Why do small updates of 299.5kb download size use up to 30.6GB in patching?

[Iron Chief]

Basically what the title says. Little updates move a lot of files around instead of just sliding in where they need to go. I don't really understand why it has to be this way.

I am not a developer so please forgive my ignorance. I see a lot of games doing this, and I do have an SSD for that reason so it's not a big deal to me.

But for those folks on HDDs it really has to hurt because shifting around 30.6GB on an HDD for every update is not fast at all. And that's especially painful when the updates are frequent.

Just my 2 cents.

[Imhotep]

The 30GB is the size of the expanded game that you downloaded.

The game itself compressed is like 11.6 gigs when you download it then it installs.

When the game downloads an update, it then has to go through the check of the installed data and ensure that everything is installed correctly, fully patched and ready to play. Aka, it digs through the 30gigs to ensure everything is where it needs to be and files are all good.

[damoniano]

I am on an SSD and this damn update system they are using (pushing out 5 hotfixes in a single day of less than 1 Mb each) is terrible. I love the game, but this needs to stop because the way steam handles files, if I close the game to go make some food for a little bit (or whatever reason someone needs to walk away from an un-pause-able game), then I am waiting 20 minutes for it to finish "Patching" these 300 kb updates. Playing on my laptop right now as I am away from home and I don't want to have to leave it open and running so I can just get in game when I am available right away, rather than wait for a tiny hotfix to finish its 20 minute patch session.
Overall, devs, please wait to release hotfixes for non-critical issues until you have more to send than 300 kbs that results in a 30.6 Gb patch.

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by damoniano:

I am on an SSD and this damn update system they are using (pushing out 5 hotfixes in a single day of less than 1 Mb each) is terrible. I love the game, but this needs to stop because the way steam handles files, if I close the game to go make some food for a little bit (or whatever reason someone needs to walk away from an un-pause-able game), then I am waiting 20 minutes for it to finish "Patching" these 300 kb updates. Playing on my laptop right now as I am away from home and I don't want to have to leave it open and running so I can just get in game when I am available right away, rather than wait for a tiny hotfix to finish its 20 minute patch session.
Overall, devs, please wait to release hotfixes for non-critical issues until you have more to send than 300 kbs that results in a 30.6 Gb patch.

IF you're waiting minutes for it to patch then you might want to ensure its installed on an SSD or you have the slowest SSD in the world.
"300 kbs that results in a 30.6 gb patch" Is incorrect. The game size installed on computer is 30 gigs expanded from the downloaded 11.6 gigs initially.

The 300 KB's gets scattered and placed in the correct spot and it has to ensure that all 30 gigs has the same data to be playable. Its a check. essentially kinda like a spell check.

[damoniano]

Originally posted by Imhotep:

Originally posted by damoniano:

I am on an SSD and this damn update system they are using (pushing out 5 hotfixes in a single day of less than 1 Mb each) is terrible. I love the game, but this needs to stop because the way steam handles files, if I close the game to go make some food for a little bit (or whatever reason someone needs to walk away from an un-pause-able game), then I am waiting 20 minutes for it to finish "Patching" these 300 kb updates. Playing on my laptop right now as I am away from home and I don't want to have to leave it open and running so I can just get in game when I am available right away, rather than wait for a tiny hotfix to finish its 20 minute patch session.
Overall, devs, please wait to release hotfixes for non-critical issues until you have more to send than 300 kbs that results in a 30.6 Gb patch.

IF you're waiting minutes for it to patch then you might want to ensure its installed on an SSD or you have the slowest SSD in the world.
"300 kbs that results in a 30.6 gb patch" Is incorrect. The game size installed on computer is 30 gigs expanded from the downloaded 11.6 gigs initially.

The 300 KB's gets scattered and placed in the correct spot and it has to ensure that all 30 gigs has the same data to be playable. Its a check. essentially kinda like a spell check.

Bruh we don't need to get technical you knew what I meant, 300 kbs download, 30.6 gb files to look over that is the "Patching process". I have a single SSD on this laptop and it works great. The problem lies in the way steam does things, it spends a couple minutes at several hundred MB/s speed, then spikes to 0, waits a while, then does it again. This is an issue I have always had with Steam on any PC I have patched games on. It is a Steam issue. I realize how the file patching system works, I didn't need a lecture on it that you already gave in your previous comment. I appreciate you trying to teach people who don't know how it works, but my simplifying of the explanation did not need to be jumped on with an "Actually that is incorrect", it does not come off as friendly or helpful when you do something like that.

