Why Your Old SD Card Won't Work With the Switch 2

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The Switch 2 comes with 256GB of internal storage, a generous amount compared to its predecessor, which started at only 32GB. However, if you want more storage so you can load some bigger games, you might've noticed the Switch 2 won't accept your old SD cards. The new console only uses SD Express cards.

That means if you have data from an older Switch on an SD card, you won't be able to just plug it into the Switch 2 and get playing. Doing so will give you an error like the one above. Instead, if you want to migrate data on your old card to your new console, your best bet is to follow the data transfer process for setting up your new Switch 2.

Unfortunately, this also means you'll need a new SD Express card for the Switch 2. If you're not familiar with this particular type of card or why it matters, let's break it down.

What are SD Express cards?

At a glance, SD Express cards might look identical to any other microSD card you've seen before, but they have very different capabilities. Typical microSD cards have a pretty wide range of speeds, and classifying them can be complicated. But the short version is that while extremely fast SD cards often have read/write speeds as high as 300MB/s, they are usually much lower. For example, the Nintendo-branded micro SD card I used in my Switch OLED only reads at speeds around 90MB/s.

SD Express cards—marked by an EX on the card—on the other hand, use PCIe and NVMe interfaces similar to the kind that you see on solid state hard drives. That means they can theoretically reach speeds up to 985MB/s, and in practice, they get pretty darn close. The Lexar Play PRO card, for example, reads at up to 900MB/s speeds, and can write at 600MB/s. That extra speed can come at a higher cost, with 256GB microSD Express cards starting around $60.

Faster speeds provide two main benefits: quicker downloads, and shorter load times. Downloading a new game to your console can involve any number of bottlenecks, from your internet speed, to the load on download servers, and, of course, your storage's speed. Using faster SD cards means it can potentially take less time to download a new game.

Once the game is downloaded, though, load times are the real winner. If you regularly sit through every loading screen tip twice, you know that waiting for your game to load data after a fast travel or entering a new map is a huge annoyance. For games saved to your SD card, faster speeds means less time waiting.

Why does the Switch 2 need SD Express cards?

It might be tempting to ask why Nintendo is forcing this upgrade, but put it into context with other consoles, it's frankly a surprise that it's taken this long. For the Xbox Series X, for example, dedicated storage cards are little more than proprietary dress up on top of a regular SSD. For the PS5? You can literally just slot in an actual M.2 SSD.

Even on comparable handheld platforms like the Steam Deck, the standard for expanding storage has been to use internal SSD expansions, which often require complex DIY upgrades. Doable for the average tech-savvy Lifehacker reader, sure, but perhaps a too-high demand for the general population.

SD Express cards are, at least for now, probably the best compromise between the increasingly insufficient speeds of traditional microSD cards, and committing to complex SSD storage options. And even SD Express cards could feel too slow in a few years: In speed comparisons, they're already a bit slower than the Switch 2's internal storage (though, surprisingly, faster than official cartridges).

Which SD Express cards should you get?

ARight now, there are only so many options for SD Express cards on the market, and the highest capacities come with pretty eye-watering price tags. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that if you just dropped $500 on a Switch 2 bundle, you're probably not super hyped to drop $220 on a 1TB SD Express card. Fortunately, there are a few good options at more reasonable price points.

• The 256GB Lexar Play PRO microSD Express card starts at $60 and is one of the most affordable options around. It cites a 900MB/s read and 600MB/s write speed, which is among the fastest I've seen so far. Lexar also offers 512GB and 1TB variants, though they're more expensive and sometimes out of stock.

• The 256GB SanDisk microSD Express card starts around $68, and boasts 880MB/s read speeds, and 650MB/s write speeds. In practice, that's probably not going to feel too different from the Lexar card. It's a touch more expensive, but it might be easier to find in stock.

• The Nintendo-branded Samsung microSD Express card comes with Nintendo's official seal of approval, but no listed speeds. It's still likely to be faster than typical SD cards, but without specs, we can't say how much faster. If Nintendo's official seal of approval is reassuring, though, this one also starts at $60.

Over time, there are likely to be more options, and prices for SD Express cards will (hopefully) fall. For now, it's more expensive to add storage to your new Switch 2 than it was for the old model. But at least that storage will be much faster. And with 256GB already built-in, you might not even need it.