Chances are you want to share something with your Steam Deck on your local network – or from Steam Deck to your PC. From what I can see most of the people is concerned about file/folder or disk sharing between Steam Deck and Windows (after all Windows is biggest gaming platform so far). In this guide, I will cover simple file sharing between Steam Deck and Windows, and Steam Deck and NAS disk (QNAP in my case)

I won’t cover here sharing from/to Steam Deck and Linux – if there will be interest I will cover that also.

I’m not fan of various apps that transfer your data – most of them for some reason use internet – and getting them to be closed to your local network can be hard or impossible – that is the reason why I use file shares or external SSDs, MicroSDs, USBs…

Also, at this moment I will not cover creation of shared network folders on Steam Deck – it is a bit complex, and the scenario I covered here works in most use cases. However, it is something I will cover in the future if there is interest.

Please be careful with this – I cannot be responsible if you do any kind of damage – hardware, software, physical or mental

What this LAB consists of ?

This is lab setup and scenarios we will cover with details to look for…

Direct transfer via external SSD – Steam Deck <-> Windows PC

First – one external SSD drive of 1TB size – with it we will be testing file transfers directly from Steam Deck to Windows PC.

External SSD is Crucial X8 SSD of 1 TB and I will format it on Steam Deck to ext4 format with label SteamDSSD – so we can simulate our MicroSD card in Steam Deck that should also be in ext4

Since Windows doesn’t know how to read Linux partitions and file systems – we need help. There is now Windows Subsystem for Linux (which is a broad topic, we won’t go into here. Then, there was solution named ext2fsd which is not now maintained for years.

Which brings us to the last solution – I have no affiliate links with them, not am I sponsored by them – this is the easiest and cleanest solution I found that works and is updated on Windows – Linux File Systems for Windows by Paragon Software. They have 10 day trial, so you can test them yourself. If you decide to buy, at the time of writing price for home users is $20 – which is not much if this tool is useful to you.

So, we will play with that piece of software to see our Steam Deck external drive on Windows.

Network Transfer Steam Deck <-> Windows PC

We will test transfer of the files between Steam Deck and Windows PC – folder will be shared on Windows.

So, Windows PC part is important here – I cannot cover in this article every single problem you can account with Windows File Sharing and Network – I will give you general guidelines, but in case something doesn’t work for you, you will need to check and troubleshoot yourself.

Windows PC

Both your Steam Deck and Windows PC need to be inside same local network

We will also need IP address od the Windows PC which will share a folder with Steam Deck

To find IP address of our Windows PC – in search type cmd to start command prompt. In command prompt type

ipconfig

My Windows PC IP address is stated under IPv4 Address and is 192.168.1.192

If you are on DHCP this address may change in week, two, month… So, if at some point your connection from Steam Deck to Windows PC stops working -check IP address . If possible, give your Windows PC fixed IP address – but again, this is out of the scope of this guide, and DHCP address is also fine.

Also in Windows – Settings – Network & Internet – Wi-Fi menu – select your current Wi-Fi on Ethernet connection – click on it

Make sure that Network Profile is private

Then head to Control Panel – All Control Panel Items – Network and Sharing Center – Advanced sharing settings – make sure that under Private profile – Network discovery is turned on, and file and printer sharing is turned on. Save changes

Last part of the puzzle is in Control Panel – Windows Defender Firewall – Allow an app or frature through Windows Defender Firewall

Click on Change settings – and make sure File and Printer Sharing are allowed on Private profile.

That is it for now in Windows part.

Steam Deck

On Steam Deck we will only check if it resides inside same network. We need to be in Desktop Mode – click on Steam orb – select System – and under System select Konsole

In terminal type in

ip a

enp4 is my network card on Steam Deck (currently I have it connected to the dock) and under it I have IP address 192.168.1.218 – so that means I’m on same network as Windows PC is – good.

We now checked some prerequisites for Windows PC – Steam Deck scenario.

Network Transfer Steam Deck <-> NAS

NAS = Network Attached Storage (QNAP in this case, Synology is famous in this category)

We will test file transfer between Steam Deck and QNAP NAS – folder will be shared on NAS.

