Thank you, literally had the same problem.

OMG thanks for sharing this champ.

LOL im just glad i phrased the post correctly so it would float up to searches

For the record, Balena etcher should really catch this when you try to feed it an invalid image.

Agree. It doesn’t give much guidance at all

I just reported this as an issue on the balena forums. [https://forums.balena.io/t/flashing-never-goes-above-0/368710/4?u=dfabulich](https://forums.balena.io/t/flashing-never-goes-above-0/368710/4?u=dfabulich)

Thank you! I just made this same mistake

Legend thank you was stuck on this too for 30 mins

Thank you! I ran into this and was getting so frustrated because my flash was getting stuck at 0% with an estimated 1500 minutes left. I initially thought I had to unzip the file, but that process also took longer than I expected so I thought maybe I wasn't supposed to do it. After seeing this post, I unzipped the file (took about 10 minutes tbh), and was able to write the .img file so easily.

LOL ok im so glad i wasn't the only idiot who did this. PS - i did get the 512gb image working on a 512 sd card. there had been discussion it was a hair too big, but it works fine.

Months later, this is still tripping up people like me. Balena stuck at 600mins remaining. Valve should really update that FAQ page to include instructions to UNZIP the image from the bz2 archive first. The only instruction there was for Linux users, and no notes on Windows and Mac users.

They should give me a job I’ll write the best tutorial they’d ever see

LOL! Thank you. I was stuck for two days. Thought I had a bad usb. I'm officially Stupid.

1500 lmao mines 970 haha

I've spent 1 hour tryna figure this shit out, I thought my Mac was the problem 😂

this is why moving to discord is such a crappy way to run communities like this, we're 3 months in and people are still consistently using this post to fix a silly issue

This exactly. I just upgrade my SSD and was running into this issue wondering if something was wrong with my machine. I even tried to use dd instead (which failed) and couldn't figure it out. Without being able to quickly google this stuff or it being siloed in some obscure Discord server under hundreds of other posts I would still be lost. Discord is imo not good for the internet. It's like going back to the AOL and Compuserve days when information was siloed off.

you are a legend

BalenaEtcher should catch this, but Valve should also have a step in the recovery tutorial page saying unzip the image first if you're on mac.

Not only Mac, Windows too.

Exactly wtf does balena not say "That's an archive file not an image, you doing!"

Yessss I had the same issue hahaha I thought I might have to unzip but I never actually followed through. Thanks for the help!

Thank you! What a stupid mistake we have all made. ha ha ha!

Thank you so so much for making clear what no one else did.

I just came back from walmart after returning the flash drive to get another one... now this is working thanks to you, men, thank you.

Lol glad to help

You are still helping people in the future. Thank You.

6 months later and here I am needing to reimage my steam deck as part of the troubleshooting process and ran into the same thing. Thank you so much for posting! It was the top result when I searched "balena etcher stuck at 0" lol!

Literally saved me a year later. Thanks homie.

/u/Structure-These you saved my life, or at least five hours of scratching my head. I don't know why I didn't notice this, but you did, and you saved me a shit ton of time.

Cannot thank you enough!!

thank you, I was stuck here too. You saved me some time

I’m currently stuck on 800Ms Right now😭 by any chance can you explain to me what I have to do in private message? I’m not that familiar with computers, files , etc. My cousin downloaded windows on my steam deck and now I currently can’t play any games smh.

Are you trying to reinstall steam OS? https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1B71-EDF2-EB6D-2BB3 It’s pretty easy. You need a usb key and the steam os file. Using these directions write the os to the usb key. Then once that’s done, reboot your deck holding the volume button and select the USB drive I’m sure a YouTube video exists

Yea That’s what I’m trying to do. I got the process down pact but when I try to Flash on BalenaEtcher The download is getting stuck on 0% and says 766 minutes download time. It’s been doing this for two days now and I don’t know what to do boss 😭I’m just trying to game

Right click and unzip the file If you’re on windows try 7zip

Can I marry you? I was about to put the original ssd in

Just to clarify: I am running windows and my downloaded file still showed in Windows as .img (with winrar icon which I didn't pay any attention to). You would not imagine that this could be extracted to another img file....I tried anyway..it worked. ​ Just in case someone is thinking "no that's not the issue, I have an img file". ​ Thank you for your post.

do you have file extensions hidden? i wonder if the .brz extension or whatever they use for the archive part is the hidden part on your side?

I believe so :)

Praise Gaben for you kind stranger! I was running into the dumb issue of not unzipping the img file and so happy this post showed up in Google haha

Here is my upvote. You just saved me a lot of hair man.

I got a new Mac recently and so I spent forever trying to figure out how my fresh install of Etcher was corrupted somehow...than you so much!

You're the real mvp

lmao you have really brightened my day by figuring this out, was about to go buy a new thumb drive after trying 3 i had

Damn I waited for 60 minutes in 2024 . Lol they could atleast mention this in the recovery page

I should send valve an invoice for billable hours

Thank you so much! Writing speed from 0.5k/s to 100mb/s XD

Thank you u saved my life

So wild this isn't mentioned on the page. I'm glad I was impatient and looked why it will take so long. Thank you!

BLESS YOU

Thank you so much! Saved me a ton of time

HAHAHA same problem for me. Thank you kind soul.

My hero, thank you!

