Instead of spending $500 on a new Deck I’m spending $200 on upgrades to my current Deck. 1TB SSD, 1TB microSD, Hall effect thumbsticks, etc.

You would be 99% fine just factory resetting the device.

But….

The way factory resets work is by flagging all your data as over-writable. If you had any sensitive information on your Deck, that data would still be there and still be recoverable if someone knew what they were doing. Best practice when selling/trading in any device is to zero out the drive (overwrite every bit with a ‘0’) then reinstall the OS.

Most likely not necessary for a Steam Deck but it’s important to know how data storage works!