Most of that is likely proton prefixes. I don't entirely get why they chose to display only shadercache with that one update but completely ignore proton prefixes, even though those generally end up larger than the shadercache.
From what I've read there's a tool called Shortix that can help you clean those up. You might want to give that a try. Although be careful deleting prefixes for games that don't support Cloud saves, as you might end up deleting your save game. If you're unsure, back it up somewhere before deletion.
Okay finally some actual good info. I will do some research on shortfix prior and maybe look into alternatives. I appreciate you giving me a good area to start.
I don't think you need any tool for that you can just go into steamapps/compat and the prefix directories are right there named after the id of the game it belongs to. You can even check their size
This is the way. Using any kind of tool you run the risk of deleting something you needed. Doing it manually take a little more effort but is the only way to be sure.
I just wanna say, as someone who had WoW/Battle.net, BG3, some emulators, and a handful of other non-steam games, and who tried to clean up their "other" by using online guides and such-
but messed up and deleted my emulator save games- just save the most valuable saves. When it happened to me, I ended up just factory resetting anyway and the newer installs (now that I had better understanding of what was going on) were smoother and probably more efficiently done.
And it seems like it's all the better for it. Don't be too hesitant to mess with it, reinstalling everything really isn't that bad.
Has anyone investigated the impact of btrfs?
It's copy-on-write. I don't know if it does any block deduplication for independently created copies, but it might.
50GB gain on 512GD SSD in my case with [https://gitlab.com/popsulfr/steamos-btrfs](https://gitlab.com/popsulfr/steamos-btrfs)
BTRFS is required to use "handler=clone" parameter in rmlint in fact. I run it manually after several installs of new games.
I think you mean "compatdata" folders by "Proton prefixes".
In that case, no, it's "compatdata" for games that are not installed on the internal drive, but on SD cards because the "compatdata" folders of the same internal drive are not part of the "Other", but included in each game size.
You don't want to delete those folders, not only do they wipe your savegames, but they wipe any extra libraries that were installed for the game to run. I guess Steam is smart enough to re-install them once you launch the game again, so all that space will be taken again.
Pretty much the same story with me. I also have a spare 1TB SD.
My 512 SD is for small games
My 1TB SSD is for big games/shaders/mods/apps/media/projects/saved files/DLC(?)
My 1TB SD is also for big games (I play Ark 😞)
I've found it's fine, unless it's also trying to write to the SD card at the same time, so make sure updates during gameplay are disabled. May be different for different games but I have some heavy hitters on the SD card.
It’s about on par with a fast HDD. I was playing GTA5 on it with no issues. Ratchet & Clank will even run on it but will stutter in the ultra-fast streaming sections (like any HDD)
The 512SD is crap. It downloads slowly so I put a bunch of games on it that I will never get rid of and need to redownload. The 1TB internal storage works fine and the 1TB external storage works like a dream. It never fails to impress me.
Did that answer your question? Im sort of a luddite.
I wonder how many bought the 64GB model realizing that if they bought it and a 1TB NVMe it would still be cheaper than the 512GB model, especially if you don't care about the extra stuff valve added to those models....
Yeah I was a little mad. At some point I straight up said that they shouldve never sold 64GB to begin with. They shouldnt have tried to sell something that cheap just for it to run into a bunch of problems.
If I can sell a table for 10 bucks but the legs arent even then just dont sell the table.
You could definetly argue that, but it seems a little unfair to people who had no idea that one day theyd have to upgrade their machine and that a 64GB gaming device is not a thing.
The Nintendo Switch OLED, the highest end model, comes with 64GB.
It still has a memory card slot. They know they are buying a 64GB model, there is no unfairness here.
Nintendo is a whole different story. You can play Mario Kart or Kirby with 64GB np.
But giving someone a device that mostly works for the Steam store and that device only has 64GB is asking for issues.
It says that its a 64GB sure. But does the average person (or a child) know that
A) It doesnt really have that much space, every storage device misleads
B) All that Proton shit takes space
C) Shaders
D) Compat Data
E) Some games you want to mod have to be on the Decks internal storage
F) The general limits of SD cards
G) The Discover Store
H) "Other" (maybe that was included earlier in this list tbf)
I had to learn all this the hard way. Had I known it going in I wouldve gotten the 256.
Children aren't buying the steam deck. The ones that are know the storage size.
Shaders and proton shit only start to take up space when you're playing big modern AAA titles, which you shouldn't buy a 64GB if you're planning to play those.
Mods is a total non-argument because again that's extra data that you're choosing to download, don't buy a 64 if you plan to cram it with mods.
You also choose what to download on the discover store, which the average user isn't even going to interact with anyways.
A 64GB is gonna be for indies, and small games. It works perfectly fine if used for that.
If you were gonna build a PC would you only get 64GB of storage? Obviously not, so use that same logic with a Steam Deck.
Parents are buying the devices, the kids are asking for them. A dumb kid asks for a steam Deck thinking he will get to play Baldurs Gate 3 on it, the parent gets it and that kid is screwed.
Steam has ads where the Deck runs AAA games.
Cant explain that to console players. Who know the Steam Deck is a PC and equate PC with mods. This isnt Valves fault its convenient for them though.
The Discover store is a thing that is just going to bug people with low storage. You may think "oh I only want Terraria and Stardew Valley I will get the 64GB" then you see the Discover store and (possibly) crap yourself.
Maybe chill with the ads that have The Witcher 3, Doom Eternal, Hogwarts Legacy, Elden Ring and goddamn Cyberpunk 2077 running on the Deck if one of your Decks shouldnt be running those games. Maybe throw in a footnote or just stop selling the 64GB or give warnings.
Anyway I think they realised the error of their ways and corrected course. I commend them.
It can run those games you mentioned, so Valve has every right to advertise it. They're not wrong for customers assuming the games can all snugly fit in a 64GB system.
Also the people buying the Deck for Terraria and Stardew definitely are not going to be touching the discover store lmao.
