Thanks to another poster here, it came to light that a new Steam Recovery OS image is available for OS 3.5.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1B71-EDF2-EB6D-2BB3
For those uninitiated, this image can be burned to a recovery USB or microSD card and used to rescue your Deck in the case of misfortune or idiocy (yes, people actually DO try to delete the .local folder).
Everyone should have a recovery media in their toolbox and they should have it BEFORE misfortune hits - not scrambling to make/get one after the fact. Especially if you don’t have a Windows PC on ready hot standby.
While we’re talking about this … don’t burn the image to a device and tuck it away without testing it first. Based on this sub, 8 out of 10 people are using devices that do NOT show up in the Steam boot menu. One individual had to go through 5 different USB drives to get one that “worked”. Can’t know for sure unless you test it. Just make sure you can boot the device up to the desktop - then shutdown, take it out and put it away for that proverbial rainy day.
My recommendation has been - and shall continue to be - buying a dedicated, known working flash drive for this purpose. This is what I use (I have five of them and they all work):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EZ0X3L8/?th=1
Sandisk 64GB - $11 - Amazon Prime - Sold and Shipped by Amazon. You could get the smaller one, but the price is the same, so might as well go for the bigger one.
For those of you tech heads that have a IODD ST400, you can actually use it for Steam Deck recovery - as outlined in my video here:
Please spare me the Ventoy rhetoric, please. I love this solution - and it can be used for so much.
I warn you with peace and love that if you have one of these and you already set it up for Steam Recovery - there is no way (no easy way anyway) to update the recovery partitions - I had to write the Steam Recovery image over top and rebuild my exFat partition of tools (but like a good technophile - I keep a backup - so no big deal).
Your ability to recover from catastrophe is directly proportionate to your efforts in readiness. :)
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It’s funny that this recovery image is based on 3.5.6 which isn’t even out yet on the stable channel. Whoops.
At least it has finally been updated!! Now to check to see if any custom scripts broke.
Funny how that works isn’t it?
I’m assuming 3.5.6 is what the OLED shipped with. So they had to make the recovery image in parity.
I wonder if Ventoy will ever end up supporting SteamOS. Linux is a supported OS, so I wonder if it’s possible to retool it or if it’s just straight up hard limited.
Obviously does not work right now, but I would be curious if it’s actually limited by the Steam Deck itself or if it’s just as “simple” as getting a version out that supports the Deck.
I keep one large flash drive for this purpose and have been hopeful for a while that it’d get support as Steam Deck popularity grows.
It’s always good to keep some relevant OS recovery tools around, especially if you are the person everyone goes to for fixing their stuff.
“misfortune or idiocy” 90% of the time the latter.
Valve has instructions on creating an image on USB for OSX as well.
Hm, I would have assumed booting from the micro SD would work. Does it not?
they work once, and then auto format themselves
Been without a PC for 2 years (Really hoping to purchase a 512GB SD OLED along with all the necessary accessories before Black Friday), what is the difference between a Recovery OS image and an installation image (and do we need separate flash drives or can both be put on the same drive)?
Tip: A lot of USB-A to USB-C adapters either can’t be used for booting from an external USB-A drive, or (for bus-powered devices) they don’t supply enough power to the USB drive, or they’re just unable to maintain a stable connection.
I’ve always had excellent experiences with the Apple USB adapters. They’re more expensive and larger than the chinese no-names on Amazon but it’s definitely worth it IMO.
Alternatively you can get the same thing from Chinese yes-name on Amazon, and get it for half the price without paying Apple tax.
Ironically I have the exact usb in your link, but I got mine for $8. Used it when I swapped out my 64gb hard drive and figured I’d hang onto it just in case lol. Always better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it
This post seems like a weird pseudo-advertisement for that multiboot selector.
time to update my Ventoy usbC drive.
Nicely done.
Can you use the recovery image on a different deck? Like going from an LCD deck to the OLED?
I believe for the OLED you will want to use the 3.5.x available now - not the 3.4 one that was out there before.
But the 3.5.x one should effectively work for BOTH units.
I have an IODD 2531. I like your out-of-the-box idea of writing the Steam Deck Recovery Image to the device and making a separate partition to store other bootable images in. But for me, that kinda defeats the purpose of the device if I write a recovery image to it and do that workaround to make everything else work again.
Granted, the Steam Deck Recovery Image may not change all that often, but still… Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, it is a goober work around - but the base image doesn’t change often, fortunately.
Interestingly, Valve actually has separate recovery images in zip archives next to the bz2 ones. Inside the zip archives are regular
.imgrecovery images. Thanks to your tip, I was able to get it to boot on my IODD 2531 simply by renaming.imgto.imaand selecting it as the boot image on my device. SteamOS Recovery boots on my Deck!I don’t know why, but Valve doesn’t restrict browsing their SteamOS Recovery repository. And that’s how I found out about the
.ziparchives. Interesting, huh?Give it a shot on your IODD ST400. You probably don’t have to use that ‘goober’ workaround anymore. :)
Do this. Something bugged on my Steamdeck two day before my 2nd kid was born and I had to scramble reimaging my Deck in time!
I now use Restic to regularly back up my home partition to a fast USB C SSD so I can do a full restoration of all my custom games if needed.
While we’re talking about this … don’t burn the image to a device and tuck it away without testing it first. Based on this sub, 8 out of 10 people are using devices that do NOT show up in the Steam boot menu.
I 100% guarantee that’s because they didn’t partition with GPT. If a drive has already been partitioned, chances are the tooling (Rufus, Etcher, etc) won’t change the partition type. This is user error, nothing to do with hardware.
Anyone have problems with this new recovery image? Like forever stuck in boot logo? I’m booting from microsd card, so no OTG involved.
I tested both of my newly created writes and both tested fine. I did notice it does take a little bit longer at the boot logo than the version 3.4 the preceded it.
Well, I have no luck with USB/OTG, MicroSD, bz2, uncompressed img image… Stuck at black screen and mouse cursor (past boot logo) for 20 mins with no result.
Previous recovery image (steamdeck-recovery-4.img.bz2) boots just fine.