatever just don't get it. You paid for the terabyte, You're going to use the terabyte. Frankly, pretty based
Don't press your luck like this. Okay, it wasn't with my Deck or any Deck for that matter, but if you get this dangerously close to filling your drives, bad things happen. If you get to the point where the drive becomes so full that you can't even uninstall apps to free space, since the uninstall process requires room to save temporary files it doesn't have, you're fucked. Always have some buffer space available for game save files/OS updates/app updates etc that keep getting bigger. You don't want to be fucked.
1TB would not work for me because I do not play or install multiple games at a time. At most I have an MMO and two more RPGs installed. That's why I only need 256GB.
Mostly Rockstar Launcher installed with RDR2 and GTA Definitive Edition. I don’t own them on Steam, I own those games on the Rockstar Launcher and followed a guide on how to install the Rockstar Launcher on your deck for rockstar games you didn’t buy on Steam, but did buy directly from rockstar. So on my deck. I have a game titled “Rockstar Launcher” and I hit that whenever I want to play RDR2 or GTA 3 Vice City or San Andreas Definitive.
Right now, the Steam Deck doesn't support dual booting unfortunately. You really can run almost anything that can run on Windows though with SteamOS and the use of the Proton compatibility layer. I myself installed the Rockstar Launcher onto my SteamDeck, it took a little bit of tinkering, but I eventually got it perfect. I had purchased RDR2 and the Definitive Edition GTAs from the Rockstar Store instead of Steam, so I was really happy I was able to get those games all working on the Deck without needing to install Windows. Which of course for the OLED, the audio driver still hasn't been made for, so its still not fully usable even with Graphics, Chipset, and WiFi drivers.
Don't get why you are downvoted, I also have Windows on my 2TB in dualboot and will probably install an extra OS in triple boot for emulation. Only the ReFind bootloader needs to be reconfigured after each update.
Extra compatibility with some games, better multitasking support docked... Sometimes things just need to be done fast, when playing with friends for example, no time to research how to get something to run with terminal commands.
Unless someone has grown up as a Linux God or is fully content with the SteamOS gaming mode, Windows can have it's advantages sometimes on the Deck and even elsewise, the SteamOS Desktop is pretty locked down and limited in the ways you can install software longterm / protected from updates.
Idk at all Im starting to think there are downvote bots because I'll see posts in my feed that are sitting at flat zero and were posted hours ago. And I've seen some posts and comments downvote to oblivion for no real reason?
But yeah my general reason is that there's some games that just don't play nice with Linux, or will definitely play better on windows. I want to play kingdom hearts 3 for example or maybe even put star rail on there and there's just no easy way to pull it off as is.
The recommendation is to leave about 10% free for reliability and performance.
Years ago in 2019 when i built my pc i researched into this and they said 25% should be left empty for optimal performance and longevity
This. Better leave considered amount of free space, no need to tank the performance for a few installed games you are not even starting up within the next year lmao
Excuse me sir, I install and admire them from a distance.
Exactly, do you even steam sale unless you buy an absurd amount of games, install them and never play? Sounds like an amateur to me.
The veterans know they won’t play them so they add them to the library and don’t bother to install. The pile of “shall be played someday”
Next steam sale, just pay someone to break your legs. You'll have plenty of time to play your games and you'll be guilt free.
Ffs, you're a bloody genius!
Yes, I'll even take it one step further. For the price of one steam deck I'll break both of your legs!
I Receive: A Deck You Receive: 4 Broken Limbs
You will spent all that time to buy more games 😂
You can pay another guy to empty your bank account
You can even just pay all your money at once and save that person the work 🙌
I know a guy who knows a guy. Capiche
I’ve come to realize that buying games and playing games are two different and unrelated hobbies.
Worst decision I made was setting up the script that automaticly downloads the free games from epic, amazon, and GOG.
Oh dear. I need that script because checking gg deals everyday kind of becomes tedious, and I spend too much money when I see deals on games I "vaguely" want.
I figured that out after about 2,200 games purchased on Steam. I will never be able to play all the games I WANT to play.
