Running out of storage and deciding which games get chopped from your Steam Deck can be a laborious task, but this mod from StorageReview is here to make sure you never have to do storage triage ever again.
How? By adding an external SSD that bumps up the handheld’s storage capacity by more than 61TB, of course.
This is overkill at its finest, but the upgrade does address one of Steam Deck’s major complaints: a serious lack of storage space. Even with the most expensive Steam Deck, the handheld maxes out at 512GB. You can swap out the internal SSD with an aftermarket option, but even those only hit 2TB. With how big game files are these days — looking at you, Baldur’s Gate 3 — 2TB might not even be enough.
61TB GAME LIBRARY
That’s where the modders at StorageReview come in. They managed to make a 61.44TB enterprise SSD from Solidigm work with the Steam Deck. The massive storage solution is not the same size as the stock M.2 SSD that Valve puts into its handheld, so StorageReview had to add a power supply to make sure it could run. While it makes for a massive burden that takes away from the Steam Deck’s portability, we commend the bravery to create such a roomy monstrosity.
For those who play demanding games on the Steam Deck, chances are we’re stuck near an outlet anyway to make sure the battery doesn’t die. In that case, the external 61TB SSD’s size doesn’t feel like that much of a drawback. We’ve already seen other gaming handhelds with ports that connect to an external GPU, so the precedent is there.
A CALL FOR MORE STORAGE
In reality, most of us won’t be following StorageReview’s lead and modding our Steam Decks with a needlessly large external SSD. As wild of a mod as this is, StorageReview says the upgrade was “surprisingly straightforward and uncomplicated,” which just speaks to how well the Steam Deck can adapt to tinkering.
All of this does have us wondering what a Steam Deck 2 looks like or if there’s a refresh with more storage space in the works. I’m sure Valve is aware of how every one of its users’ libraries is overflowing with unplayed games. Though, now that we’ve seen what an over-the-top storage solution for the Steam Deck looks like, swapping out the SSD for a 2TB one doesn’t seem so bad.
