How to install SteamOS on the Steam Deck
3This video is a step by step guide which shows how to install SteamOS on the Steam Deck.
Reinstalling SteamOS is necessary when replacing the NVMe SSD and in scenarios in which it stops working properly.
You'll need a flash drive which is at least 8 GB and a dock to be able to connect the USB-C power supply at the same time.
There are three possible operations which can be performed from the recovery image:
clear local user data - leaves the OS alone & wipes out user data
reimage - reinstalls the OS & wipes out user data (deletes ALL data)
reinstall SteamOS - reinstalls the OS & attempts to leave the user data alone
Please keep in mind that user data loss might still occur even for the last option. The last option is meant to help when the OS is broken.
These are the steps from the video.
1. Download the recovery image from https://steamdeck-images.steamos.cloud/recovery/steamdeck-repair-latest.img.bz2
2. Download Rufus portable from https://rufus.ie/en/
3. Prepare the flash drive
4. Write the image to the flash drive using Rufus portable
5. Connect the flash drive to the Steam Deck, the dock and the PSU to the Steam Deck (the Steam Deck needs to be turned off)
6. Press volume up (+) and power to turn on the Steam Deck
7. Boot into recovery from the boot menu by selecting the EFI USB boot option
8. Reimage the Steam Deck to clean up everything & install everything from scratch
9. Once the process is done, shut down the Steam Deck
10. Disconnect the flash drive and start the Steam Deck as usual
The system will initiate the first time setup when started.
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