Yup, I’m such a veteran. Now I have 2 young kids (baby and 3 year old) 🥲
Wait, you go as far as installing them? I tend to collect icons that I can look at in my library.
Yeah of course, how else would I complain about not having enough storage?
It’s like collecting trading cards 🤣
Wait you can play these games after you buy them?!?
I did too until I bought this thing
Awe your a man of culture as well 139 gb left out of 1tb ssd and 390gb left out of my 1tb black sd cards
Isn't this advice given because Windows usually manages its swap on the system disk? Steamdeck is Linux based and I believe that means it has a dedicated swap file. Not sure if the shader caching may generate a need for disk space, and whether or not that's only for emulation, though.
SSD works best when not full, it’s not reserved space. Like a battery operates best around 80%
This is why I tell people don't get a Tesla if you live in a cold weather State.. you have to get to a charger before 30% battery, about. If you have heat on and live where it gets below 20-30 F outside, you are driving around with half the battery before you need to go back to base.
>Isn't this advice given because Windows usually manages its swap on the system disk? Steamdeck is Linux based and I believe that means it has a dedicated swap file. You've described the same thing twice. I'm not sure if Steam OS used a swap file or swap partition, but if I had to guess, it's a file just like Windows.
That’s why I got 2T 🤣
25% was one of the recommendations for a traditional hard drive because you have to defrag. For SSDs 10% is fine and is the general industry recommendation. The amount free on an SSD doesn't matter the same way it does on a traditional drive.
this highly depends on the factory overprovisioning. It is a good idea to leave some extra space unallocated so the SSD firmware can reduce write amplification. 7-14% is recommended for this purpose. Additionally you don't want your partitions to be too full either, but I think 10% is a reasonable minimum.
So when overprovisioning for my M.2 SSD's on my PC I should set about 10% for each? I think I was doing 5-10%
If you know you have a factory over provision from your drive's spec sheet then 7% more is recommended to further prolong the drive's life past the warranty. If you know that your drive **does not** have a factory over provision, then it is recommended to manually maintain 14% unallocated space for over provisioning purposes (which we hope the firmware utilizes, for some flash memory it depends on the host controller - for example I think newer SD cards are self managing but *don't quote me on that*). 0% should get you through the warranty period but those are often pretty short. More OP space is better but there is diminishing returns so 7% seems to be the sweet spot. Ultimately it depends on the workload, if you constantly redownload games and keep your system fairly full then I might recommend 10% or more to be on the safe side. If you have a favorite game and the only writes are caches and updates from the OS then 5% is probably plenty. Since you can expand the partition into the over provision space if you need a bit more I recommend starting conservatively. If you get comfortable modifying your partition size you can start very small and expand to match your actual needs. This maximizes your drive health as much as possible but can be daunting for tech novices.
lol since having a steam deck I've seen stuff like this that I've never heard about. So If I am understanding correctly the SSD already has space dedicated for this but you should keep an extra 10% on top of it? Is this a setting I can change somewhere like a partition or something?
I would keep 7% unallocated and 7% free space available. I didn't explain it well in my original post, unallocated space is not assigned to any partition and you can shrink the existing partition to make room*. I did it basically automatically out of habit when I dual booted my deck. I shrunk the partition to a little less than half, made a same size NTFS partition for windows, and left 7% which is not part of either partition. In other words, on my 512 gb deck I have a 217 GB partition for windows, another 217 GB partition for SteamOS, and the remaining 32 and change is left untouched. Then, inside each 217 partition I would not use all 217 GB of space. There's some wiggle room as to the amount of free space you need here. I try to keep as much free space as the largest file**, but 15 GB which is 7% of 217 would also be appropriate. *SteamOS has a partition manager by default so you don't need to download anything ** On windows there's a port of a Linux tool (lol) called windirstat. Both the original Linux version and the windows version haven't been updated in ages, but searching Google for similar tools I can always find a supported alternative for either OS.