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by damoniano:

Originally posted by Imhotep:

IF you're waiting minutes for it to patch then you might want to ensure its installed on an SSD or you have the slowest SSD in the world.
"300 kbs that results in a 30.6 gb patch" Is incorrect. The game size installed on computer is 30 gigs expanded from the downloaded 11.6 gigs initially.

The 300 KB's gets scattered and placed in the correct spot and it has to ensure that all 30 gigs has the same data to be playable. Its a check. essentially kinda like a spell check.

Bruh we don't need to get technical you knew what I meant, 300 kbs download, 30.6 gb files to look over that is the "Patching process". I have a single SSD on this laptop and it works great. The problem lies in the way steam does things, it spends a couple minutes at several hundred MB/s speed, then spikes to 0, waits a while, then does it again. This is an issue I have always had with Steam on any PC I have patched games on. It is a Steam issue. I realize how the file patching system works, I didn't need a lecture on it that you already gave in your previous comment. I appreciate you trying to teach people who don't know how it works, but my simplifying of the explanation did not need to be jumped on with an "Actually that is incorrect", it does not come off as friendly or helpful when you do something like that.

We do need the technical's actually. you should see the amount of posts that need explaining for the same thing you did thats done with almost every game moving forward.

Satisfactory, Ark, all blizzard games yada yada yada. It also helps other people learn.

[damoniano]

Originally posted by Imhotep:

Originally posted by damoniano:

Bruh we don't need to get technical you knew what I meant, 300 kbs download, 30.6 gb files to look over that is the "Patching process". I have a single SSD on this laptop and it works great. The problem lies in the way steam does things, it spends a couple minutes at several hundred MB/s speed, then spikes to 0, waits a while, then does it again. This is an issue I have always had with Steam on any PC I have patched games on. It is a Steam issue. I realize how the file patching system works, I didn't need a lecture on it that you already gave in your previous comment. I appreciate you trying to teach people who don't know how it works, but my simplifying of the explanation did not need to be jumped on with an "Actually that is incorrect", it does not come off as friendly or helpful when you do something like that.

We do need the technical's actually. you should see the amount of posts that need explaining for the same thing you did thats done with almost every game moving forward.

Satisfactory, Ark, all blizzard games yada yada yada. It also helps other people learn.

Your "technicality" existed at the top of the thread, repeating it again when I didn't personally feel the need to be exact on how Steam works was unnecessary, the people who my complaint was for would understand what I mean, those who don't, can read your comment. Now I am not trying to argue, but really the point I was getting at is that the way steam handles patches right now, It is faster for me to uninstall the game and fully redownload the compressed ~ 11 gigs and that is a problem

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by damoniano:

Originally posted by Imhotep:

We do need the technical's actually. you should see the amount of posts that need explaining for the same thing you did thats done with almost every game moving forward.

Satisfactory, Ark, all blizzard games yada yada yada. It also helps other people learn.

Your "technicality" existed at the top of the thread, repeating it again when I didn't personally feel the need to be exact on how Steam works was unnecessary, the people who my complaint was for would understand what I mean, those who don't, can read your comment. Now I am not trying to argue, but really the point I was getting at is that the way steam handles patches right now, It is faster for me to uninstall the game and fully redownload the compressed ~ 11 gigs and that is a problem

Then that means you have a hardware issue and too many things were utilizing your hard drive when this occured aka the drive was in use so the check took longer. You're also super rude and going to get ignored.

No, my "Technicality" didn't exist at the top of the thread otherwise i wouldn't have stated it. I will proceed to ignor you from here on out because you keep stating things that make no sense further more.

If my technicality did exist at the top though, you shoulda read it and stopped talking to be honest, time for me to be rude cause everytime i provide help and real answers (direct they may be and without feeling) i get the brash end, so with that being said, You shoulda read the beginning and technicality of it that someone else posted first than i did and actually learned and followed through with it and did something.

Instead you decide to keyboard warrior more and type more. Well played stoopid doomb doomb.

Did you know that it has a filesize of 30gb's and when you delete the game and reinstall it that it doesn't have to do the check because it already did while it downloaded?

Did you know that if the check took longer than downloading the game your hard drive has too many things running on it?

Did you know if you're using an SSD and you have windows running on it as well as your games it runs slower than a hard drive?

I can go on for days proving exactly how much of a doomb doomb you are but i won't. The amount of times you replied and stated rude and doomb things means FAILURE.