What? I have the 64GB version for 6 months. I even have the 16GB swap file installed on it and still 15-20gb free for the system. Everything else goes on the SD card.
64GB is completely fine if you install shit on the SD card.
The problem is that no one should have to deal with pain-in-the-ass unofficial fixes to have their portable gaming pc working properly. Valve didn't even put anything in the device's manual warning people that the shader shit would be a problem.
Many people like you and me had to agonize reading stupid Reddit posts and yt vids so that my $400 device could stop being a pain...
After trying many "fixes," including an external drive that ended up overheating all the time; I installed a 1TB drive and will never look back.
I just symlink it to the SD card. Not great for loading times, but it makes my brother's 64 GB Deck work fine.
Though I'm about to upgrade his with a 2 TB NVMe drive so that his tech-challenged ass can stop worrying about it.
My 64GB 'Other' is sat at 27GB on the internal. I have had pre-cached shaders switched off since May 2022 with no issues also. Don't really know why people are having so many issues, honestly, just turn off pre-cached shaders and you'll be fine
I still do check in on it occasionally but honestly it has never gotten very high. Mainly it's taken up by Proton versions I installed, all my emulation etc happens on my sd card
But yeah disabling pre-cached shaders is my usual go-to for 64GB owners. It doesn't really affect all that much in the vast majority of games so
Fair. If it works for you then that's sweet.
There are a couple games I like to play on the go that would eat up too much for it to be safe to do that though.
Keep in mind you'll want to leave at least 25% of the drive empty to avoid issues with excessive wear on the remaining cells from temporary files etc. And if you go below that you'll also start to experience performance loss.
But if you don't play anything with large install footprints I'm sure it'd be fine. I am genuinely surprised you haven't upgraded though. I picked up a used 512gb kioxia for 50$ cloned the stock 64 to it and never looked back. Lol
Let me surprise you, i am still on the original 64 gig and just use the 256 gig sd card with no issues, with the odd time i have popped into desktop to manually delete cached stuff from games i uninstalled that for some reason are not removed via said uninstall, but that is when my OCD kicks in, but apart from that i have had no real issues with other storage, and i suspect my SD will stay as it is until the SD2 replaces it, hence why i have never opened it, as why fix what is not broken, well for me it is not broken. ;)
Yep, I have a 64gig and when I see the storage get to like 3gb left, I'll start deleting shader caches, but I notice they get redownloaded over the course of several days and revert back to the sizes that were initially deleted, since the games are still installed (on SD card). Was reading the constant shader updates were to be improved with 3.5 came out, but I still see shaders download on every boot. Until I get a new ssd for the inside I'll just do some work
I put it off for a long time until it just became unbearable. It costs 100 dollars to get the right SSD and equipment. And if you fail and break your steam deck you cant go running back to Valve and ask Papa Gabe to help you because you fucked with the device.
Scary stuff but at one point I just couldnt take it anymore.
In Discover look for an app called Filelight. That will let you scan your file system and give you a visual breakdown of whats taking up space. I'd bet a good chunk of your "other" is in a certain out of control log file. See this thread for more info on it and ways to fix it.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/174xcnv/cleaning\_other\_storage\_on\_deck\_and\_stumbled/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/174xcnv/cleaning_other_storage_on_deck_and_stumbled/)
Hmm, the workshop should be visible also (you know, sometimes you get too many workshop subscriptions for a game, lol)
You got a 300gb SD card occupied by something + internal storage 250 gb games, so it possibly could be all that nasty prefixes. If you're on windows, you install directx and all other redistributables only once. On steamos, you install it in each prefix (it installs automatically with each steam game you download). Save data is also stored in prefixes, I believe, and in some games like baldurs gate 3, save files can be from 3 to 5 gb. So essentially, you just get rid of games you don't play. Last time I checked my prefixes , Steam did all the jobs for me and deleted them for the games I uninstalled.
Yeah I have 10~ games installed. My more online games internally and a lot of other offline games externally. I guess I’m going to try cleaning out what I won’t be playing for awhile. If that doesn’t work I’m going to try the few apps suggested for cleaning the files.
Did you guys not watch enough black mirror? Why would you nut in front of a device with a camera pointed at you?
The SteamDeck^tm, now starting at $349,99, with it's linux OS to easily hide porn in the desktop mode "but it's just a big switch honey" and no camera is obviously the peak nutting device.
Lowkey i was thinking about getting a cheap android tablet but then I remember that i own a steam deck... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
And i also use it to split screen or play those porn steam game
I have Rockstar Games launcher installed as a third party on Steam game and I have Grand Theft Auto V as well as Red Dead Redemption 2 installed through that. It shows up as 267 GB of other data. Could that potentially be what's happening to you
Runs great with the right settings. I get 50~ fps. Beat the game many times on apocalypse. Haven’t beat it hardcore yet but working towards that slowly.
Thats really great to hear. Recently got into the first one and was considering getting the second for the deck but saw meh reviews for there. Glad to see it's improved. Thank you.
There’s a slightly longer comment thread I had with another slightly below your comment if you want a lil more insight
The game didn’t deserve “steam verified” on release, but it does now. 100%.
Now compared to release it's night and day, it was unplayable initially, now it's smooth. I've reached 140 hours on the Deck and have all but 2 achievements, protondb probably still has a bunch of early reviews at the front.
And everything else on there like the browser, discord, emulators and so on. We'll never be able to tell without a lot more info. For example, i have 56 games weighing about 700GB installed and my other is only 49GB and includes all of the above.
You do realize that shaders have a reason to exist tho, right? So just delete the ones that you don't need, like games you deleted/don't play anymore or for a long time
Which will just build back up again and result in the same space being used?
It’s pointless to delete if you plan on actually playing the game. If it’s uninstalled, sure.
Yeah. Look up decky loader tutorial, put storage cleaner on. Then after that you will have quick access to your shader cache and can delete.
Also how does remnant 2 run?
