HDD 100% Usage During update for game installed on SSD. what gives?

[Forsaken Chief]

Hello everyone, I found some articles with similar topics to this one but never any that really hit all the points of my issue.

When Updating games I have installed on my SSD, Steam utilizes 100% of my HDD that the games are not installed on. Thus the HDD hits max bandwidth and despite having awesome internet and being connected over lan, my download speeds become crippled by the HDD's limits, even though my game is installed to my SSD, NOT my HDD and has never been on my hdd.

System Specs:

i7-4790k @ 4.0ghz (liquid cooled)
32gb DDR3 PC3 10700 (Corsair)
Maximus Hero VII Z97 Mobo
1tb Samsung 970 evo nvme SSD (OS & Steam Library 1)
500gb Samsung 840 evo Sata SSD (Steam Library 2)
2tb WD black Sata HDD (steam library 3)
EVGA GTX 1080 Classified (8gb)
EVGA 850w Modular PSU

Here is how it goes down.

IE: While updating game installed on SSD (in this case, game is on either SSD):
-Download starts for game installed on SSD.
-HDD of a separate Library that does not have any instance of that SSD installed game ramps up (why?)
-Download goes fast (at first)
-download speed maxes out HDD bandwidth
-download transfer rate hits 0bytes while HDD is maxed (100%)
-HDD clears for a moment, Download goes full steam (200-300mb/s+)
-Download maxes out HDD again
-download transfer rates drop to 0bytes again.

-Rinse and repeat until download completes.

Here are the things I have verified:

Steam cache download: Cleared (many times)

Server side: this issue does not seem to be related to steam's servers as multiple other, SSD only, devices on my home network have no issue downloading large updates at reasonable speeds, even over WIFI.

home network: Tested the same network cable my desktop uses with other, SSD Only Devices with the same updates in question. Those devices saw less than 20minute download and install times with no slowdown during same network load conditions.

Failing drives: Being that both drives are samsung, I used samsung testing tools to verify drive health, both came back with excellent health ratings and with no errors found. Same with the HDD using WD's drive checking software.

General failure of other components: When the steam library on my HDD is no longer in the equation, the problem goes away completely. Simply adding a steam library to my HDD with NO installations remaining on the drive (all previous steam files removed before creation) the problem returns. Again, with NO games installed on it.

Windows: This ONLY happens with Steam, the windows app store does not do this, neither does origin or any other digital marketplace. Their downloads and updates utilize the drive the game is installed on only.

So... I'm left with it being some kind of oddity within Steam itself. Does anyone have any clues as to how or why this happens? I want to keep using my HDD for older games that don't benefit from SSD's but with how much my download speeds are being crippled by steams random use of the drive I don't know if that will be viable. This is really frustrating.

Update I have since built a new Rig! (spoiler: problem still ehists) specs are as follows:

Ryzen 5800x
ROG Strix x570-F MOBO
64gb Trident neon mem OC'd to 3600
360ml CM liquid cooler
RTX 2080Ti Matrix
500m Mastercase (Coolermaster)
EVGA 850w Modular PSU
1tb 960 evo NVME (system drive)
1tb QVO Sata SSD (Game Drive)
500gb 840 Evo Sata SSD (dedicated drive for specific game and mods)
2tb WD Black HDD - originally used for older games, however now just for media files and installers.

All new build, all new installs. ensured Steam was installed to the NVME. However, the second I add my HDD as a library, the issue persists on this system as well. As I mentioned in a recent post, I've given up on utilizing an HDD with steam and am waiting for promotions on a 2 or 4 tb Sata SSD instead.

[Forsaken Chief]

|<- Iceira ->| eredeti hozzászólása:

Have try to catch up on what this post is about, google steam flush ( can hope that will fix odd issue with cache or DL folder, its hard to say what that cmd actual fix, other then its there. almost learn by doing, i bet steam knows.

then you mention 100gb free that is seen as not enough free room depend on DL size. anything remotlely near 20gb can be seen as user own problem.

steam use supercompressed files that mean cpu unpack and write to disk sametime it install it so disk usage goes 100% and if AV app doing scan sametime you just hit the max and why all slow down
-download transfer rate hits 0bytes while HDD is maxed (100%)
this is work as intended , if reciveing end cant keep up you end pc tell other end i cant keep up and packets is dump from router + you reduce the speed to what ever it is you can keep up with.

