The current release of the Steam Deck has come with different storage upgrades. Steam offers its consumers a 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB SSD. Some people have chosen the lowest costing product with the least amount of storage.
By purchasing a larger storage SSD, anyone can change the storage capacity of the Steam Deck if done in the right order.
How to Upgrade SSD – Steam Deck
Starting with the Steam Deck itself. You must know that it has sensitive components and you need to be careful on how you open it up and make sure to not damage it.
To begin firstly you need to have the proper set of tools for this job, these tools are:
- Metal Tweezers
- Thin Philips Screwdriver
- Two Plastic Picks
These are the only tools that you will need to perform a successful SSD transfer on a Steam Deck.
Once you have brought all the required tools on the table, it’s time to grab the Steam Deck and turn it off. You can turn it off by holding on to the top right power button and selecting the second option, which is power off.
Unscrewing & Opening
NOTE: If you don’t think that you are capable of doing this on your own, it’s recommended to take the Steam Deck to a professional who can do the job successfully.
Flip your Steam Deck on the other side where there are a total of 8 Philips head screws. For this situation, you will need to grab your Philips screwdriver and start removing the screws all 1 by 1.
Each Philips screw has a little bit of thread lock on it. Thread lock is a type of liquid that is placed on the screws themselves to prevent any dust or dirt to enter the hole and make the screw holes larger, eventually damaging the steam deck.
Make sure to have a proper area for screw selection. You don’t want to mix up the screws for the Steam Deck, which can end in mixing up the screws.
Once all the screws have been unscrewed, you will notice the plastic back has not come out yet. The reason behind that is that there are still plastic picks that hold the back panel and the Steam Deck itself.
You need to take your two plastic pics and begin prying open the Steam Deck.
To begin the prying process, you will need to take your long plastic pick and just pry it open only a few millimeters, with the other prying tool you will want to slowly move towards the closed area in order to make sure you successfully but slowly remove the back cover.
This process needs to be done slowly and carefully because the plastic can be very sensitive and break at any given moment.
Once all the picking and prying have been completed, the back panel can come off easily with no cables attached to it. And your inside components will be exposed.
From here you will want to focus on the 2 showing screws and the one screw which is hidden under the gray tape. NOTE that the gray tape is a way for your seller to know if you have been messing around with the insides. This may remove the guarantee you have on your Steam Deck.
The gray tape covering the screw can be removed with the Metal Tweezers and the other two screws can be screwed off easily with the screwdriver. Make sure to put these screws in a different location and not mix them up with the first set of screws.
Once everything has been unscrewed, the metal protector can come right off and leave the SSD and the processor exposed.
Before going off and screwing anything else out, firstly you will want to disconnect the battery from the motherboard and prevent power from coming to the device.
To remove the battery, you will simply need to get yourself a prying tool and just move the flex cable a little bit until it comes out of its slot, from there you can carefully remove it from the motherboard, leaving no power to it.
Now that all the power has been removed from the device, time to focus on the SSD and remove it. The SSD is held by only one screw, and it’s pretty simple to remove. Simply unscrew it and pull the SSD out of the device.
Once unscrewed and pulled out, the SSD will have an aluminum cover around it. This is to prevent it from getting heated up. You can pull out the old SSD from the aluminum cover and place the new SSD inside the cover.
Now that the SSD has been changed. It’s time to assemble all the pieces back together.
To firstly begin, screw back the new SSD that you have installed into the motherboard. And make sure the aluminum cover is covering every part of the SSD. (Have it to the closest point from the screw, to make sure everything is covered and protected)
Place the Flex Cable from the battery inside the slot in the motherboard.
And screw back the metallic protector that is held by the 3 screws.
Once all the inside components have been assembled, the same way that they were re-assembled, it’s time to place the plastic cover over the Steam Deck and slowly press inside to make sure all the plastic teeth fit into place with the Steam Deck.
The final step is to screw in the 8 remaining Philips head screws into the Steam Deck and you should have assembled back your Steam Deck to its original form.
When the Steam Deck has been assembled, it’s time to turn it back on and see the results.
You will notice that there is no actual Operating System in the Steam Deck. The reason behind that is the new SSD drive that was just installed.
You can fix this situation by easily installing the Steam Operating System into the Steam Deck.
To check if you have successfully installed the SSD Drive, simply press A from the “Missing Boot Device” screen and go to your Setup Utility window. From there you can see the NVME Size, and see if it was changed.