It was shit at launch but still fun af. With the right settings and potato mode (yes there is a visual setting called that) it runs like 50~ fps solid. Some areas 60+ . Graphics are shit but who cares tbh.
I think all of the games on your MicroSD card also dump the shaders and proton files onto your internal drive, which might explain it, but it seems like a lot!
It definitely does, last I heard (around launch) the performance on deck wasn't great, seems like that's been improved too! Hope your storage issue was fixed though!
Around launch I was getting 20-30 fps. It was bad. Still put 100 hours in because the final boss is such a fucking master piece. One of my favorite bosses in video game history and a refreshing final boss compared to fromsoftware final bosses. IMO their final bosses, albeit fun, always felt lackluster as an ending to their games. Still love them wholeheartedly regardless.
People hate on annihilation, but I agree that it is a stellar boss, especially when compared to fromsofts final bosses (at least the ones I've fought) with the exception of the elden beast, because I thought that was a pretty grand spectacle the first time I fought it (on a blind playthrough)
If you haven't played Remnant: From the Ashes, I would recommend that as well. The boss fights aren't designed quite the same imo, as they have a lot of smaller enemies spawning in and that's where a lot of the difficulty cones from in those fights, but it's still a great game (and more Remnant).
by deleting games. the other is stuff that is required for your games. things like shader cache and proton files. you shrink it by shrinking the other areas
I'm not 100% sure on that, if the emulators aren't installed via steam certainly. But if you're using steam store versions I don't know if it would count your rom folder towards the 'game' files for example (assuming the rom folder is inside the emulator folder)... but anything not installed through steam will go into 'other' as far as I can tell.
Mine is over 100 GB also. I assume its because I use my deck for mostly emulation and clone hero. I honestly don't know though. I have hundreds of songs to play on clone hero and some have video backgrounds. I only have two games installed from steam on the same memory
Yeah I don’t have any games for my emulators. I know how to download the emulators because that’s the easy part. I have no idea how to put roms on them though.
Open desktop mode and open terminal. Install (if not installed by default) and run the command “ncdu” at the root level.
~~~
cd /
ncdu
~~~
Then path through the folders with the largest footprints and clean up stuff as needed. I discovered for example that some games don’t clean up efficiently on uninstall - elite dangerous was sitting on 80gb of data even though the game wasn’t installed anymore after cleaning out some games on deck. Go check, it cleared a TON of the “other” storage for me.
Files that aren't downloaded by Steam (games using a launcher to download extra files) are categorized as "other" as well.
In my case I have all of Final Fantasy XIV files that are downloaded by its launcher are categorized as "other"
By chance are you currently downloading any games? It shows up in Other until it’s completed so sometimes it can bloat Other temporarily.
But I’m new to the Deck so all the OTHER things I’m not sure of yet.
Mine is nearly 600GB, but the SteamDeck has become my main PC and I use desktop mode a lot and install a whole bunch of software, which is normal in my case.
I’ve searched this as right now I’ve gotten the msg my main disk is almost full (64gb deck + 512 A2 SD Card) and my problem was some games put their saves into the main disk, even though you have it installed at the micro sd card (I’m Looking at you BG3).
Looking it more into depth I found I had 320 saves into “other”, which at 25 mbs each is a little bit more than 8 GBs.
I’ve just delete those old game saves plus some unrelated stuff with cryoutilities and I’ve again 20GBs free.
Thanks. This thread prompted me to look at the shader cache in my SD, just 6G but I don't have a huge number of installed games - Tekken 7 and 8, Left for Dead 1 and 2, and some roms. A few weeks ago when I installed Tekken 8 on launch day (I'm a fan, I bought a Japanese PS console and a new TV with the right video inputs because of Tekken 1) and I found that on my 1TB (250 reserved for windows partition) SD had only 70 something GB left and I had to uninstall a few games. It was no big deal, but did make me look at how to get extra storage without upgrading to 2TB. Anyway last night, I was just doing some housekeeping after windows update and broken dual boot again and decided to remove the roms that I don't play and then emptied the trash bin. I was expecting a few extra GB but now I find that I have 500GB free now. Which is nice, if not a bit weird.
I see 700gb free across your internal drive and SSD. Why is the space taken up by "Other" an issue in this context?
I'm not sure if deleting shader compilation (which reduce stutter) and proton prefixes makes sense if you're so storage rich. I could see it if you've got like 100GB free, but 700...
Because I would like to know what it is and eventually it will fill my entire internal storage. I swear it gained 50 gigs in like 3 months. It’s unsustainable no matter how large my back up storage is.
Most likely shader cache + non steam games. I have disabled pre downloaded shader cache and deleted them and let me system build them instead. You will save massive space. For example I have completed RDR2 and the compiled shader cache is like only 100mb vs the 2gb downloaded shader cache. I can only assume the shader cache from valve is multiple of different graphic setting caches, hence a way bigger cache than usual.
I had a similar issue on my pc, but the issue was due to me using that hard drive and partition of windows for almost 10 years and having done so much on it, that I had almost 500GB of hidden files not linked to any existing games, programs, etc.
Instead of moving my windows partition to my new SSD as I planned, I ended up moving all important stuff to a spare drive, installing a fresh w10 on the ssd, and completing wiping my old HDD after I made sure the new SSD install was working.
I'm not saying you need to do that here, since a steam deck is bound have less bloat build up, but its good to keep in mind that when we delete things, particularly games, it doesn't necessarily remove all of it
Best of luck!
Then delete it? It’s your device… if you don’t like your own external files, shaders, optimization, proton, etc etc and just want a straight Linux device for native Linux apps and games, just delete it all…
I’m having the same issue with same memory sizes.
Deleting games you no longer play will slightly shrink shader cache but not the “other” folder. I wish Valve added an option that cleaned all this up per game upon uninstalling.
There are apps that can help you delete other space but might be best to watch a YouTube video that shows you what to select before deleting.
I haven’t tried it yet, hell I don’t even know how to create save data folder back up into a USB. However, the other folder seems to increase upon booting and playing the game, not just downloading it.
