If unsure, go with ext4.
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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EXT4 is your all-rounder. Unix feature complete and reliable. No actually big downsides that would make it insufficient for, well, anything.
BTRFS is your complex and feature rich option. All the modern file system features like copy-on-write, snapshots, subvolumes, deduplication. Good for putting an operating system or user files on. Stuff you might want to snapshot or sort into subvolumes, etc.
XFS has some neat features too, but it has one main focus, performance. The difference isn't massive since it's just a file system, but for the fastest transfers speeds, with the smallest CPU impact, nothing beats XFS afaik. It's also fully unix feature complete, so it has no trouble with symlinks, hardlinks, permissions, etc. EXT4 can theoretically be faster if handling a ton of tiny files, but game files are usually above that threshold.
I don't think there is any reason not to just use ext4 for that
On BTRFS you could use deduplication to make the prefixes take up approximately no extra space. But that requires you to run a deduplication program every once in a while.
Its compression feature can also save some space and decrease load times.
But the impact of this stuff isn't that big. Much easier to just go ext4 and be done.
I've been using EXT4 and XFS on external drives for a long time with no issues. Both are rock solid under linux and steam.
Ext4 will be the easiest probably. The deck supports BTRFS, but requires manual remounting after every steamOS update for some reason.
If you do want to use BTRFS, I'd look into Popsulfr's deck BTRFS project. I know it can auto configure microSD cards for BTRFS (and fix the previously mentioned mounting issue), as well as set up some of the other BTRFS benefits like automatic compression and deduplication. Deduplication especially can save you a lot of space.
BTRFS compression can also speed up load times when loading games from slower storage like a microSD, which is a nice benefit to go alongside the increased storage space.
Can confirm, I tried doing exfat for a Steam install on an external drive, and it just didn't work at all. Ext4 and btrfs both have simlinks (although simlinks in btrfs are kinda weird) and work with Steam and emulation. Ext4 is the tried and true stable filesystem, and btrfs supports more modern features. I've always prefered stability to bleeding edge, so I use ext4, but it really is up to personal preference and what you need.