Is there any way to make ARK update faster?

[vimzu]

Sorry in advance if this belongs in another thread
I've been having this awful problem with the ark updates. My wifi connection is pretty decent for where i live (around 5 MB/second), but downloading patches for this game is a _colossal_ pain. Not only does it take an hour or so to download the required files, which shouldn't take longer than 5 minutes max in normal curcamstances, mind you, but it also manages to get stuck on the last 100 % downloading... nothing...? for another hour. It doesn't even say that it's installing.
Any ideas how can I can fix this issue? I'm so frustrated with sitting every other day or so, waiting for the game to update itself

[PlayerNumber03]

Run task manager while you're downloading. There are 4 factors for updates:

Internet download speed (I update at like 30-50MB/s)
Processor speed (processing the incoming data)
Hard drive read speed (reading the info you're sending)
Hard drive write speed (installing)

Ark will download at like 5-15MB/s on a slow hard drive, but 35-65MB/s on an SSD. I can uninstall ark and reinstall with like 3 additional maps in 20 minutes or so if I use my SSD.

[Lordbufu]

There really isn't, as the problem is mostly on steams end, and isn't only present in Ark.

Having a large SSD with both steam + Ark tends to help a bit, as a lot of of the installing of updates and games is buffering/unpacking and installing, most of witch is done on the drive steam is installed on (not where Ark is installed, unless its the same drive obviously).

For example i have recently updated my setup with a large HHD disk, while i wait for a more suitable SSD solution, and now im noticing that the downloads take 2/3 times longer then when it was installed on a SSD. Purely because steam downloads a piece of the update/game, then unpacks that piece before downloading again, and repeats the process until it's at a 100%. Then it verifies the files once more before installing it, potentially causing another delay at 100%.

TLDR: Get a large SSD for steam + Ark (and any other potentially large games), or move steam itself onto a SDD if you have space left over on one.

*edit: And yes as mentioned above the CPU is also a factor, but youd have to have a really old one if that is going to bottleneck you. ...... like stupidly old ..... before 64-bit was even a thing kind of old.

[vimzu]

The problem is, I have a whole external disk dedicated for ARK and other large games and it sits at 931 GB total and 598 GB available, so there's that.
My other games that I update and are installed on there take much MUCH less time to do so and my CPU is not that old either

[Lordbufu]

External disk ...... o boy ....

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8379-RYIP-2998

Steams general point of view on external disks (near the bottom of the page), and for good reason imo.

Large games with many files (big files are not a problem, mostly lots and lots of small files), will create lots of disk read/write, having other games install/update just fine doesn't mean they should be compared.

Minecraft itself installs just fine on my computer, but as soon as i install modded stuff even on a SSD its gonna take a while because there are 100's of small files.

Same thing applies here, and having an external drive is only going to make that bottleneck worse, as the data has to travel over USB (most likely) to even get to said disk.

[vimzu]

I think the problem may be in ark not using network to download for some reason?
Here's a screenshot I took that illustrates that: https://i.ibb.co/3cV0x3z/image.jpg
It still shines through in rare cases (and this is when the progress of updating ACTUALLY moves forward) but most of the time updater looks like that. Thoughts?

[Lordbufu]

Originally posted by Archy:

I think the problem may be in ark not using network to download for some reason?
Here's a screenshot I took that illustrates that: https://i.ibb.co/3cV0x3z/image.jpg
It still shines through in rare cases (and this is when the progress of updating ACTUALLY moves forward) but most of the time updater looks like that. Thoughts?

*points at disk usage*

Its unpacking so not downloading the next part, until done with said unpacking process.

[vimzu]

Ahh.. well heck, then I'm screwed. So there's no way to even improve the process if I cannot move ark to an SSD? They all don't have enough space, and even if i'll try and clean them, at the rate that devs keep adding files upon files, I'll just run out of space entirely :(

[PlayerNumber03]

Originally posted by Archy:

Ahh.. well heck, then I'm screwed. So there's no way to even improve the process if I cannot move ark to an SSD? They all don't have enough space, and even if i'll try and clean them, at the rate that devs keep adding files upon files, I'll just run out of space entirely :(

It's the physical capabilities of a hard drive. A 1TB SSD dedicated for ARK should run like... $100 or something? They're pretty cheap. I'll admit, the recent update from today/yesterday is abysmal. 2 high end PC's are struggling with a 500mb update. Like, 15 minute update, even with average read/write speeds of 70MB/s and downloads of 20MB/s minimum.

[Lordbufu]

Originally posted by Archy:

Ahh.. well heck, then I'm screwed. So there's no way to even improve the process if I cannot move ark to an SSD? They all don't have enough space, and even if i'll try and clean them, at the rate that devs keep adding files upon files, I'll just run out of space entirely :(

Well ... an SSD would be ideal yes, but even a internal HDD is likely to improve this, as an external is always an extra bottleneck because of its USB connection. There are plenty of people who play on a normal HDD, even on externals despite being far from ideal, but essentially if the install speed is a problem then likely SSD is the only way to solve that annoyance ....

And even then there are simply days that steam just hates you, and does make the actual download part last for ever, but lucky enough those days are usually only around DLC releases.

[vimzu]

Well thanks a lot for the advice guys. I'll try to do something about it. But right now I'll try to cope and pray for the rate at which the updates are being rolled out to decrease overtime. Afterall, Genesis came out not that long ago, bringing a ton of bugs that need fixing to the table...
Anyways, thanks again and cya!

[Br0therTuck]

Like the download of the last update was fast, 1.6GB in 1 Minute but over 10 Minutes to install with SSD...^^
https://i.imgur.com/G7rWUEy.png