[Del-Dredd]

Originally posted by damoniano:

Originally posted by Imhotep:

IF you're waiting minutes for it to patch then you might want to ensure its installed on an SSD or you have the slowest SSD in the world.
"300 kbs that results in a 30.6 gb patch" Is incorrect. The game size installed on computer is 30 gigs expanded from the downloaded 11.6 gigs initially.

The 300 KB's gets scattered and placed in the correct spot and it has to ensure that all 30 gigs has the same data to be playable. Its a check. essentially kinda like a spell check.

Bruh we don't need to get technical you knew what I meant, 300 kbs download, 30.6 gb files to look over that is the "Patching process". I have a single SSD on this laptop and it works great. The problem lies in the way steam does things, it spends a couple minutes at several hundred MB/s speed, then spikes to 0, waits a while, then does it again. This is an issue I have always had with Steam on any PC I have patched games on. It is a Steam issue. I realize how the file patching system works, I didn't need a lecture on it that you already gave in your previous comment. I appreciate you trying to teach people who don't know how it works, but my simplifying of the explanation did not need to be jumped on with an "Actually that is incorrect", it does not come off as friendly or helpful when you do something like that.

Does not effect the majority like this though, most with SSD's are all done in under 5 mins, mostly faster.

[Iron Chief]

The process is fast for me, just about 2 minutes. So not a big deal for now. Might be a big deal later if this causes excessive SSD wear....which is why I don't let steam auto update my giant library of games all the time anymore, lol.

I have fast internet so downloads are not a problem time wise either.

I guess I don't know much about how the patching system works so I appreciate the teaching lesson.

[thalx]

Originally posted by damoniano:

I am on an SSD and this damn update system they are using (pushing out 5 hotfixes in a single day of less than 1 Mb each) is terrible. I love the game, but this needs to stop because the way steam handles files, if I close the game to go make some food for a little bit (or whatever reason someone needs to walk away from an un-pause-able game), then I am waiting 20 minutes for it to finish "Patching" these 300 kb updates. Playing on my laptop right now as I am away from home and I don't want to have to leave it open and running so I can just get in game when I am available right away, rather than wait for a tiny hotfix to finish its 20 minute patch session.
Overall, devs, please wait to release hotfixes for non-critical issues until you have more to send than 300 kbs that results in a 30.6 Gb patch.

With a modern NVME, you can do these 30GB patches 10 times a day for 80 years before anything happens to the disk. It is also important to know that the size of the patch has nothing at all to do with its effects. Even a single wrong byte can have fatal effects, fix a crash, enable a quest, etc. To say that you should wait for patches larger than 300KB is technically and gameplay-wise absolutely pointless.

[Caldrin]

This is how Steam updates games..

Downloads a file then unpacks games files inserts new files and so on.

[Iron Chief]

Originally posted by thalx:

Originally posted by damoniano:

I am on an SSD and this damn update system they are using (pushing out 5 hotfixes in a single day of less than 1 Mb each) is terrible. I love the game, but this needs to stop because the way steam handles files, if I close the game to go make some food for a little bit (or whatever reason someone needs to walk away from an un-pause-able game), then I am waiting 20 minutes for it to finish "Patching" these 300 kb updates. Playing on my laptop right now as I am away from home and I don't want to have to leave it open and running so I can just get in game when I am available right away, rather than wait for a tiny hotfix to finish its 20 minute patch session.
Overall, devs, please wait to release hotfixes for non-critical issues until you have more to send than 300 kbs that results in a 30.6 Gb patch.

With a modern NVME, you can do these 30GB patches 10 times a day for 80 years before anything happens to the disk. It is also important to know that the size of the patch has nothing at all to do with its effects. Even a single wrong byte can have fatal effects, fix a crash, enable a quest, etc. To say that you should wait for patches larger than 300KB is technically and gameplay-wise absolutely pointless.

That's reassuring. I wonder if that will hold true with the latest quad bit cells and even 5 bit. Prob not.

I have 2 x 8TB Samsung QVO quad bit drives i am worried about as thats the bulk of my library. And the rest lives on some higher quality 3 bit NVME that are much smaller at 4TB and 2TB

At the very least I hope SSDs get super cheap (and more durable) by the time those need replacement.

I take manufacturer ratings with a grain of salt, like all those times I bought LED bulbs with 10,000 hours rating yet they always die within 2 months to a year and half regardless how long they are used. probably just a few hundred hours for the ones that made it the longest.