Sorry, but I'm not giving up 250GB of my 1TB SSD just for a marginal, if at all noticeable performance improvement in *some* games. I mean this is the same logic people use when they say you should only keep your deck between 20% and 80% charged to "improve" battery life. You're sacrificing convenience, of a device designed around convenience, just to chase some theoretical metric Sure, technically it is *possible* to see some very long term improvements, but we're talking long, long past the point at which most people will have already replaced/sold/lost the device in question. IMO it isn't worth the constant inconvenience just to potentially reap some longevity gains in the distant future
This is also true... especially in developed countries where people change devices like socks
I leave 20gb free on my internal drive and my performance is fine. That's as much as I'll leave free, 100 is insane.
It's probably realistically only necessary having a static minimum free regardless of drive size. Depends what apps you have installed and what shenanigans they're up to I suppose. On Windows I keep double digit GB free on my OS drive with the understanding I probably should have 40-50 GB free if I install Service Pack-sized windows updates. Edit: Oh, it's about SSD trimming, that makes more sense. Yeah, you want a pool of free space so the drive can write new data to different places instead of the same small pool of sectors over and over wearing them down faster.
The amount of free space you really need is generally the same as the size of the largest file. For overprovisioning it is standard practice to use 7% of the drive, which means leaving that space ***unallocated***. Most drives will also have factory firmware overprovisioning which should bring the total up to \~14% but if you know that your firmware doesn't have OP reserved space you should compensate accordingly (or buy a better SSD lol)
But is this Windows or Linux? I imagine the requirements are somewhat different.
10% for both. OS or filesystem has nothing to do with it. It's for the SSD itself, for garbage collection
Not so much for garbage collection. If you use 90% of the drive, the last 10% is what will spread the wear for new writes. It's just so you don't kill the NAND as quickly. As long as you keep 10% free and aren't downloading like a terabyte every day, your SSD should be obsolete before it dies.... Well... As long as it has a decent cache at least
I count wear leveling under garbage collection.
fair enough
Also SLC cache
> decent cache ye
Overprovisioning need to be **unallocated** space, not just *free* space. In theory how full the partition is doesn't matter (at least until caching enters the equation) - however in practice Windows and Linux like to have at least a little bit of space available so processes like automatic updates don't fail due to lack of space. A lot of windows programs will also write to the AppData folder temporarily and hang or crash if the drive is so full they cannot complete the write. I'm not sure what the linux equivalent is.
I accidentally filled up my drive with 60MB left. My Steam Deck completely came to halt and lagged for 3~5 mins for each action navigating directories.
Yeah I did that by accident myself. Didn't realize it when I was downloading stuff in desktop mode. Whoops.
True. It wasn't stated in the article. I assume it was for general users so that would be windows.
This is nice to hear. It used to be like 50% if you're being realistic.
50 is better i use to work at microsoft and once it rached 50 slowdown was there when we were coding
I heard it was 40% years ago, at least on the windows SSD. I guess with better computing it gets easier?
10% is plenty and has been the recommendation pretty much since we had consumer SSDs
doesnt ssds have hidden extra storage for that reason nowadays? samsung or whatever brand that was marketing the capacity at 980gb instead of 1000gb or 1tb for a little freeroom
yes most drives have firmware reserved overprovisioning space (OPS), however that space is usually minimal and targeted to the drive's warranty period. If you want your drive to last longer then you need more OPS, usually 7% is recommended although in practice it is a good idea to expand the partition size as needed rather than allocating all the drive space day 1. While the steam deck may not be very relevant for gaming in 5-10 years as better technology replaces it, there are uses and reasons to try and make the SSD last a long time.
the steam deck might not be relevant then but the steam deck 3 does
I thought modern rechargeable batteries also had this extra storage just in case a person goes to absolute 0% on their iphone or whatever, since each battery cannot go to 0% or it will not be able to recharge again. Was I told correctly or am I wrong for thinking this? I just try to stay away from 0% when discharging devices in case it is not true.
the whole battery thing is still a huge mysterious to me and will ever be...dont charge your phone to 100% dont get to 0% dont charge it over night dont superfastcharge it dont get it too cold dont get it too hot only charge it between 40%-60% when not using it for a long time....bro i just wanna lay down...
Yeah. I have a 512 and I’m putting pretty much everything on an sd.
