How Can I Run Steam Deck SD Card Speed Test Efficiently [Step-by-Step Guide]

Updated by

Tracy King 

Written by

Sherly 

Updated on Jun 20, 2024

The speed of an SD card matters a lot for the Steam Deck. It greatly affects your gaming experience. However, how to test the SD card speed for Steam Deck? On this page, you can learn two ways to run Steam Deck SD Card Speed Test:

The Steam Deck uses a UHS-I interface, so Steam Deck can only handle 100MB/s on the read speed. Hence, knowing the speed of your SD card can make the best use of it. However, is it possible to test the SD card speed on the Steam Deck?

The answer is probably "No." Steam Deck has no built-in tools to test the speed of an SD card. But don't worry. This article can help with this issue. Now, let's dive into learning more details about running a Steam Deck SD card speed test. There are two ways in this guide, and the easier one is to use a professional third-party SD card benchmark app.

Read Also:

Read the table to get more details about the two ways:

Here is a link related to Steam speed; click it to learn more details.

How to Solve "Steam Takes Forever to Allocate Disk Space" Issue?

Meanwhile, this article will discuss the major causes of this problem and explain solutions in simple and easy steps to deal with such scenarios in the future.

Run Steam Deck SD Card Speed Test via EaseUS Partition Master - Easy & Detailed

EaseUS Partition Master is a free speed test utility and can help you test the peak speed and the real-time speed of your Steam Deck SD card. Let's briefly see its features from the list below:

Its clear interface makes it easy to use, so now, follow the guide below to test Steam Deck SD card speed. Make sure you have inserted the SD card into a Windows PC before you start.

Step 1. Launch EaseUS Partition Master. And click the download button to activate the "DiskMark" feature under the "Discovery" section.

Step 2. Click on the drop-down box to choose the target drive, test data, and block size.

Step 3. Once everything is configured, click "Start" to begin the disk test. Then, you can see the Sequential or Random read/write speed, I/O, and Delay data.

Let's learn more features of EaseUS Partition Master now. As a professional hard drive manager, its features are as follows:

• Run SD card speed test
• Test SSD read/write speed
• Run Micro SD card speed test
• Run external hard drive speed test
• Fix SSD slow write speed issue
• Check SSD health on Windows 10/11

To know the specific speed of your device and get better performance, download EaseUS Partition Master to help.

Run Steam Deck SD Card Speed Test via Task Manager - Limited Data

Task Manager is a utility built-in Windows and can also test the SD card speed for your Steam Deck. However, the data you get is real-time. Its limitation is that you can't get the peak speed. But if you want just to test the real-time speed of your SD card, follow the steps to try:

Further Reading: Install Windows on Steam Deck

Step 1. Connect your SD card to a Windows PC.

Step 2. Right-click the Windows icon and choose "Task Manager."

Step 3. Choose the "Performance" section and locate your SD card. Then, you can see the real-time speed of your SD card.

You can see that the data shown on the Task Manager window frequently fluctuate, so if you want to get a precise result, turn to EaseUS Partition Master.

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Conclusion

This article shows you in detail two methods on how to measure the speed of a Steam Deck SD card. Task Manager is a handy way to measure speed, but it has limitations. It cannot measure the extreme speed of a new SD card. Therefore, it is a smarter choice to choose a reliable three-party speed measurement tool. EaseUS Partition Master can not only test the speed of various storage devices but also report the health status of internal and external storage devices by checking SMART Status, which can effectively reduce data loss and the number of hard disk crashes.

Steam Deck SD Card Speed Test FAQs

There are still many other issues related to the Steam Deck SD card speed test, so I list some other questions here to help. Check the answers below:

1. How much speed can a Steam Deck SD card handle?

The SD card speed of the Steam Deck is limited by its interface. Steam Deck supports the UHS-1 interface, so the Steam Deck can only handle 100MB/s.

2. What is the best SD card for Steam Deck?

There are many types of SD cards that are compatible with Steam Deck, and they also provide all kinds of capacity options for you. Here is a list of the popular SD card for Steam Deck:

• Lexar PLAY 1TB MicroSDXC UHS-I Card
• Kingston Canvas Go Plus
• SanDisk Ultra MicroSD Card
• Samsung Pro Plus MicroSD Card
• SanDisk Extreme Pro MicroSD Card

3. What is the maximum SD card read speed for Steam Deck?

Steam Deck supports UHS-1 SD cards only. That is to say, it is limited to 100MB/S read speed. Therefore, your SD card doesn't need to run faster than 100MB/S.