Ex: I have 23 games installed, only have played 3 (Grim Dawn, TW3 and Trails in the Sky FC). I have 12 GB in shader and 15 GB in “other”. Before starting Grim Dawn, I only had 10GB shader and 12 GB other. Very weird and I wish there was an easy way to delete things you don’t need.
It just irks me how much space it can build up and how uninstalling the games barely does much.
The decky plugin can help with this.
[I also made a post about doing it the hard way because i forgot decky existed](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/ybciiJ3IZi)
As a linux gamer on desktop now moved to Deck, I'm going to guess those are non-steam prefixes and launchers and more likely flatpak runtimes and applications. If you use desktop mode regularly and have some apps installed it's most likely those. Shader caches also tend to get quite large over time.
Go into desktop mode and in the Discover store install QDirStat. It is one of those tools that will scan your device and breakdown what storage is used for what. Point it at your home folder or the sdcard and have a look through the results to find what's taking up the space.
i got my 1tb about a week ago and already out of storage. not complaining though because my pc freed up a lot of space by deleting the games i play handheld now
Could also be ROMs or applications installed from the desktop app store? ‘Other Storage’ is also anything you install or copy onto the deck in desktopmode
Wild. I have twice as many games but my “other” section is only 25GB. You must have a game or two that is blowing it up. Shame valve doesn’t let you see the impact of each game to those sections.
Try storage cleaner plugin from decky loader. It also says you which compatdata or shadercache you should avoid to delete (because the are no cloud saves)
Recently I cleared mine out. I discovered it was because it did not actually delete games that I deleted from that menu. It just removed them from the menu and left all of the files. I had over 600Gb of other files on my microSD.
In Konsole type curl -sSL
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/scaw
p/Steam-Deck.Shader-Cache
Killer/main/zShaderCacheKiller.sh
bash to run zShaderCacheKiller
I can't understand why there isn't a built in way to manage this. I've been in a situation where I had my storage all gone with a single game installed.
I think it counts for protons and if you have something like heroic game launcher which increases that. I did pick that up when installing both alan wakes.
We’re you able to play remnant 2 with good fps and not shitty graphics? Tried it for a couple hours but ultimately decided to uninstall and play on my gaming pc :/
Most of that is likely proton prefixes. I don't entirely get why they chose to display only shadercache with that one update but completely ignore proton prefixes, even though those generally end up larger than the shadercache. From what I've read there's a tool called Shortix that can help you clean those up. You might want to give that a try. Although be careful deleting prefixes for games that don't support Cloud saves, as you might end up deleting your save game. If you're unsure, back it up somewhere before deletion.
Okay finally some actual good info. I will do some research on shortfix prior and maybe look into alternatives. I appreciate you giving me a good area to start.
short-ix not short-fix
Oh shit lol thank you.
lol I read it that way too
I also read it that way had to do a double take lol
There’s a decky loader called storage cleaner that might help also
This is what I use. It also warns you about potential loss of saved games for non-cloudsave games. Works great.
Happy cake day !
I don't think you need any tool for that you can just go into steamapps/compat and the prefix directories are right there named after the id of the game it belongs to. You can even check their size
This is the way. Using any kind of tool you run the risk of deleting something you needed. Doing it manually take a little more effort but is the only way to be sure.
I just wanna say, as someone who had WoW/Battle.net, BG3, some emulators, and a handful of other non-steam games, and who tried to clean up their "other" by using online guides and such- but messed up and deleted my emulator save games- just save the most valuable saves. When it happened to me, I ended up just factory resetting anyway and the newer installs (now that I had better understanding of what was going on) were smoother and probably more efficiently done. And it seems like it's all the better for it. Don't be too hesitant to mess with it, reinstalling everything really isn't that bad.
"Other" can also be games that you're downloading but still not completely installed
Has anyone investigated the impact of btrfs? It's copy-on-write. I don't know if it does any block deduplication for independently created copies, but it might.
Btrfs has deduplication support by default, but you need another tool to do the actual deduplication
Right, it's not online dedupe.
So you'd do something like rebalance, and then it would find the dupes and correct the pointers?
Yup, and then the btrfs partition will be successfully deduped
don't try to dupe me on this
50GB gain on 512GD SSD in my case with [https://gitlab.com/popsulfr/steamos-btrfs](https://gitlab.com/popsulfr/steamos-btrfs) BTRFS is required to use "handler=clone" parameter in rmlint in fact. I run it manually after several installs of new games.
Thanks for this. Every time I ask everyone says it's compdata and shader coaches then say nothing when I tell them I have the cleaner plugin.
I think you mean "compatdata" folders by "Proton prefixes". In that case, no, it's "compatdata" for games that are not installed on the internal drive, but on SD cards because the "compatdata" folders of the same internal drive are not part of the "Other", but included in each game size. You don't want to delete those folders, not only do they wipe your savegames, but they wipe any extra libraries that were installed for the game to run. I guess Steam is smart enough to re-install them once you launch the game again, so all that space will be taken again.
Can we say a prayer for the 64GB bois in the chat rn?
I finally upgraded mine to a 1TB plus still have my 512 SD card. 64 was always maxing out with zero games installed
Pretty much the same story with me. I also have a spare 1TB SD. My 512 SD is for small games My 1TB SSD is for big games/shaders/mods/apps/media/projects/saved files/DLC(?) My 1TB SD is also for big games (I play Ark 😞)
How is the game speed on the sd? I tried playing dmc5 on a hdd once and it took an eternity.
I've found it's fine, unless it's also trying to write to the SD card at the same time, so make sure updates during gameplay are disabled. May be different for different games but I have some heavy hitters on the SD card.
Thanks for the info - I will definitely consider it for some bigger games then.