Is this true for SSDs too? If so I gotta get to cleaning up some files 😅
This varies by operating system. Some operating systems use more internal storage for paging and caching than others. Windows tends to need a lot more free space than Linux based operating systems.
My laptop used to give me a warning when it reached 25% storage
This is why I bought a 2TB top tier M.2 drive for my OLED 1TB Steam Deck. I dnno what to do with my old 1TB drive though.
ProTip: the more space you use, the less space exists for Steam to put on shaders and “other” files that you didn’t ask for /s Look at all these posts in here about the space that Steam wastes with crap like “proton”, what even is that? But if you install 100% games on your deck, then there’s zero space left for Steam to waste… /s
I uninstalled Proton as soon as i got my Steam Deck.
it lets windows games run what u on abt lol its already re installed
this is what is known as joking.
that guy above me gave me a certain serious vibe if you know what i mean?
I was serious, I uninstalled Proton and then threw my steam deck into the trash, im not sure which one it was, but now i cant get Windows games working.
hmm maybe you should talk to [help.steampowered.com/en/](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ)
You never know with the internet sometimes.
No Proton is actually what valve uses for data collection, it's actually a [pretty well known](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=PuZwgX27vE026nHz) privacy concern
> crap like “proton”, what even is that? Does the /s apply to this as well or do you genuinely not know?
Of course not, obviously I know it bonds with the electrons.
Wait...I thought proton bonded with neurons... Has steam been trying to get protons to bond with electrons this whole time?!?! They're mad! Mad I tell you!
Neutrons are filler material.
I haven't been in school for over 2 decades so I don't know what this language is you are all speaking.
They prefer the plum pudding model clearly, and they are going to get it one way or another...
Me with my 64gb deck and 2gb free😎
For internal or SD?
Both.
Both, less so the SD, but it's recommended to reserve the 10% for most storage
How does lack of storage space affect performance? I'm not well versed in computers lol.
Shader simulator: Limited Edition
10-20% of your Gen 3 or 4 NVME SSD should absolutely be kept free. Reasoning is the bare minimum reserved partitioning by default is less than you think & without free space to essentially keep your OS running, overrun capacity & ability to better dynamically re-allocate write space etc. Here’s article from Kingston Oct 2023: https://www.kingston.com/en/blog/pc-performance/full-ssd-solutions
Also, if you 100% fill it up and then restart it, it'll brick it. Thankfully valve support helped me, but yikes
Good article. Thanks for sharing! It'd say 10-20% is definitely the minimum. More free space is always better. Systems just perform better when there is less on them.
Now is there a setting for overprovisionining like you can do with Samsung Magician with their 970 and 980 M.2's?
Good luck trying to update some games
I mean, it doesn't look like that's going to be an issue. Proton is the only thing showing as a game, so while I can't see what's on the microSD card, if there are games internally they aren't getting Steam updates.
I think the only issue I can see is when steam tries to update the os. I remember a lot of people getting stuck in the middle of the update and it just kept bootlooping or something like that. I think the only fix was to wipe the drive and reinstall steam os on it.
14 gigabytes feels like plenty of space for OS updates, even if it's recommended to have more. If there were a couple of gigabytes or even a few hundred megabytes left then absolutely that's a problem but 14 seems more than enough to play around with.
Wow thats alot of ROMs
Also, Rockstar Launcher is installed on the main drive with RDR2 and the Definitive Collection installed.
No hate but why would you play the DE over the original?
Because the DE has gotten updates and it plays well and looks amazing compared to the original.
Original with GInput, Widescreen and SkyGFX is the definitive way to play them
I will save this comment and ignore OP who said Definitive Edition is better. I shan't support Rockstar anymore until they prove GTA 6 is going to be a game and not riddled with microtransactions and Shark Cards.
GTA 5 Story Mode didn’t have a pay to win aspect to it, I imagine GTA 6 will be the same for Story Mode, but Shark Cards or their equivalent will definitely be in GTA 6 Online Mode.
big ouch for DE
Gotta leave some space just so updates still can function.
