REMOVE AND UPGRADE YOUR DECK’S SSD

5 Replace the SSD

Undo the screw holding the SSD in place, remove the SSD’s shield covering, then pull the SSD out. Place the shield over the SSD you want to install. Insert the new SSD and screw it into place. The final part of the physical process is to put your Deck back together. Plug the battery back in, screw the metal sheet on, put the back cover on and screw the eight screws in.

6 Download SteamOS

Now we need to reinstall SteamOS. On your PC, head to https://bit.ly/lxf306steamos and click Download SteamOS Deck Image. This ISO image needs to be written to the GPT-formatted USB stick. To keep life simple, you can grab Etcher from https:// etcher.io, install that and get it to write the Steam Deck ISO file to the USB stick.

7 SteamOS on Deck!

Plug the USB stick into the Deck. Press and hold the power and volume-down buttons. At the startup beep, release the power button but keep holding the volume-down button until the BIOS appears. Select your USB device and it should boot to the desktop – we had to reboot once. Click Reimage Steam Deck from the Desktop mode and follow the on-screen instructions.

8 Enjoy the new storage!

The Steam Deck first has to initialise the new drive, but once in, you’ll find you have a whole universe of new space under Storage. If you drop to Desktop and install KDiskMark, you can even test your drive. The old external microSD probably ran at 100MB/s read, while our 512GB NMVe runs at almost 3,000MB/s – that’s 10 times faster than the original internal storage.