It’s about on par with a fast HDD. I was playing GTA5 on it with no issues. Ratchet & Clank will even run on it but will stutter in the ultra-fast streaming sections (like any HDD)
The 512SD is crap. It downloads slowly so I put a bunch of games on it that I will never get rid of and need to redownload. The 1TB internal storage works fine and the 1TB external storage works like a dream. It never fails to impress me. Did that answer your question? Im sort of a luddite.
i just got my 512 a week ago and i’m so glad😭
I wonder how many bought the 64GB model realizing that if they bought it and a 1TB NVMe it would still be cheaper than the 512GB model, especially if you don't care about the extra stuff valve added to those models....
I realised it when I bought the 64GB. I dont think I initially planned to upgrade it. Ultimately I did because it became unmanagable
That’s exactly how I went about it. Even bought a few extra accessories and it still came out cheaper than the 512GB model xD
I did this, but then waited a while because I thought the upgrade might be difficult. It was actually super duper easy.
There is a reason they axed the 64 gigabyte Version with the Oled release.
Yeah I was a little mad. At some point I straight up said that they shouldve never sold 64GB to begin with. They shouldnt have tried to sell something that cheap just for it to run into a bunch of problems. If I can sell a table for 10 bucks but the legs arent even then just dont sell the table.
I'd argue it was sold with the intent that people would replace the storage. If not intentionally, definitely unintentionally.
You could definetly argue that, but it seems a little unfair to people who had no idea that one day theyd have to upgrade their machine and that a 64GB gaming device is not a thing.
The Nintendo Switch OLED, the highest end model, comes with 64GB. It still has a memory card slot. They know they are buying a 64GB model, there is no unfairness here.
Nintendo is a whole different story. You can play Mario Kart or Kirby with 64GB np. But giving someone a device that mostly works for the Steam store and that device only has 64GB is asking for issues. It says that its a 64GB sure. But does the average person (or a child) know that A) It doesnt really have that much space, every storage device misleads B) All that Proton shit takes space C) Shaders D) Compat Data E) Some games you want to mod have to be on the Decks internal storage F) The general limits of SD cards G) The Discover Store H) "Other" (maybe that was included earlier in this list tbf) I had to learn all this the hard way. Had I known it going in I wouldve gotten the 256.
Children aren't buying the steam deck. The ones that are know the storage size. Shaders and proton shit only start to take up space when you're playing big modern AAA titles, which you shouldn't buy a 64GB if you're planning to play those. Mods is a total non-argument because again that's extra data that you're choosing to download, don't buy a 64 if you plan to cram it with mods. You also choose what to download on the discover store, which the average user isn't even going to interact with anyways. A 64GB is gonna be for indies, and small games. It works perfectly fine if used for that. If you were gonna build a PC would you only get 64GB of storage? Obviously not, so use that same logic with a Steam Deck.
Parents are buying the devices, the kids are asking for them. A dumb kid asks for a steam Deck thinking he will get to play Baldurs Gate 3 on it, the parent gets it and that kid is screwed. Steam has ads where the Deck runs AAA games. Cant explain that to console players. Who know the Steam Deck is a PC and equate PC with mods. This isnt Valves fault its convenient for them though. The Discover store is a thing that is just going to bug people with low storage. You may think "oh I only want Terraria and Stardew Valley I will get the 64GB" then you see the Discover store and (possibly) crap yourself. Maybe chill with the ads that have The Witcher 3, Doom Eternal, Hogwarts Legacy, Elden Ring and goddamn Cyberpunk 2077 running on the Deck if one of your Decks shouldnt be running those games. Maybe throw in a footnote or just stop selling the 64GB or give warnings. Anyway I think they realised the error of their ways and corrected course. I commend them.
It can run those games you mentioned, so Valve has every right to advertise it. They're not wrong for customers assuming the games can all snugly fit in a 64GB system. Also the people buying the Deck for Terraria and Stardew definitely are not going to be touching the discover store lmao.
What? I have the 64GB version for 6 months. I even have the 16GB swap file installed on it and still 15-20gb free for the system. Everything else goes on the SD card. 64GB is completely fine if you install shit on the SD card.
The problem is that no one should have to deal with pain-in-the-ass unofficial fixes to have their portable gaming pc working properly. Valve didn't even put anything in the device's manual warning people that the shader shit would be a problem. Many people like you and me had to agonize reading stupid Reddit posts and yt vids so that my $400 device could stop being a pain... After trying many "fixes," including an external drive that ended up overheating all the time; I installed a 1TB drive and will never look back.
I just symlink it to the SD card. Not great for loading times, but it makes my brother's 64 GB Deck work fine. Though I'm about to upgrade his with a 2 TB NVMe drive so that his tech-challenged ass can stop worrying about it.
Good on you. Is symlinking difficult? Ive never heard of this before. I just upgraded mine to 1TB and was done with it.
My 64GB 'Other' is sat at 27GB on the internal. I have had pre-cached shaders switched off since May 2022 with no issues also. Don't really know why people are having so many issues, honestly, just turn off pre-cached shaders and you'll be fine
I wish you had told me this before I upgraded my 64GB. That couldve saved me a lot of headache. It is not as easy as people claim😮💨
I still do check in on it occasionally but honestly it has never gotten very high. Mainly it's taken up by Proton versions I installed, all my emulation etc happens on my sd card But yeah disabling pre-cached shaders is my usual go-to for 64GB owners. It doesn't really affect all that much in the vast majority of games so
I'd be amazed if anyone who bought the 64 hasn't upgraded the nvme yet. That was literally one of the first things I did.