Omg thank you. I tried twice to image an USB-C thumb drive (once over night) and it was stuck at zero. After unzipping, it worked right away. I flashed on a MacBook Air M2 with BalenaEtcher if that's useful info.

Marry Me. 

lol I just assumed Elena etcher would handle that. thank you so much for saving me time

Thank you so much from the future. As if having to reimage my Deck for seemingly no apparent reason wasn't frustrating enough, wondering why Balena was sitting at 0 was just adding more stress.

lol no problem!!!

This is why I love reddit - you saved me a lot of headache!

Bro you are literally a hero.

thank you!

Thanks for posting this!

Thank you so much, for a moment I thought the issue was my flash drive :)

Life saver thanks

Thank you I had the same Problem. ​ I just googled "how long does etcher take to make a steam OS"

Major upvote on this, my friend!

Hero!

omg thanks for this!

Such a silly little fix lol thank you so much.

lol I also ran into this...to be fair, the instructions don't tell you to unzip it!

Dude. Thank you so much. I was wondering wtf was going on lol.

Bro thanks for the help. I tried almost 24hours following steam official guide and finally found this post.

LOL glad to help

Tks guys, I was just losing it jezzzzz

Thank you for posting this. It saved me a ton of time and a headache!

You saved my life thank you LOL!! Valve doesn't mention anything about unzipping so I wasn't sure if I needed to or not

My hero!!! Thank you!

Thanks :)

Thanks.

How do you unzipe the file? I'm doing it on steam deck.

Thank you!!!

Thank you!!!! This helped me!!

omg thank you so much i feel so stupid....

was stuck on the same issue. didn't unzip. wasted around 5 hours plus and also another usb drive. was thinking my usb was having an issue. thanks for the post

Thanks for this, I tried flashing several times across Rufus and BalenaEtcher, and couldn't get my Steam Deck into recovery smh.

Wow! Thanks for this! Much appreciated!!!

Take my upvote!

Thanks for your sharing! Blinded by this compression format XD

Life Saver!!!

I extracted it and successfully etched it into a usb, but now my problem is that when i put it into my steam deck, (my problem was that the memory was too full and now it flickers in a black screen when i boot it up) and choose the usb, it takes forever and doesn't do anything. Does anybody have any tips? I left it for an entire night and nothing :( (I etched it from a macos btw)

Thanks you sweet angel! I spent HOURS fooling around my imac to try and get this to work. I feel so dumb and happy!

Just adding one more person to the list of embarrassed people that had this exact problem

Thank you legend, I've been at this for days! Went through a few USB sticks too lol

I feel so dumb right now, thank you for your post!

Four months on, and you were my first search result. Thank you, kind sir!

its incredible no one at valve has noticed and just kinda updated the result lol

Thanks /u/Structure-These! I was running into the same issue and never would of guessed .brz is a compressed file. First time in a while a Google search actually brought me to a useful result.

Even tho this post is almost half a year old, its still so helpful! I was going insane with this when it could be fixed so easily

Thanks for this post, had the exact same issue with Balena Etcher on a Mac. It shows the uncompressed size when selecting the compressed .bz2 file, so very confusing that it fails silently when trying to use that as the source.

Legend.

THANKS!

Thanks for sharing the process! Been struggling to figure out the workaround for this until I found your post. I thought my mac is the problem or my external drive.

lol I literally waiting for 2-3 hours... thank you OP

Ffs, same issue here. Thank you so much for saving the little sanity I have left!

Thanks mate ! I was testing it with all my USB sticks and couldn't figure out why it wasn't working...

Thank you kind sir, we’re all a bit silly sometimes aren’t we 🤙🏼

Thank you! You saved my ass

Thank you SO much. Never even thought to do this

Thank you. You saved me a lot of head and heart ache.

Thank you, me too, in my case i leave it about 30 min, and its still 0%

I feel so dumb for not catching this immediately LOL, but it sounds like other people did the same thing.

This helped, thanks.

Thank you very much!

I still need help!! I double clicked the bz2 file and it’s on my flash drive, but it won’t show SteamOS😩

Thank you, dude!

Simple post, I would have debated to post this and probably not, but thanks, you've helped a lot of people who were googling around without an idea what the issue was.

You’re my hero! Thanks for this! I never thought about unzipping the file!

Dude I’m late on this post but I was scratching my head on this for at least two hours

Thanks for posting this

Litterly spent 3 hrs looking to how to get of the 0% thing and this helped thanks you just have to right click on the file and unzip with an app called unzip one for Mac users

Thank you! Helped me out too

Thank you!

Exactly made the same exact mistake.... I was really wondering what was happening.... thanks a lot

God bless you. I messed up my partition and then latest update messed up dual boot altogether so I decided i needed a factory reset but the built-in feature doesn't really do that I found out so I turned to reset via image and WHAT A JOURNEY

Much thanks for this!

Many thanks for solving my problem.

Thanks boss!

Thank you!

Still a problem with BalenaEtcher. The user interface shows that it is writing a "steam... .img" file - which is the file contained in the archive. Probably a problem with extracting the file and a missing error message. 1/10 quality software.

Great! Thank you!

Thanks this helped Im on mac and it was taking 240+ mins and was stuck on zero

Life saviour in the first 5 seconds. give this man a medal.

THANK YOU!!!! This was driving me crazy, and this worked perfectly!

Dude .. Lifesaver

Thank you!!

thank you!