I’ve got an RMA on my Deck over a sticky button issue, so I ordered a 1TB external drive online to back it up before wiping and sending it off.

What’s the bare minimum you would recommend I back up if I just want to preserve my desktop settings, apps, and some non-steam game content (since much of that is already tied to my account)?

  1. Is it just a matter of copying folders over in desktop mode or is there an official (or recommended) backup tool I should use?
  2. Would Syncthing, which I use to transfer files normally, be a reliable method to use my Mac as a potential backup location?

Thank you for any advice.

  • @[email protected]
    17•10 months ago

    By and large, I don’t. The vast majority of the data on there is already backed up to the Steam servers.

    As for stuff like emulator saves: I set up a nextcloud on my NAS that will synchronize the saves between my deck and my desktop.

    But if you are just doing bulk backup? rsync is your friend. Works on every modern OS and is rather trivial overhead wise.

  • @PlasticExistenceEnglish
    6•10 months ago

    I would setup the external drive with Clonezilla and take a drive image of the internal Steam Deck drive. That will preserve everything and it will restore everything once you get the Deck back from Valve. I did a Clonezilla image when I upgraded my internal drive, and it worked out great.

    • EggyheadOP
      6•10 months ago

      I am looking at Clonezilla. I’m a little worried because 1) I do not have a keyboard, and 2) there’s a glitch on my system that requires me to log into Steam every time I restart the system or switch between desktop and gaming mode. It started when I installed Daggerfall Unity using a tutorial that instructed me to add a shortcut link to an otherwise hidden steam folder to my home folder and call it “steam”, which apparently broke something, and I don’t think there’s any way to fix it short of a system restore. I don’t know if Clonezilla would end up preserving that glitch, but I’d rather it not.

      • @PlasticExistenceEnglish
        3•10 months ago

        Doesn’t sound like Clonezilla would be a great option then. The keyboard is necessary for that as it will be how you navigate menus and input your clone image name.

        You can use the Steam Link App from your computer to help manage desktop work, assuming it works on Mac. It would allow you to have a keyboard to use on it remotely.

        What I think you’ll really want to do is to grab a copy of your user’s home folder, which IIRC will also have all your Steam Library games. Once you get your external drive, this should be easy enough.

      • @smort
        1•10 months ago

        Yeah sounds like you want to do a system restore anyway. If you have individual files you need to save off the deck, do that. Just not system files

  • @JoeKrogan
    4•10 months ago

    I only back up emudeck saves. The rest is cloud saves or a game that I’m not bothered to play again becauseit wasn’t fun or they didn’t implement could saves.

  • Björn Tantau
    1•10 months ago

    Settings of apps installed via Discover are stored in /home/deck/.var/app. Settings of the desktop and pre-installed apps including Steam are stored in /home/deck/.config and /home/deck/.local/share.

    For backing up I wouldn’t bother much with differentiating between stuff I want to keep and stuff I don’t. I’d back up everything in my home folder with sudo rsync -avP /home/deck /WhateverTheLocationOfTheDriveIs. Let the Deck format the drive for you and then this command will copy the whole deck folder over and preserve all permissions. You can start it over if you get interrupted for some reason and it will pick up where it left of.

    I’d only worry about what to copy back when setting everything back up again. But I probably would just start everything from scratch to get rid of garbage.