this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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Steam Hardware

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Just a quick question that someone here may know: I have a Steam Machine coming and I'm looking to swap the SSD in my Steam Deck (2 TB) with the SSD in the Steam Machine (512 GB). As far as I know, the SM comes with a 2230 SSD so it'll fit in the Steam Deck, but I'm curious if the install is different enough that I should backup and re-image the 2 TB drive before I put it in the Steam Machine or if I can just swap the two drives.

I'm assuming I have to re-image each drive with a SteamOS USB installer, but if I could just hotswap them it'd make life easier. Just not sure how much device-specific code is part of the install.

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[–] greyscale@lemmy.grey.ooo 10 points 3 hours ago

"Hot swapping" means doing it while the machine is running. You can't hot swap an NVME SSD. You gotta turn the computer off.

It would appear that theres a standoff for 2230 and maybe 2280 on the right, so you can just reuse your Steamdecks SSD.

There could be driver issues for the difrerent Hardware devices, most likely it will run just fine, but you may have performance impacts you later dont know where they are comming from. Reinstalling is the safe way, if you dont want to redownload all games, you can copy the steam games folder

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 50 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I do believe you can install one, but I don't think you could hotswap it. Keep it unpowered while doing stuff like that. Hotswapping means replacing the part while the machine is running.

[–] buffaloseven@piefed.ca 18 points 9 hours ago

Oh, haha yes, you’re right. I meant swap. Obviously power everything down.

[–] zewm@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

For what it’s worth, I recently upgraded my mobo, cpu and ram. I used all the parts from my old rig hot swapped. Hard drives, GPU, etc. I’m using Cachy Linux.

Booted up fine no problems. Didn’t have to reimage/format.

You could always just swap them and if it works it works. Otherwise nuke and pave.

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 hours ago

I can't imagine they would make separate images for each device, apart from steam frame for the different cpu architecture. It should work if its up to date.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 10 points 11 hours ago

I'd just try it out. If it fails you can still flash the installer to a USB stick or SD card.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 2 points 9 hours ago

Should work just fine without any work. Just plop it in.

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 4 points 11 hours ago

Pretty sure you can just flash a USB drive