PCGaming @lemmy.world inclementimmigrant @lemmy.world 1 yr. ago

WD unveils massive 2TB SSD for Steam Deck and PC handheld owners

www.pcgamesn.com Store loads of games on your Steam Deck or ASUS ROG Ally with this new large and fast 2TB drive from WD

An NVMe solid-state drive is a must-have for expanding the storage space of your PC gaming handheld, whether you own a Steam Deck or the ASUS ROG Ally.

17 comments

Some advice: Avoid all WD/Sandisk SSDs like the plague.

SanDisk Extreme SSDs are “worthless,” multiple lawsuits against WD say
I’ll wait for the crucial ssds no thank you
Yoooo no thank you I don't wanna buy anything WD for the foreseeable future.
- What was their blunder, I must have missed it?
  
  This comment links it: https://kbin.social/m/pcgaming@lemmy.world/t/450116/-/comment/2312264
If I swap the main SSD, is the only option a complete wipe and reset? I'd like to keep various settings and how I've customized the desktop over the year+ with my 64GB deck.
- Don't have a steam deck, but what I used to do on Linux when upgrading drives is just dd the old drive over. Sure it's inefficient as hell, but with pcie 4.0 speeds You're looking at 20 min to make a byte-for-byte copy of your old 1 tb drive, which you can then extend your partitions to make them bigger.
  
  Nowadays just using cat to clone drives is almost always faster
Ignoring the vendor:

Do people actually see a need for this? I noticed the same thing with the ps vita back in the day. People wanted the BIGGEST storage possible.

But in the case of the vita and the steam deck: There are a few games I keep installed at all times because of course. But mostly, I am playing one or two games at a time. I'll probably update storage when I finally need to open my deck (for whatever reason) but haven't seen a strong need to.

Like, the people who need 2 TB: What are you actually installing?
- I’m the target market. With Steam I keep everything I ever played on my current PC installed forever, or until I run out of disk space and have to triage.
  
  I don’t like to triage.
- Example of a game that works nicely on the deck, and is giving me a great portable replay (other than the EA Launcher): Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
  
  Size of that game: ~110GB
  
  Also, personally, because of the slightly shonky WiFi download speeds and that I use it offline/whilst travelling a lot, I leave a bunch of games on there just in case I fancy them.
  
  To me, more space would be good. I am unsure I'd need 2TB, but it would solve a lot. I've also got a few hundred gigs of other launchers (battle net) and ROMs on my SSD currently that are less easy to manage than Steam installs... again, the larger drive would just lighten the worry.
  
  Yeah but ME LE is actually 3 huge AAAs.
- If you have slow internet and a few games that have 100+ GB you don't want to delete anything if possible. I bought myself a 8tb hdd last year to move games there if I don't play them and the ones I actively play stay on my 1tb nvme.
- What am i installing?
  
  Whatever the fuck I want. What kind of question is this?
- The Steam Deck can play more than steam games. I usually keep about 30-40 Steam games installed, but most are really light little games for casual play with just a couple of large AAA games at any given time.
  
  But outside of Steam, the Deck can emulate up to PS3 and Switch games. And theres not really a good cloud-based solution without having to switch into Desktop mode. So I have my usually about a dozen PS2 games, one or two PS3 games, and my whole PS1 library on the Deck. Then every couple months I'll go into Desktop mode and delete what I've beat and copy over new games from my gaming PC.
  
  I'm also not a dock user. Maybe I would be if I didn't have a gaming PC, but for me the point of using the Deck is to not be attached to anything. Otherwise an external HDD might help. I'm thinking about eventually building a NAS: I'm not sure if I could have games live there and still playable on the deck though?
  
  While I definitely allegedly have more roms and isos on my deck than I am likely to play in any reasonable time frame:
  
  There are a LOT of really bad guides for the deck out there that encourage people to install ninety bazillian pieces of software to transfer a file. Look in to just learning how ssh and scp/rsync work. Lets you manage all the files and the like from your primary PC while your deck is just turned on and charging. And WSL for Windows 10/11 means you don't even need any "new" software on windows (let alone an OS with a native *nix component).
  
  I use nextcloud to sync game saves because that is a rare enough occurrence and I use a local nextcloud for other stuff on my network. But for games and even a lot of updates? Just turn the deck on and then go to my main PC. And if my nextcloud ever borks itself for the umpteenth time? I could whip up an rsync script that checks if the deck is on and on my network and synchronize saves if so (and then just set it to run once an hour).
- My household had multiple people who use the Deck. I upgraded to a 1TB (plus the 512GB SDCard) which is enough for now but games ain't getting smaller in size

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