Why is the Steam BAckup so slow

[loctite]

Is there any possibility to speedup the backup process?

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Get better hardware.

No there no way to speed things up.

[loctite]

but why? faster cpu and faster SSD does not help. Why? this is not effective.

[loctite]

I think the reason is it is not multi core optimized

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Could just do this, drag files to where you want them.
If want game on D drive, make new game folder with Steam from the settings, so it knows where to look when Steam launch, then close steam. Head to the new folder, move your acf file and game files to that new folder, and finish, delete stuff on the C drive you no longer want on your C drive, then launch steam.

Steam searches for acf files under the Steamapp folder, which tells the state of the game to the client, either need updates, or not, or if it's installed, or not.

[Nx Machina]

Originally posted by loctite:

Is there any possibility to speedup the backup process?

Do NOT use the backup feature.

Simply copy the game folder to an external HDD.

Next time you want to reinstall the game simply copy it back.

Click on install and the existing files will be detected, verified and only missing files (if any) will be downloaded.

[loctite]

I will try this thanks

[nullable]

The backup feature is more along the lines of legacy feature from when people might be putting games on CD-R or DVD-R's being able to split them up was convenient and bandwidth was quite a bit less. So if you're not doing that not much point. And the feature doesn't hurt anything, maybe not much point to take it away either.

[Pixels303 blw.tf]

Yes I know this is an old thread..

Steam uses compression using only one processor thread and a very poor compression algorithm.

Regardless if you have a brand new computer or a lard ass old PC, the compression time will be the same crappy speed or slower than molases while employing Steam Backup. Don't use it unless you want to be waiting a very very long time.

This means that copying your massive folder via windows explorer is much quicker.

If you want a very quick way of backing up, I used 7Zip, using BZ2 compression algorithm using 24 threads with my 12 core Ryzen CPU setup and obtained 50% compression ratio and 100mb/s file storage speed. Only took about 10 minutes to backup my Killing Floor folder which was 71GB big and 31.6GB after being compressed.. Using archives copying over the network is much quicker than direct copy, which is why I decided to use a archiver like 7zip. Plus 7Zip is free. It only took me 20 minutes to backup and restore to another machine using 7Zip over the network.

Otherwise, it would take about an hour to back it up using Steam's lousy backup feature and closer to two hours to make a backup and restore it to another machine.

Now if only a network card had the compression capability of a 24 core computer using advanced high compression algorithm on both ends, it could theoretically massively speed up file transfers. But then, a person would need to have custom network equipment.

[p0k314NET]

Necro, but... Because Steam client main build remember year 2005 and it is not multi core CPU software. This is terrible piece of application, totally archaic. And Steam knows it very well, but do not fix it. Why? Because they still feels like a monopoly, and they do not change anything when they do not need. Typical corpo. Who cares about customers life quality. Give me your money, sucker!

[nullable]

Originally posted by p0k314NET:

Necro, but... Because Steam client main build remember year 2005 and it is not multi core CPU software. This is terrible piece of application, totally archaic. And Steam knows it very well, but do not fix it. Why? Because they still feels like a monopoly, and they do not change anything when they do not need. Typical corpo. Who cares about customers life quality. Give me your money, sucker!

Whether you're a monopoly or a business with 1% of the market. It's usually not worthwhile to fiddle with code you don't really need to change. The Steam Backup process isn't broken, it doesn't need to be fixed. It's just a legacy feature and there's nothing about it that can't be done better with newer features or a better process utilizing Steam's behavior.

So grumbling about the backup feature is fine, but I don't get it when you can just copy and paste the files if you're moving them from system to system anyway. Or use the move feature. And if you want to compress data copy it to an archive location and compress it, nothing is stopping you. There's nothing in the Steam Backup that's magical or worth fussing over.

Frankly for all the whining it causes they should just remove it and throw an FAQ up about how to use Ctrl-C and 7zip.

[Bt]

Sorry for the necro, but I had to look up why it was taking hours to backup 300gb of games.

Some of you either have not experienced, or have forgotten that simply moving game files and reinstalling in the new location is a gamble. Some games refuse to do it entirely. Skyrim is a good example, requiring you to redownload almost the entire game if you move it yourself.

I use steam backup because it's reliable and doesn't seem to have any of those issues other than being slow. That said, I wish steam would update the feature to allow multi core compression, or no compression at all.

[WhiteKnight]

Originally posted by Ciao Ranger:

Sorry for the necro, but I had to look up why it was taking hours to backup 300gb of games.

Some of you either have not experienced, or have forgotten that simply moving game files and reinstalling in the new location is a gamble. Some games refuse to do it entirely. Skyrim is a good example, requiring you to redownload almost the entire game if you move it yourself.

I use steam backup because it's reliable and doesn't seem to have any of those issues other than being slow. That said, I wish steam would update the feature to allow multi core compression, or no compression at all.

In Valve time.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Ciao Ranger:

Some of you either have not experienced, or have forgotten that simply moving game files and reinstalling in the new location is a gamble. Some games refuse to do it entirely. Skyrim is a good example, requiring you to redownload almost the entire game if you move it yourself.

This is because 99% of people are doing it wrong and using vastly outdated information to somehow 'move' things.

1) Steam already lets you move games between libraries on the same computer
2) staem has a backup/restore function that works fine.

People manually moving files complain becuse they do it wrong, dont move the right files, dont move enough files, then wonder 'why is it not working'

[Gerarderloper]

Originally posted by Satoru:

2) staem has a backup/restore function that works fine.

The backup function has a disadvantage of being single threaded and slow.
I know my drive can do 104MB/s but its only pushing the update at 29MB/s; there is also the issue that additional files not being backed up or possibly DLC as some people claim.

Valve need to majorly update the backup tool, have it compress whole game folder and not just specific files. They also need to make it multi-threaded both in compression and write threads.

ATM what I will do in the future is manually compress game folders to the backup SD card and select the ACF with it (how steam knows something is installed).

[loctite]

Please Valve do something against slow backup!