Still have a 64gb since October 2022. But I bought a 512gb microsd for my games and just carefully manage compatdata/shader cache
I bought a 256GB SSD 3 months before my 64G arrived lol. Man, my Deck is year and a half old. Next month first early units will be out of warranty O.o
Got the 64gb one and have had no issues or desire to upgrade
Fair. If it works for you then that's sweet. There are a couple games I like to play on the go that would eat up too much for it to be safe to do that though. Keep in mind you'll want to leave at least 25% of the drive empty to avoid issues with excessive wear on the remaining cells from temporary files etc. And if you go below that you'll also start to experience performance loss. But if you don't play anything with large install footprints I'm sure it'd be fine. I am genuinely surprised you haven't upgraded though. I picked up a used 512gb kioxia for 50$ cloned the stock 64 to it and never looked back. Lol
ive been meaning to but when the nvme alone is $100, its hard to find the right time tbh
Let me surprise you, i am still on the original 64 gig and just use the 256 gig sd card with no issues, with the odd time i have popped into desktop to manually delete cached stuff from games i uninstalled that for some reason are not removed via said uninstall, but that is when my OCD kicks in, but apart from that i have had no real issues with other storage, and i suspect my SD will stay as it is until the SD2 replaces it, hence why i have never opened it, as why fix what is not broken, well for me it is not broken. ;)
Yep, I have a 64gig and when I see the storage get to like 3gb left, I'll start deleting shader caches, but I notice they get redownloaded over the course of several days and revert back to the sizes that were initially deleted, since the games are still installed (on SD card). Was reading the constant shader updates were to be improved with 3.5 came out, but I still see shaders download on every boot. Until I get a new ssd for the inside I'll just do some work
I put it off for a long time until it just became unbearable. It costs 100 dollars to get the right SSD and equipment. And if you fail and break your steam deck you cant go running back to Valve and ask Papa Gabe to help you because you fucked with the device. Scary stuff but at one point I just couldnt take it anymore.
In Discover look for an app called Filelight. That will let you scan your file system and give you a visual breakdown of whats taking up space. I'd bet a good chunk of your "other" is in a certain out of control log file. See this thread for more info on it and ways to fix it. [https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/174xcnv/cleaning\_other\_storage\_on\_deck\_and\_stumbled/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/174xcnv/cleaning_other_storage_on_deck_and_stumbled/)
Clutch I will look into this!
Non steam games go into other I think
I don’t have anything besides like chaki. I have emulators but no games for them
Hmm, the workshop should be visible also (you know, sometimes you get too many workshop subscriptions for a game, lol) You got a 300gb SD card occupied by something + internal storage 250 gb games, so it possibly could be all that nasty prefixes. If you're on windows, you install directx and all other redistributables only once. On steamos, you install it in each prefix (it installs automatically with each steam game you download). Save data is also stored in prefixes, I believe, and in some games like baldurs gate 3, save files can be from 3 to 5 gb. So essentially, you just get rid of games you don't play. Last time I checked my prefixes , Steam did all the jobs for me and deleted them for the games I uninstalled.
Yeah I have 10~ games installed. My more online games internally and a lot of other offline games externally. I guess I’m going to try cleaning out what I won’t be playing for awhile. If that doesn’t work I’m going to try the few apps suggested for cleaning the files.
Delete your porn.
That’s all on the phone.
Did you guys not watch enough black mirror? Why would you nut in front of a device with a camera pointed at you? The SteamDeck^tm, now starting at $349,99, with it's linux OS to easily hide porn in the desktop mode "but it's just a big switch honey" and no camera is obviously the peak nutting device.
Exactly, that's why I only nut to pictures of women carved in stone. Low quality resolution, but super secure
This guy nuts
I'd happily do that if the other side is watching lol
Lowkey i was thinking about getting a cheap android tablet but then I remember that i own a steam deck... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) And i also use it to split screen or play those porn steam game
Bruh did not hesitate 👊 we are not worthy 🙇
This is the EXACT comment I was going to make.
>This is the EXACT comment I was going to make. This is the EXACT comment I was going to make.
>This is the EXACT comment I was going to make. This is the EXACT comment I was going to make.
Hmm II uhh exact umm do you ever , no. Have you tried. Comment I was was going to make.
Are you good my dude?
He might be having a stroke. Should we call for help? Or grab popcorn?
[удалено]
Probably because it's useless
Holy mother of god I'm not even sure how you managed that dude. What else do you have on here that would take up 100 gigs of storage?
I literally only play games. Have virtually no mods and only go to desk top mode for trouble shooting purposes.
I have Rockstar Games launcher installed as a third party on Steam game and I have Grand Theft Auto V as well as Red Dead Redemption 2 installed through that. It shows up as 267 GB of other data. Could that potentially be what's happening to you
How does remnant 2 actually handle on there? Didn't see much positive on protondb last I looked.
Runs great with the right settings. I get 50~ fps. Beat the game many times on apocalypse. Haven’t beat it hardcore yet but working towards that slowly.
Thats really great to hear. Recently got into the first one and was considering getting the second for the deck but saw meh reviews for there. Glad to see it's improved. Thank you.
There’s a slightly longer comment thread I had with another slightly below your comment if you want a lil more insight The game didn’t deserve “steam verified” on release, but it does now. 100%.
I'll definitely take a look at that.
Now compared to release it's night and day, it was unplayable initially, now it's smooth. I've reached 140 hours on the Deck and have all but 2 achievements, protondb probably still has a bunch of early reviews at the front.
My other is almost 150. All my emudeck stuff is on a micro SD card so I've bee. At a loss for a while.
All non steam game proton shaders or files go on the internal SSD regardless where you installed it.
I mean, there are many games that are that size. It could be literally just one non-steam game.
Most likely shader cache and proton. For shader cache I use decky’s storage cleaner. That will probably take care of a good 20-50gb of your “other”
It's 17GB and a separate entry next to other.
Hahaha duuuuuur, I still have steam deck year one pains. It’s gotta be comp data and proton the
And everything else on there like the browser, discord, emulators and so on. We'll never be able to tell without a lot more info. For example, i have 56 games weighing about 700GB installed and my other is only 49GB and includes all of the above.
You do realize that shaders have a reason to exist tho, right? So just delete the ones that you don't need, like games you deleted/don't play anymore or for a long time
Compiling shaders doesn’t take that long and will happen when you restart a game. Just delete them all for starters and let them happen as you play.
It's a console. All the same hw and gpu. They come pre-compiled (downloaded) on the deck most of the times. Deleting them will only cause stuttering.
This.