Either i miss the info though the reading here you never told what file size you try to dl
even 25gb file can be a issue if unpack ratio is 1 to 3 or 1 to 5.
in other words you dont have enough free room.

and it also sounds like wrong default steam lib in "steam storage management" " * " Star is default, and after latest patch, month ago apox some user lost right default disk ( they even fix this later, if i recall correctly, check its there )

and you make same mistake as other user here, its years ago those disk was seen as big, and same was game install size with 25gb, thing just got bigger 50gb to 100gb DL size for a game.
so temporary work space is even higher now, let me be rude anything lesser then 250gb free space is soon seen as user own problem in a few years then dl is 100gb then its 500gb i hope you can see the problem is to be near full with huge DL that is user own problem
with disk size today that is 20Tb disk to even 10TB as what is require, so call 4TB big i will not, but they can do the work.

most of this know by experience user. ( you need a faulth disk but then that happend today disk goes burnout ) they do that today. so it cant be that.

You completely miss the point sir. The issue isn't lack of storage, the issue is: if I have any steam library on a HDD, then when downloading a game or update for a game installed only on an SSD NOT the HDD, steam still utilizes the HDD unnecessarily for the download process and maximizes its bandwidth (not its storage) thus bringing the download speeds to a crawl while it waits for the bandwidth on the HDD to clear. This causes any download, regardless of size, to triple or quadroupal in download times.

Your comments of experience or steam help should know are irrelevant and frankly unnecessary. I already reached out to steam support before posting here, they were not able to resolve the issue.

[Elucidator]

This sounds like odd behavior
It helps if people read the logs.

What I know from my own logs is that steam first downloads a file to a caching folder, and only after completion and verification of the file, moves it to the library directory. (at least if you use the default directory for the library and have the library on the same disk)

So for someone like me its hard to see what is going on, what is different, etc.

I therefore recommend checking the logs; especially content_log.txt

[Forsaken Chief]

Elucidator eredeti hozzászólása:

This sounds like odd behavior
It helps if people read the logs.

What I know from my own logs is that steam first downloads a file to a caching folder, and only after completion and verification of the file, moves it to the library directory. (at least if you use the default directory for the library and have the library on the same disk)

So for someone like me its hard to see what is going on, what is different, etc.

I therefore recommend checking the logs; especially content_log.txt

Honestly, i've given up at resolving the issue, i've simply stopped using the HDD for anything steam related. once I deleted the additional library i used for older games, the problem went away. (my systems primary SSD, an 870 evo plus, has always been my primary steam install location, I have other SSD's setup for certain games, especially if they are mod heavy).

I mostly continue to contribute since I know other people run into this issue from time to time, while none of the solutions worked for me, I have seen them work for others. So i've felt it worth it to keep the thread alive.

For anyone else reading this tho, this man's suggestion is a solid recommendation, if you're having the issue, post your logs here. Maybe someday we'll find a reliable solution that doesn't involve spending $$ on SSD's to rid yourself of the HDD. (not everyone can afford to just smack in large capacity SSD's like I did).

[Hodor]

Forsaken Chief eredeti hozzászólása:

Honestly, i've given up at resolving the issue, i've simply stopped using the HDD for anything steam related. once I deleted the additional library i used for older games, the problem went away. (my systems primary SSD, an 870 evo plus, has always been my primary steam install location, I have other SSD's setup for certain games, especially if they are mod heavy).

I mostly continue to contribute since I know other people run into this issue from time to time, while none of the solutions worked for me, I have seen them work for others. So i've felt it worth it to keep the thread alive.

For anyone else reading this tho, this man's suggestion is a solid recommendation, if you're having the issue, post your logs here. Maybe someday we'll find a reliable solution that doesn't involve spending $$ on SSD's to rid yourself of the HDD. (not everyone can afford to just smack in large capacity SSD's like I did).

Did the symlinks solution not work for you?

The 100% usage is due to steam's bitwise patching system where whole files are mirrored before patching then original deleted and mirrored back. This can tax magnetic drives, but bitwise patching has been here for a couple years already and here to stay, so if symlinks works for you it can encourage valve to include an option for us to specify the SSD as the download cache drive.

[ApexAftermath]

So I just noticed this for the first time today trying to patch the new Guardians of the Galaxy game. It was taking FOREVER and I thought my SSD was going insane.

Instead I notice my slower secondary HDD drive at 100%. I don't get why this happens if you installed Steam to the SSD and installed the game to the SSD as I have. Why is Steam trying to use that drive at all?

Steam should absolutely allow us to tell it where to download files, and that should be to the dang drive the game being updated is being installed to!

I may try that solution posted earlier, but unfortunately I just deleted the game and reinstalled which I should add CORRECTLY uses the SSD for the downloading. It seems only patches are doing this strange behavior so why is that?!?

[Isthatyoudave?]

What ever happens drive wise, steams downloads speeds are worse than every other game client at the moment.

Origin and uplay both download at 105MB on my fttp connection. steams download goes up to 105MB then reduces all the way down to 16MB gradually. mostly it drops down low and climbs a bit and sits around 20MB. Many times it will stop downloading all together while it is doing things on drives.

