Upgraded my 64GB Steam Deck to 1TB SSD! Here's How to Do it

I got myself a cheapo 1TB SSD thanks to a thread on Redflagdeals!
The packaging has Intel’s name on it so it’s probably not that cheapo 😂
Here’s the link to the forum discussion
https://forums.redflagdeals.com/direct-dial-1tb-30mm-ssd-steam-deck-132-2567704/
I paid $141CAD shipped. That’s a pretty good price!
Make sure the SSD you’re getting is M.2 2230 (30mm) and make sure you backup anything you need from your old drive first!

You also need to prepare a USB bootup drive using Steam’s instructions. Link’s here
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1b71-edf2-eb6d-2bb3

My drive must be ancient because it took forever to create the image and another forever to bootup the Steam Deck. The whole hardware installation thing is straight forward and did not take too long. But the bootups and reinstalling SteamOS took hours.

The first couple things I installed were Decky Loader and a bunch of plugins (CSS loader, vibrantDeck, etc)
https://github.com/SteamDeckHomebrew/decky-loader

You can immediately tell the difference with or without vibrantDeck on. I also tried out CryoByte33’s Utilities as per other’s recommendations. I’m not sure if it does anything as I didn’t do AB testing. Check it out here
https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities

GOG runs perfectly with my Cyberpunk cloud saves syncing properly. But Epic Games was acting weird and wouldn’t let me install games until I disabled Steam’s In-Game Overlay. I also installed EA App but need to run the installer instead of the launcher each time I want to launch the app.
Now that I have 1TB SSD plus 1TB SD card I have all the space I need for all my games and most importantly the space for all the shader caches ! 😂

Music used:
BeeyornandRaysd – Noir Et Blanc Vie