this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Steam Deck
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I wouldn't say it's safer since it will significantly more quickly kill the SD card itself, but from a year of using Windows and SteamOS, the bootloader break can be solved pretty easily since there's an easy script on SteamOS to fix it and you can always disable Windows updates if they are annoying. Ultimately a matter of preference on what's preferred though, but just good to know the pros and cons of each option!
Nicer microSD cards now claim to have comparable or better numbers of write cycles compared with average SSDs. Samsung claims their nicer cards have 100,000 writes per sector for example, while many SSDs seem to report having 40,000-100,000.
Unless I'm misunderstanding something it seems like running windows on a microSD should be fine. You can always go with a cheaper card too if you want low risk.
In cases like those, I believe you'd be correct that they wouldn't be too bad on difference, but from my understanding that's not the norm for SD cards so for most people it'll be a big risk. But that's good pointing it out though, especially for anybody with an SD card of that power, thanks for mentioning that part!
My understanding is many SD cards have sub-optimal wear leveling compared with SSDs so there may be more to it than just writes per sector.
It's certainly possible their write distribution isn't as good as SSD's. Honestly it feels like there should be a bigger tradeoff I'm not seeing in my reading here, so I'm kinda hoping someone knowledgeable on the subject will jump in and confirm or deny.
But ultimately I don't think that using a microSD for running windows is necessarily a terrible idea, sounds like it could work out ok.