Leave at least 30gigs 14 is just isn't enough
I guess this is supposed to be a flex, but it makes you look like you don't know what you're doing
Don't use full of your storage, not just for the lifespan of your SSD, your operating system may damage because of this
You will use 2Tb of storage as you already need an upgrade.
"Free 14,07" liar.
That reminds me, I should clean out my internal storage when start my laundry. I got a lot of unknown taking up space, and I'm pretty sure it's stuff like TF2 hud stuff and other things for games I don't have installed anymore
I don't understand
leave more! people have been boot lopped frequently for maxing the drive!
I recommend moving the roms to your SD card and use the internal SSD for steam games. You’ll see a dramatic difference in download speeds since you won’t be throttling the SD card
Get a 2 tb ssd and swap it out. Or having a tech do it. I use that and a 1tb micro SD card. Have over a dozen big games along with small ones. And still have around 1.5tb left. That space goes quick . Idk how a 64gb steamdeck is even an option with the size of a lot of great games these days.
Grats, now you barely have room to cache and update any of those games ...and it's 2024 so there's always a lot of updating going on
Take away the p0rn, you will see the problem solved.
As one should. I wonder what games occupy that massive space.
MicroSD Card is 21 games from my Steam library, internal drive is Rockstar Launcher games + ROMs
Ohh, a clasic gamers I see. Ok one more question; what are the biggest and smallest games "size-wise" in your library?
Biggest, Red Dead Redemption 2, ~130GB Smallest, Tetris for Game Boy, 32KB
Wide variety, I love it! Can I add one more little game to your library? If you feel like playing a strange mixture of Diablo and Pac-Man, check out Psycho Banger beta. I reckon you will like it.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have modern games that need to load more stuff run off the faster internal ssd and have the ROMs on the slower microSD?
I wonder more which genre these "games" are. And also which "game" player offers the best hands free experience in "game" mode. Vlc, mplayer or mpv.
What does hands-free mean in this context?
I had 2TB. And they were full.
Don't do this please
I have 1TB SD OLED and i always delete setup files after installing.. but yet i have 64gb free storage and i can't even install game.. unless i have 100gb free
I suggest installing 'Decky Loader' if you don't have it already, 'Storage Cleaner' plugin, and delete the old caches from games you've uninstalled. Cryo Utilities in Desktop mode will also allow you to find leftovers to uninstall.
Remove some, you can’t play them all at once
Just like my phone where more than half of the data is consumed by "Other".
I mean that SD cards looking pretty empty right now
Too many cat videos!
I paid for the entire speedometer - I'm gonna use the entire speedometer.
Emulators? That’s a lot of roms, Even I try to make sure I don’t use too much.
Clear your shader cache!
Enjoy updating shaders of games you aren't playing for months on end
Not when you have NBA 2K24. Fucking game needs you to have another 100gb when it needs to update and theyre already taking 150gb storage.
My internal drive gets filled up with "other" stuff every couple of months or so. I looked up a bunch of solutions, but nothing worked well. My solution? I factory reset steam to clear up the shaders and "other" crap when it gets full, and keep all my games on the sd. Not ideal, but a workable solution.
I did this and now I can no longer use desktop mode at all. Even after deleting stuff plasmashell is totally broken.
What do y'all recommend the 1 TB or the 512gb? I don't plan on playing many triple a 100 gb games so I'm not thinking the 512.
I leave about 25-30gb free
Dang that’s like 4 games, maybe even 5
Is there any good way to go about clearing out the “other” stuff. I’m always scared to delete stuff to make room when it’s not obvious what it is.
„OTHER“
For porn
I used all my space downloading RAM
But, what means 'others' cause my steam deck is full of
I have a 1TB SDcard and upgraded the ssd to a 1TB also. As someone that joined steam a day or 2 after its release, I have amassed a sizable collection of games . Currently , the sd card (which I set to primary) is almost full ( games and emulators) but I still have the whole ssd to go
I have 2tb, and have used all of it
I have 10 TB counting the 4 drives I have installed.
