Steam Deck storage problems solved with an ingenious hack

Clever modders have resolved the lack of internal storage on the Steam Deck with a hack that allows the use of a 60TB SSD.

The Steam Deck is a great device, a portable PC powerful enough to run all but the most demanding of games, but comfortable enough to hold for long play sessions and small enough to be safely tucked into a bag. After over a year of use, however, some users are running into a problem – namely, lack of storage space.

As standard, storage for the Valve Steam Deck comes in the form of a single 2230 M.2 SSD, which provides a maximum of 2TB of storage space for the OS, games, apps, and files. At first glance, this doesn’t seem too bad, but with some modern games that take up 80GB or more, that space can be eaten up quickly. Though guides have long existed for ways to get the most out of an M.2 SSD or to replace it with a slightly larger NVMe drive, the team at StorageReview had a more ambitious plan.

Steam Deck gets wild 61TB storage upgrade

The StorageReview team took the Steam Deck into their lab and proceeded to develop a process by which a monstrously huge Solidigm P5336 61.44TB Enterprise SSD could be installed into the Steam Deck. Several technical and logistical problems needed to be overcome in the process, including converting the Steam Deck M.2 NVMe slot into something that could be used by the enterprise connection used by the Solidigm SSD. The team utilized a combination of an adapter from NFHK and an Icy Dock enclosure to hold the drive itself.

StorageReview

The power supply was the next problem, as the need for the huge 61TB drive was far above what the M.2 slot could usually provide. The team decided to short the ATX power connector to ensure it was always on and ran a cable to the now external hard drive dock to guarantee a stable source of power.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Steam Deck had few technical hurdles to overcome when it came to recognizing and formatting the drive, which StorageReview attributes to Valve’s attitude towards design openness and flexibility. The drive was formatted using a standard Re-Image USB Drive, and the team said that they were getting 3,600 MB/s sequential read, compared to about 2,300MB/s with the internal drive.

The StorageReview team says this modification is “a testament to the limitless potential of creative engineering and a refusal to be bound by conventional design restrictions.” However, they do note that the considerable storage expansion does come with the downside of the unit being considerably less portable.