Steam download drops to 0/bytes a second, but HDD usage stays at 100%

[La Creatura]

I'm trying to download a game and the network usage keeps jumping sporadically from anywhere between 4-10 mbs per second down to zero, and then back up again after some time.

While this is happening, my HDD usage according to task manager is consistently at 100%, even when the network usage drops to zero. Anyone have an idea about what's going on? I haven't noticed this problem until today. This is a newly built PC.

[Cheezus Crisp]

Sounds normal to me. It's just Steam waiting for the files to be written to the drive before downloading again. The downloaded files are compressed and when decompressed take up more space on the drive.

[La Creatura]

Originally posted by Cheezus Crisp:

Sounds normal to me. It's just Steam waiting for the files to be written to the drive before downloading again. The downloaded files are compressed and when decompressed take up more space on the drive.

That makes sense. Although I haven't noticed this happen with other steam games, as I've seen that other games start the decompression step after the files are all downloaded first.