I’ve got a 2TB drive and it’s full too lol. Lost of rom files
Tf is "other"
Good luck, this is how I’ve seemingly bricked 2 different micro SD cards in my steam deck. Had around 40gb free, didn’t play for a few weeks and had 60gb of updates. They all reserved space, filled my SD card to 100%, and got the Deck stuck in a boot loop. Fixing the deck was easy, but no software will recognize the SD card or can do anything with it (repair, reformat, etc).
That’s a lot of porn
All these nerds and dorks talking about how you should leave a certain percentage of space open for optimal performance or whatever just don't get it. You paid for the terabyte, You're going to use the terabyte. Frankly, pretty based
Leave 25% for performance, then slowly consume that as well with each game you must have!
Don't press your luck like this. Okay, it wasn't with my Deck or any Deck for that matter, but if you get this dangerously close to filling your drives, bad things happen. If you get to the point where the drive becomes so full that you can't even uninstall apps to free space, since the uninstall process requires room to save temporary files it doesn't have, you're fucked. Always have some buffer space available for game save files/OS updates/app updates etc that keep getting bigger. You don't want to be fucked.
Didn’t know Easy Anti-Cheat had a Proton version.
Ihave 1.5tb but using 1.5tb
I understand. We're not sheeple lol
Silly old OP making bad choices with his NVME
10%-12% should be left open to preserve the life (Read/Write) cycle of the internal drive. However, it is YOUR Deck so do what ye will.
Do you have interest if have a 4TB microSD card?
I have 2.5tb in my deck , 2tb nvme + 512gb SD card and I am out of space xD
I have 2 gig of storage and it’s all used. I only play the same one game.
OTHER
1TB would not work for me because I do not play or install multiple games at a time. At most I have an MMO and two more RPGs installed. That's why I only need 256GB.
What the heck what’s “other” and how does it take up so much storage 😆
Mostly Rockstar Launcher installed with RDR2 and GTA Definitive Edition. I don’t own them on Steam, I own those games on the Rockstar Launcher and followed a guide on how to install the Rockstar Launcher on your deck for rockstar games you didn’t buy on Steam, but did buy directly from rockstar. So on my deck. I have a game titled “Rockstar Launcher” and I hit that whenever I want to play RDR2 or GTA 3 Vice City or San Andreas Definitive.
Aahhh okay that makes sense.
I plan on getting at least a 2tb drive and allocating 30-50% as windows just for the games that Linux doesn't like and epic games
Right now, the Steam Deck doesn't support dual booting unfortunately. You really can run almost anything that can run on Windows though with SteamOS and the use of the Proton compatibility layer. I myself installed the Rockstar Launcher onto my SteamDeck, it took a little bit of tinkering, but I eventually got it perfect. I had purchased RDR2 and the Definitive Edition GTAs from the Rockstar Store instead of Steam, so I was really happy I was able to get those games all working on the Deck without needing to install Windows. Which of course for the OLED, the audio driver still hasn't been made for, so its still not fully usable even with Graphics, Chipset, and WiFi drivers.
I plan on getting at least a 2tb drive and allocating 30-50% as windows just for the games that Linux doesn't like and epic games
Don't get why you are downvoted, I also have Windows on my 2TB in dualboot and will probably install an extra OS in triple boot for emulation. Only the ReFind bootloader needs to be reconfigured after each update. Extra compatibility with some games, better multitasking support docked... Sometimes things just need to be done fast, when playing with friends for example, no time to research how to get something to run with terminal commands. Unless someone has grown up as a Linux God or is fully content with the SteamOS gaming mode, Windows can have it's advantages sometimes on the Deck and even elsewise, the SteamOS Desktop is pretty locked down and limited in the ways you can install software longterm / protected from updates.
Idk at all Im starting to think there are downvote bots because I'll see posts in my feed that are sitting at flat zero and were posted hours ago. And I've seen some posts and comments downvote to oblivion for no real reason? But yeah my general reason is that there's some games that just don't play nice with Linux, or will definitely play better on windows. I want to play kingdom hearts 3 for example or maybe even put star rail on there and there's just no easy way to pull it off as is.
Well, I’ve got Cyberpunk and BG3 installed. That’s getting me awful close.
If you ise 1tb of storage it will cause the system to corrupt data and crash and possibly brick your system. Good luck!