Steam takes a long time to finish after download

[kaprics]

https://gyazo.com/d1c91d07da9418abb4ed15c29bd00026

as you can see in the image above steam is taking 30 min to install the update although its only 30mb. this problem only started happening recently.

anyone know why this is? its really annoying for an update to take less than ten seconds to download and 30 to isntall, btw sometimes it jumps to 2 days etc.

[ReBoot]

Might want to check your disk, that's what takes so long after downloading. Also, some games are notoriously long to patch, thats just how they are.

[76561198374607608]

steam is always making new updates to make their games good and to make players play comfortable and better ... but i guess the updates makes the players feel bad >>>

[kaprics]

引用自 ReBoot：

Might want to check your disk, that's what takes so long after downloading. Also, some games are notoriously long to patch, thats just how they are.

the disk seems fine, everything is at full speed while the game is downloading, its anly after it finished downloading. the disk usage then falls and it all takes very long. though still if it falls to 5mb/s it shouldnt take 30min to install 30mb. the problem is only with steam not any other programs

[ReBoot]

Does it happen for all Steam games or only a specific one?

[Cathulhu]

Steam uses Delta patches.
This means they only download the parts that changed in a file.
Then the Steam client creates a copy of the files that are in need to be patched.
Depending on the file size that can take a moment.
Then the files get patched, which can also mean decompressing files, that again take time.
After that is done, it gets recompressed if necessary, again takes time.
Then the patched file gets a hashcheck to verify nothing went wrong, takes time depending on file size.
And at last, the patched file gets moved into the game folder overwriting the outdated file.

This way the download size of patches massively decreased. You no longer need to download a 2GB file just because 10MB in it changed, instead you just download the changes and the Steam client applies that to the file.

Depending on what software can interfer with Steam it may prolong the procedure. Addtionally some games, like ARK Survival Evolved or Payday 2 is notoriously known for having a slow patch process due to its file structure.

[I Want My Pizza!]

引用自 Cathulhu：

Steam uses Delta patches.
This means they only download the parts that changed in a file.
Then the Steam client creates a copy of the files that are in need to be patched.
Depending on the file size that can take a moment.
Then the files get patched, which can also mean decompressing files, that again take time.
After that is done, it gets recompressed if necessary, again takes time.
Then the patched file gets a hashcheck to verify nothing went wrong, takes time depending on file size.
And at last, the patched file gets moved into the game folder overwriting the outdated file.

This way the download size of patches massively decreased. You no longer need to download a 2GB file just because 10MB in it changed, instead you just download the changes and the Steam client applies that to the file.

Depending on what software can interfer with Steam it may prolong the procedure. Addtionally some games, like ARK Survival Evolved or Payday 2 is notoriously known for having a slow patch process due to its file structure.

Ahhh.. so that's why steam takes 4 minutes to download the first 276.4Mb of an 1.6Gb patch (10Mbit line), and is handeling that first 276.4Mb for over an hour.....


I am so scared what steam will doe with the rest of that 1.6Gb patch, the remaining 1.324.6Mb...... I WANT MY MOMMY!!!!!!



Can't do anything about it. I restarted Steam, restarted the pc, did the 'ol "steam://flushconfig" trick - nothing seems to help so far :(
Just have to wait and endure it....

[Millz206]

absolute bull, I can download and install a brand new game (50GB+) in less time than it'll take for a 1GB update... this is the case with every game on steam, every other launcher I've used for games (Blizzard, Origin, Epic Games) blazes through updates so it's not my PC, it's Steam.

[ReBoot]

引用自 Millz206：

absolute bull, I can download and install a brand new game (50GB+) in less time than it'll take for a 1GB update... this is the case with every game on steam, every other launcher I've used for games (Blizzard, Origin, Epic Games) blazes through updates so it's not my PC, it's Steam.

Steam tends to open many concurrent connections. That may overload crappy network hardware. Then there's ISPs that throttle Steam but not others. I suggest you glance more in the direction of finding out what it is.

[The_Outlier]

I lost my HD and am reinstalling games- here's the thing: file xfer rate from Steam- 288.8 Mbps (yay). Disk drive: 3T with 2T free. Games download fast, fast, fast...

Then the installation of the content, even NEW content- not updates- takes far longer than the download did. Zero network activity. CPU-100%. This is a brand new i7.

I think Steam has plenty of resources to work with on my PC- but something is making installations take a long, long time and is burning CPU cycles. Task Manager says it is Steam. It would be great if this was fixed.

[crunchyfrog]

引用自 The_Outlier：

I lost my HD and am reinstalling games- here's the thing: file xfer rate from Steam- 288.8 Mbps (yay). Disk drive: 3T with 2T free. Games download fast, fast, fast...

Then the installation of the content, even NEW content- not updates- takes far longer than the download did. Zero network activity. CPU-100%. This is a brand new i7.

I think Steam has plenty of resources to work with on my PC- but something is making installations take a long, long time and is burning CPU cycles. Task Manager says it is Steam. It would be great if this was fixed.

Ah, now you may be misunderstanding how it all works.

Steam does things differently to most other places. Games are downloaded both encrypted AND compressed. Some games also behave a little differently to others - Ark SE and Payday 2 are notorious for downloading a chunk then seeming to do nothing, before carrying on again. A lot of people trip up on that.

What is actually happening is that the "chunk" downloads to a space on your drive. Then it stops the download while it unpacks and sorts the data out before writing to it's final location. Then it continues on again.

But here's the kicker - if you're experiecing all that fine and dandy, that does NOT mean you should expect the same at the END of your download. Depending on the game it could simply be that's when it's doing it's most intensive work with the data, and therefore that's why you're seeing lesser performance.

Key thing to do, if you can, is keep an eye on the downloads page. Note the graph, both the CPU, disk and net usage. This will give you a fair indication of what's going on.

But anyway, it'd be nice to see some more finite data from you. As to which game(s) you're referring to, exact speeds at each step, and so on.

[ill is the name]

what good is it when it takes twice as long to update a game than just do a fresh install? this is the dumbest ♥♥♥♥ I have heard of in a while. How many software engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? ZERO that is a hardware issue. Doesn't matter why Steam does what it does, its inefficient. This isn't 1990 and we are using AOL. Just uninstall the game and reinstall and it will be faster. That is the dumbest logic ever. Your update procedures are flawed, again this is not dial up. Can download the entire game faster than this process Steam uses to update. Flawed. Nothing against you guys explaining it, its still flawed though.

[w33nter]

to workaround got to SETTINGS > STORAGE > select HDD > delete library (if nothing is in use)

I got 2 ssd and a hdd, all my games are installed on ssd. Well i found out using process monitor that my D:SteamLibrary on HDD was being used as download library, then installing to the SSD. So the download was fast but then reading the install files from HDD was super slow.
https://learn.microsoft.com/es-mx/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

This started to happen around february 2025 so I think some latest update make this cange on my library settings or probably it is because the main SSD is almost full. (i used to have disks installed on hdd that is why library existed there, but was not in use.

I hope this helps

[Rex]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.