This happens no matter which drive the games are going to or which drive steam is installed on.

All other game clients download solid at the full amount all the time.

Steam needs to look at the downloading process to see where the choke points are.

Just as a test I renamed the library directories, on the hdd's in my system that had steam libraries, with old on the end and then downloaded a game that is going to a SSD and the download speeds sat at 115MB p/s which is the highest it goes. S soon as you add renamed the directories back and download the speed drops happen even if it not installing onto the hhd's.

They need to look at their code and process as its doing stupid stuff.

Would be very interesting to know if this strange behaviour has an impact on games too while you are playing? Is steam constantly accessing the other drives while we play games causing those little loading stutters that sometimes happen.

Using the fix commented earlier does solve the issue and now downloads are back at full speed.

[nullable]

I wonder if Valve is using the drive with the most space that has a library associated with it? That might explain the behavior. And there might be a rationale for that behavior too.

[HYPER]

Fuhrer_Zwutzig eredeti hozzászólása:

I've had this problem for forever and have been looking for a solution since a long time. Steam was installed on my NVME SSD which is my C drive and which had over 100GB of free space and had the game needing updating installed on it. However, the only way to prevent it from downloading to my HDD (which extremely bottlenecked the downloadspeed) was unplugging the sata cable of my HDD to force it to download to the SSD.

For those of you who still have the same issue, I've found this (quite easy) trick which seems to be working. It works by substituting the wrong downloading folder on the HDD for a link to the downloading folder on a SSD on Windows 10:
- Open the downloading folder on the HDD, copy the path and delete that downloading folder
- type cmd in the search bar and opening it by pressing ctrl+alt+enter ( needed for permissions)
- use the Mklink /J command to create a link from the HDD to your SSD (see below)
- In my case, my E drive is the HDD and my C drive is my SSD. However MAKE SURE to use " " at the start and end of the path if there are ANY spaces in the path name (as I've done with the folder on my C drive path):

Mklink /J E:\Steam\steamapps\downloading "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\downloading"

and press enter, it should now tell you:
Junction created for E:\Steam\steamapps\downloading <<===>> C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\downloading

The downloading folder still exists on the HDD, however, any file transfered to it will actually be on your SSD, and it will appear on both. I've had no problems updating any games since I made the junction folder and all downloading problems are no more!

This solution worked perfectly for me. Future steam users that seem to have the same problem as OP should also give this a try.

[Nico]

Some games require 3 times the game size available in the game drive for the update, otherwise it looks to use a secondary drive.
Probably developers can tweak it?

[Lambros]

Only update games you actually playing. Limit attack vectors from people that want to mass test a new hack.

[Rens Agatha ⁧【レンス】]

my game not responding after sending banish card wtf konami

[Tsubame ⭐]

Rens Agatha eredeti hozzászólása:

my game not responding after sending banish card wtf konami

Wrong forum and thread; please go to the game's forum and post a thread about it.

[Ist mir egal]

i have this issue also with ARK, it downloads on a very very slow HDD(10MB/s on big files) and then moves the downloaded content on the SSD

[:::... FulVal85 [LMHT] ...:::]

This problem happen also when you download a game (or update) in hard-disk (with steam installed in the same hard-disk), and the same same happen with epic client, bethesda client etc etc...

you cannot fix that... and i think that is the same with SSD with all clients

[Forsaken Chief]

:::... FulVal ...::: LMHT eredeti hozzászólása:

This problem happen also when you download a game (or update) in hard-disk (with steam installed in the same hard-disk), and the same same happen with epic client, bethesda client etc etc...

you cannot fix that... and i think that is the same with SSD with all clients

This does not reflect the issue being described here. as in my case, Steam, and the game in question are not only on SSD's but the issue has been replicated with a couple configs:
1: Steam on SSD-A and the game itself on SSD-B (both NVME)
2: Steam and the game installed on the same NVME SSD
3: Steam and the game installed on the same SATA SSD (for the giggles)
4. Steam on SSD_A, the game on SSD-B (Both NVME) and another Steam library with older, smaller games on HardDisk-A.

All four configurations produced the same results for me. now, I will mention. At one point, deleting the steam library from the HDD seemed to resolve the issue (as is my current config, so Steam on SSD-A and Games on SSD-B). However the issue eventually returned even tho steam has zero files on the HDD that it is blasting to %100 use.(after a fresh installation and formatting all the drives, just to be sure). however, I forgot exactly when I started seeing the issue again but after a while steam started blasting the HDD again despite never having had a presence on it this time (and none of the games ever installed to it).

now my only option seems to be to remove the HDD and Swap it for an SSD. while this sounds like a given, I do have concerns with backing up data only to an SSD drive, as when they go, they're gone. HDD's, even if it's expensive as all hell, have many other recovery options even once the hardware has failed.