One of the major advantages of Steam Deck and other handheld gaming PCs is that their storage can be easily upgraded. With the availability of the M.2 2230 form factor from major SSD brands, it is now possible to upgrade the storage of your Steam Deck quickly and affordably. However, the major issue is how to transfer everything from the old drive to the new one and what to do with the old SSD. Even the 256GB or 512GB version of the old SSD is a healthy amount of extra storage that feels like a waste to just stick in a drawer and forget about it.
DockCase Pocket: The Solution
This is where the DockCase Pocket comes in. It is an M.2 external enclosure that allows you to plug your new drive into the USB Type-C port on your Steam Deck to clone your existing drive. The DockCase Pocket offers a bespoke design built specifically for the diminutive 2230 SSD. It can house drives up to 2TB and comes with a display that provides a live readout of your drive’s performance and the temperature at which it is operating.
The DockCase Pocket also offers power loss protection (PLP) support. Since you are running a straight SSD inside the enclosure, it can be somewhat sensitive to a sudden loss of power, such as when you yank the USB cable straight out. By providing this PLP support, the DockCase gives your drive three seconds to make its data secure before the power finally gives out. It has a small capacitor inside the device that charges up the moment you plug it into a device, and you can see the progress of the short charge process on the readout itself.
Performance and Cost
The DockCase Pocket ships with a 10Gbps Type-C cable that allows you to run at its peak of a theoretical 1024MB/s. In a test with the 512GB SSD from the top-end Steam Deck, it delivered a read write performance of 900MB/s and 874MB/s respectively from synthetic benchmarks. Using a 30GB folder of mixed file types to simulate the transfer of a Steam game folder, a peak transfer rate of 755MB/s was seen, and the whole process took 113 seconds to complete.
The DockCase Pocket is on Kickstarter with a $69 early bird price tag, but with an MSRP of $109, it is a pricey enclosure. Unless you want the live readout or the security of knowing you have power loss protection in place, it may not be worth the extra cost over a far cheaper dumb enclosure. The dumb enclosure produces almost identical benchmark figures and is just 7 seconds slower in the file transfer and a bit behind in the 3DMark Storage test, but it still makes for a decent cheaper option for cloning and continued use of your old Deck SSD.
The DockCase Pocket is an excellent solution for those who want to upgrade their Steam Deck’s storage and transfer everything from the old drive to the new one. Its bespoke design, power loss protection support, and live readout make it an attractive option, but the high cost may not be worth it for everyone.
Leave a Reply