Tag: SSD

So you want to upgrade your SSD on the Steam Deck, huh?

Paul2 Replies
The Prices of Steam Deck

Upgrading is Possible

I’m not going to say it won’t be easy to do. It just depends on how much of knowledge you have to do this. I bought the 64gb Model because well it was the cheaper of the 3. I figured it would be cheaper to do it myself than to pay them to do it. I am looking now and think I did a great job with this because I didn’t have to spend the 600 dollars for the 512gb model. In fact there are more bigger kinds of the SSD that I can install that will go beyond the 512gb that they are selling. If you want to do this, I really suggest checking out the Steam Deck Teardown that the IFIXIT guys did. I simply love the idea of tearing it down and being able to MOD it, if I so choice.  I’m going to talk about the best choices you have to upgrade your storage in the Steam Deck.   These are just my recommendations on which ones will help you and save you money in the process.

Buy NVME 2230 30 mm SSDs

So we start to talk about the kind of SSD’s you will need to buy in order to upgrade your Steam Deck.   You will need to find SSDs that are one sided NVME.  They can not have chips on both sides of the card, there would be no room for it.   You’re going to look for the type you might want but here are some good options that I see on Amazon.

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SkHynix 256GB PCIe NVMe 2230 SSD for 31$

Here’s the first one that I recommend for anyone who might just want to upgrade to a little bit bigger size. This however will not give you as much room as you might want but it will give you enough room to start off with and then you can SD cards to do the rest.  As you can see this one will be a good deal for you right now.   You can quickly and easily upgrade your Steam Deck to a bigger storage.   It however isn’t the only one I would recommend.

Micron SSD 512GB M.2 2230 30mm NVMe PCIe 4.0 for 99$

Now here’s a great deal going from jusst paying 399$ pluss tax to 499$ Plus tax.  Saving you over 130$, if you just did it yourself.   So this one should fit Steam Deck and I don’t see any problems with it.  It is small enough and fast enough to use with the Steam Deck.  You won’t see it slowing you down as you are gaming on the Steam Deck.

SN530 m.2 2230 SSD 1TB NVMe PCIe For 184$

This seems to be the best deal around because you can get almost a 1 tb for the best amount of money.   The only problem with this one is you really only get 866gb of space and the rest is taken up by design of the chip.   I don’t know if you want that or not but at least this one is available to you to buy.  You might be able to find other 1tb that will get closer to the 1tb limit but not  many and they start to get more expensive.

2TB M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe SSD Gen 4.0 for 539$

Finally we get to this bad boy, it is a bit expensive for my tastes but at least this is a Samsungs SSD.  So it will be blazing fast but I don’t know if I would pay 500$ for a 2tb when you can easy get Micro SD’s for cheaper.  I guess those who can afford to pay it will most likely.  I am sure there will be other manufacturers who will come out with 2tb but for right now this one is the only one on Amazon and claims to be able to upgrade the Steam Deck.  I suspect your will only get like 1.7tb of space off this SSD but it will be massive.  If you have a lot of games, this would definately let you put them on the Steam Deck.

Installing the Steam OS

So you bought a bigger SSd and went to install it but you will need to install the Steam OS.  You can follower the instructions on how to create a Steam OS recovery USB drive.   I personally might go with my own and use CloneZilla and clone the hard drive and move it to the new one after you install the new SSD.   Then grab something like Gparted and expand the disk to the size you need that would be my recommendations so you don’t loose any of you games or have to reinstall the games that you have already installed.   You will need a USB stick that has the size you want to clone so if you have a 64gb then you will need one that is at least that big.  You can use a dock or something like that, See my previous post about Docks.  to use multiple USB sticks.  Hope this helps.  Did you find this informative, why not share it and let others know that it is possible to upgrade your Steam Deck.

Three ways to speed up your Laptop

Paul
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Laptops all around

You probably got a old laptop, which is probably slow and very sluggish. It is a single, double, or quad core low megahertz system and you really can’t do much with it because it is so unbearable slow. I grew up with 9600 baud rates, for the younger generation that is very slow internet. It can be very disheartening to have to just wait for the system to boot or a program to run. You could of even bought this laptop from a yard sale. So what can you do with this laptop besides make it a door stop? This article will tell you how I refurbish my laptops to make them faster and more responsive when I don’t want to buy a better laptop.

2x or 3x more RAM!

If your laptop can support another laptop memory module then you should install another RAM module. It however is dependent on what speed of ram you currently have installed. If your laptop only has one module slot you will need to go buy a bigger ram and install it instead the one you have. So you need to know how big you can install into the laptop. You can easily Google it and find out how much you can add to your laptop. I wouldn’t install anything to big, something like 8 GB to 16 GB will do to make it even faster. The faster the ram speed the faster the system will respond but it must be capable with the current module so I suggest installing the same speed if you aren’t going to replace the module.

Replace the HDD with SDD

If you’re considering doing this, I strongly recommend you backup your current system. Remember the rule of 3. You should always have at least 3 different ways to restore your current system. What’s is an SSD? It is short for Solid State Drives and don’t use mechanical plates to write data. Think of a HDD has having several layers of DVD plates that are much smaller and use magnetism to read and write data. SSD are almost like RAM and have no moving parts and thus are more responsive to reading and writing which makes booting the system way faster than you probably ever realize. You can find some SSD at Amazon if you need one. You can find some really cheap SSD because you probably don’t need a lot of space for your old laptop,\.

Install Linux

I’ve talked about this before but I will say this again. If you are using a really old laptop you probably can’t use Windows 10 and since Windows 7 is at it’s End of life. You really can’t go wrong, by going to opensource operating system. I personally love Linux Mint but I am sure there are other Linux system that might be better for your laptop because it might require a very simple Linux desktop. You want your system to boot up and be able to use your laptop with ease this is definitely the best recommendation I can give you. If you are planning to install windows 10, you should make sure your laptop can support it.

Got a favorite Linux system? Or maybe something else to make your Laptop speed up and more responsive why not leave a comment and let me know and others.