Create a Steam Deck Debian rescue image

Following the installation of Debian 12 on the Steam Deck, we are now going to backup the SD Card content into a rescue image : the idea is to be able to recover and duplicate the whole running system easily without having to re-install again if needs be.

There are at least two ways to achieve this :

  • using the dd tool from the command line,
  • relying on gnome-disk-utility GUI to create a disk image.

Using dd command line tool to create a disk image

Since I am making an image of an SD Card mounted at /dev/mmcblk0 and wish to create an image named "steamdeck-debian-repair-20240818.iso", the command line I am using for this purpose is the following:

$ sudo dd status=progress if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=./steamdeck-debian-repair-20240818.iso bs=1M
$ sync

Executing this as root with sudo allows us to read from mmcblk0 device indeed and create an iso from its content.

Conversely, restoring such an image shall be a matter of:

$ sudo dd status=progress if=./steamdeck-debian-repair-20240818.iso of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
$ sync

Using gnome-disk-utility GUI to create a disk image

As an alternative, if you are using the GNOME desktop environment, you may as well rely on gnome-disk-utility (simply called "Disks" on the desktop) to the same extent:

Creating Steam Deck rescue image - Create disk image

Choose "Create Disk Image" from the menu...

Creating Steam Deck rescue image - Provide image name

Name your image accordingly...

Creating Steam Deck rescue image - Status progress

And wait for the process to complete.


Once you have your image file, restoring from it is as simple as double-clicking on the file to launch "Disks":

Creating Steam Deck rescue image - Restoring disk image

In my experience, creating a backup image of the 64GB SD Card takes around 12 minutes with both methods.

You now have the choice either way.

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