NAS should also be in same local network as Steam Deck – configuring NAS is topic for itself – but we will cover only basic thing here – find out what our IP address is

We will click on “hamburger” menu on top left corner of QNAP NAS and head to Network & Virtual Switch

IP address of the NAS is 192.168.1.10

So, all is good, we can start with our scenarios.

Copying Files/Folders from Steam Deck to PC and vice versa via external SSD or MicroSD

Ok, let’s test our first scenario – External SSD is in Steam Deck and I will create folder and file in it. This exact same thing will work with the MicroSD you have in your Steam Deck.

I created folder named WinTransferTest and inside it file named HelloWindows.txt in which you can see what I wrote. We will now dismount disk (be sure to dismount it properly!!) and attach it to Windows PC.

Dismount procedure is to click on USB icon on system tray – select your external drive and press safely remove.

Ok, so far good news – Linux File Systems for Windows mount SSD and can see that it is ext4 and GPT – we mounted it in Read/Write Mode.

Let’s check File Explorer – our external Steam Deck drive can also be seen here

Folder and File is accessible. So, far great.

I will now create second txt file in the WinTransferTest folder – named HelloSteamDeck.txt, write something to it, unmount disk from Windows and check if we can access it on Steam Deck.

You need to Unmount your external drive and safely remove it. Be sure to do that, because data can get corrupted if it isn’t done! After you unmount External SSD, be sure to Eject it from Windows!

We are able to open on Steam Deck file we created on Windows, this is great!

So, this method works, and is easy and quick to setup – I can recommend it.

Let’s now try our luck with network methods

Network Transfer Steam Deck <-> Windows PC

This is also very convenient if it works. But once you get a hang of network sharing, it will be great and useful.

We went through network and file sharing setup in above section. Let’s now create shared folder on Windows and test it on Steam Deck

On Windows in root of C drive I created folder named DeckWinShare – right click on it and select properties

On Sharing tab click on Advanced Sharing

Select Share this folder and click on Permissions

Remove everyone and add your Windows User and grant him Full Allow rights (my username is DeckGuy) click Apply – OK twice to close sharing dialogs BUT stay on Properties screen!!!

Go to Security tab and click on Edit

Again ,add your user, give him full rights and click Apply | OK and after that close DeckWinShare folder Properties

Now, to test this, in File Explorer in top text bar enter \\localhost – you should see your share. We see our share on the local machine – good. Let’s head to Steam Deck.

Now, that Windows IP address we found and wrote down at the beginning of this text, we need it now. We will enter in the texrt bar on Steam Deck following

smb://192.168.1.192

That is IP address of our Windows machine, and if everything is ok, we should be able to login and see our network share.

We are asked for authentication – enter your Windows username and password here. If you wish select Remember password – so you don’t have to repeat this – OK

It works!! We see our shared folder – you can create shortcuts to these folders on your Steam Deck just by pressing and dragging them to the left side on the Places bar of File Manager in Steam Deck.

Inside we will create new file and save it, and have a look if it is in our Windows folder

It does, great – so we have one network method that works for us!!!

Network Share Steam Deck <-> QNAP NAS

This will be quick one, and I won’t cover every step of NAS setup – let’s quickly create shared folder and test it on Steam Deck

I will start FileStation 5 select my Volume and click on folder with plus sign and select Shared Folder

I will create Folder Named NasToSteamDeck and give my user DeckGuy RW (Read/Write) rights.

In the end I will click on Create

Ok, let’s now test from Steam Deck – IP address to which we need to connect is 192.168.1.10

Let’s do that

Again, same procedure as with Windows, only now we are connecting to different IP address – address of our NAS

Again, success, you will be asked for credentials when you try to access folder.

We created again one little file to check on NAS

It can be seen and opened on NAS!!!

Ok, we got all three methods working, and I have to say, all three methods work nice from the beginning in my case.

With this we can easily manipulate with files on our Steam Deck – we can also use this method as base for replication or backup of our files/folders from Steam Deck.