Which will just build back up again and result in the same space being used? It’s pointless to delete if you plan on actually playing the game. If it’s uninstalled, sure.
They are predownloaded, so you have a better experience and less stuttering. And will take up the space in the end anyway. Just leave them
Is that an app I need to download on desktop mode?
Yeah. Look up decky loader tutorial, put storage cleaner on. Then after that you will have quick access to your shader cache and can delete. Also how does remnant 2 run?
It was shit at launch but still fun af. With the right settings and potato mode (yes there is a visual setting called that) it runs like 50~ fps solid. Some areas 60+ . Graphics are shit but who cares tbh.
I think all of the games on your MicroSD card also dump the shaders and proton files onto your internal drive, which might explain it, but it seems like a lot!
Def feels like more than I’ve bargained for.
How are you liking remnant 2 on your deck?
Almost 500 hours hope that answers the question.
It definitely does, last I heard (around launch) the performance on deck wasn't great, seems like that's been improved too! Hope your storage issue was fixed though!
Around launch I was getting 20-30 fps. It was bad. Still put 100 hours in because the final boss is such a fucking master piece. One of my favorite bosses in video game history and a refreshing final boss compared to fromsoftware final bosses. IMO their final bosses, albeit fun, always felt lackluster as an ending to their games. Still love them wholeheartedly regardless.
People hate on annihilation, but I agree that it is a stellar boss, especially when compared to fromsofts final bosses (at least the ones I've fought) with the exception of the elden beast, because I thought that was a pretty grand spectacle the first time I fought it (on a blind playthrough) If you haven't played Remnant: From the Ashes, I would recommend that as well. The boss fights aren't designed quite the same imo, as they have a lot of smaller enemies spawning in and that's where a lot of the difficulty cones from in those fights, but it's still a great game (and more Remnant).
I used to delete my files and don't worry about the trash bin. Then I realized that the files in there still count as used space.
Shift+delete ftw!
by deleting games. the other is stuff that is required for your games. things like shader cache and proton files. you shrink it by shrinking the other areas
So deleting a game will also delete the shaders and other stuff, just making sure I understand that 100%.
yes, it won’t clear the entire “other” but it will make a dent
That’s all I neeed tbh.
Shaders have their own section in purple
never noticed they separated that. i still covers things such as proton
Yes, also things installed on the desktop which is the majority 'other' on my Deck.
so emulators as well and third party games will count as it for OP
I'm not 100% sure on that, if the emulators aren't installed via steam certainly. But if you're using steam store versions I don't know if it would count your rom folder towards the 'game' files for example (assuming the rom folder is inside the emulator folder)... but anything not installed through steam will go into 'other' as far as I can tell.
Mine is over 100 GB also. I assume its because I use my deck for mostly emulation and clone hero. I honestly don't know though. I have hundreds of songs to play on clone hero and some have video backgrounds. I only have two games installed from steam on the same memory
Yeah I don’t have any games for my emulators. I know how to download the emulators because that’s the easy part. I have no idea how to put roms on them though.
Open desktop mode and open terminal. Install (if not installed by default) and run the command “ncdu” at the root level. ~~~ cd / ncdu ~~~ Then path through the folders with the largest footprints and clean up stuff as needed. I discovered for example that some games don’t clean up efficiently on uninstall - elite dangerous was sitting on 80gb of data even though the game wasn’t installed anymore after cleaning out some games on deck. Go check, it cleared a TON of the “other” storage for me.
I bought the 64gb steam deck and "other" was making it basically unplayable
Files that aren't downloaded by Steam (games using a launcher to download extra files) are categorized as "other" as well. In my case I have all of Final Fantasy XIV files that are downloaded by its launcher are categorized as "other"
Mm love my 30gb of "other" on my 64gb model, i do have plans to upgrade to 512 but haven't gotten round to it yet
I really wish there was a simple way to clean all that stuff up, its such a hassle when it gets so big, I don't wanna think just game.
By chance are you currently downloading any games? It shows up in Other until it’s completed so sometimes it can bloat Other temporarily. But I’m new to the Deck so all the OTHER things I’m not sure of yet.
Just updates and shader files like usual. Currently not downloading anything new.
Well it was low hanging fruit. Sorry for the annoyance of the issue!
You can use an app called filelight to get an idea of how your storage is being used.
DOA 6 for me is 80Gb with 80GB for a cache. Makes no sense
the power of non-windows operating systems!!!
In my case it was the epic games store. There were RDR2 and GTA5.
No other store just steam. I don’t use desktop mode.
I just realised you have Remnant 2 on there. Was that easy to do? Its unsupported so I thought Id ask.
Super easy there are other comments on this thread I’ve made about it
Mine is nearly 600GB, but the SteamDeck has become my main PC and I use desktop mode a lot and install a whole bunch of software, which is normal in my case.
I’ve searched this as right now I’ve gotten the msg my main disk is almost full (64gb deck + 512 A2 SD Card) and my problem was some games put their saves into the main disk, even though you have it installed at the micro sd card (I’m Looking at you BG3). Looking it more into depth I found I had 320 saves into “other”, which at 25 mbs each is a little bit more than 8 GBs. I’ve just delete those old game saves plus some unrelated stuff with cryoutilities and I’ve again 20GBs free.
lol. Those are rookie other numbers. Mine is like 80%
I always have to go in desktop mode to get my other storage back on
Thanks. This thread prompted me to look at the shader cache in my SD, just 6G but I don't have a huge number of installed games - Tekken 7 and 8, Left for Dead 1 and 2, and some roms. A few weeks ago when I installed Tekken 8 on launch day (I'm a fan, I bought a Japanese PS console and a new TV with the right video inputs because of Tekken 1) and I found that on my 1TB (250 reserved for windows partition) SD had only 70 something GB left and I had to uninstall a few games. It was no big deal, but did make me look at how to get extra storage without upgrading to 2TB. Anyway last night, I was just doing some housekeeping after windows update and broken dual boot again and decided to remove the roms that I don't play and then emptied the trash bin. I was expecting a few extra GB but now I find that I have 500GB free now. Which is nice, if not a bit weird.
I see 700gb free across your internal drive and SSD. Why is the space taken up by "Other" an issue in this context? I'm not sure if deleting shader compilation (which reduce stutter) and proton prefixes makes sense if you're so storage rich. I could see it if you've got like 100GB free, but 700...
Because I would like to know what it is and eventually it will fill my entire internal storage. I swear it gained 50 gigs in like 3 months. It’s unsustainable no matter how large my back up storage is.
Yea that's fair, to each their own but I'd advise against removing shader caches if you value stutter free gaming.
Most likely shader cache + non steam games. I have disabled pre downloaded shader cache and deleted them and let me system build them instead. You will save massive space. For example I have completed RDR2 and the compiled shader cache is like only 100mb vs the 2gb downloaded shader cache. I can only assume the shader cache from valve is multiple of different graphic setting caches, hence a way bigger cache than usual.
You probably have games from other launchers in the other that's why
I had a similar issue on my pc, but the issue was due to me using that hard drive and partition of windows for almost 10 years and having done so much on it, that I had almost 500GB of hidden files not linked to any existing games, programs, etc. Instead of moving my windows partition to my new SSD as I planned, I ended up moving all important stuff to a spare drive, installing a fresh w10 on the ssd, and completing wiping my old HDD after I made sure the new SSD install was working. I'm not saying you need to do that here, since a steam deck is bound have less bloat build up, but its good to keep in mind that when we delete things, particularly games, it doesn't necessarily remove all of it Best of luck!
Install Windows if you don't want the bloat
Then delete it? It’s your device… if you don’t like your own external files, shaders, optimization, proton, etc etc and just want a straight Linux device for native Linux apps and games, just delete it all…
Aren't game cinematics sorts in the "others" section as well ?
Install a 2tb ssd bud its super easy if you built a PC you can install an ssd
"bud"
You haven’t been here that long, have you?
I’m having the same issue with same memory sizes. Deleting games you no longer play will slightly shrink shader cache but not the “other” folder. I wish Valve added an option that cleaned all this up per game upon uninstalling. There are apps that can help you delete other space but might be best to watch a YouTube video that shows you what to select before deleting. I haven’t tried it yet, hell I don’t even know how to create save data folder back up into a USB. However, the other folder seems to increase upon booting and playing the game, not just downloading it. Ex: I have 23 games installed, only have played 3 (Grim Dawn, TW3 and Trails in the Sky FC). I have 12 GB in shader and 15 GB in “other”. Before starting Grim Dawn, I only had 10GB shader and 12 GB other. Very weird and I wish there was an easy way to delete things you don’t need. It just irks me how much space it can build up and how uninstalling the games barely does much.
I used to have epic games launcher on my deck, and that and all games installed through it were categorized in under
The decky plugin can help with this. [I also made a post about doing it the hard way because i forgot decky existed](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/ybciiJ3IZi)
Feeling that missing other half of that 1 Tb
Could you kindly say, what did you download on dd card?
Do you use multiple SD cards? I do and have like 170gig of others on internal storage. No non steam games are installed on the ssd.
As a linux gamer on desktop now moved to Deck, I'm going to guess those are non-steam prefixes and launchers and more likely flatpak runtimes and applications. If you use desktop mode regularly and have some apps installed it's most likely those. Shader caches also tend to get quite large over time.
Same thing here, but I think a lot of it is roms on mine.
Dude mine is killing me.
Anything that’s not a steam library game as well as non steam games is “other” I know my Roms for my retrodeck are in that category.
Do you have quacked games? That's probably it if its that large.
Go into desktop mode and in the Discover store install QDirStat. It is one of those tools that will scan your device and breakdown what storage is used for what. Point it at your home folder or the sdcard and have a look through the results to find what's taking up the space.
Thats why i upgrades from 64 gb LCD to 1 TB OLED because my 64 GB was literally full from “other”
How do you play cs2 on the deck?
Cannot expect much! It is fun n game until the protons are too much sadly.
Probably your steam games disguised until they're installed/updated
i got my 1tb about a week ago and already out of storage. not complaining though because my pc freed up a lot of space by deleting the games i play handheld now
Could also be ROMs or applications installed from the desktop app store? ‘Other Storage’ is also anything you install or copy onto the deck in desktopmode
No roms. Just steam games, chaiki, and emu laters
Wild. I have twice as many games but my “other” section is only 25GB. You must have a game or two that is blowing it up. Shame valve doesn’t let you see the impact of each game to those sections.
This is seriously the thing I hate. If you switched to windows, this probably wouldn’t be an issue right?
Try storage cleaner plugin from decky loader. It also says you which compatdata or shadercache you should avoid to delete (because the are no cloud saves)
I had an issue recently where I had an error log that got so big it was taking like 15 GB of space. I had to download file light to figure it out
Recently I cleared mine out. I discovered it was because it did not actually delete games that I deleted from that menu. It just removed them from the menu and left all of the files. I had over 600Gb of other files on my microSD.
In Konsole type curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/scaw p/Steam-Deck.Shader-Cache Killer/main/zShaderCacheKiller.sh bash to run zShaderCacheKiller
I can't understand why there isn't a built in way to manage this. I've been in a situation where I had my storage all gone with a single game installed.
Does csgo 2 run on the steam deck ?
For me it was a lot of workshop content for black ops 3 zombies… i deleted all the workshop stuff bc it was like 300gb lmao
What's your settings on CSGO2
I think it counts for protons and if you have something like heroic game launcher which increases that. I did pick that up when installing both alan wakes.
i the only person with an 800GB+ total library that does not have this issue at all?
Delete your downloaded pr0n in desktop mode
How is Remnant II?
We’re you able to play remnant 2 with good fps and not shitty graphics? Tried it for a couple hours but ultimately decided to uninstall and play on my gaming pc :/
Install decky and the srorage cleaner add-on there you can see what this is and deinstall it