Steam write to disk speed is very slow

[CHAO]

I have checked my drive for issues and speed and it's fine, so when I download any game from Steam the write to disk speed is very slow, and it also throttles my internet speed because it cannot download more than it can write.
Any idea to fix that?

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by eyelesstoby2021:

Seems like a lot of arguing on this thread but it still doesn't really answer the topic question. I'm having a similar problem with updating NBA 2k21 with a slow-disk write. Is this a problem I can attempt to fix myself or just a problem with how the developers designed the patch?

It's not arguing. It's simply that some people don't like to accept the answer they don't like.

The fact remains that some drives ARE that slow, because they can be broken, or they can be hindered by crapware. It's VERY common.

That's what we try to get to the bottom of. We can't help if people come and ask for help, but then won't play ball.

So yes, you can fix it yourself. So which of the things listed in this thread have you tried and EXACTLY what was the results for each of them?

[Iceira]

lets say crunchyfrog was my next door neigbour, and he took hes laptop at my network and he has no DL or write issue, and i bet if we was friend he will slap me around and say fix your crap have a nice day.

he dont care if i have broken cable or interference or addware, or any excuess in i have drop my disk on floor, he will say not my problem, your pc, fix it, have a nice day.
and im sure as friend i will hear comment for a long time as fun among friends.

point is steam is not responsible for local customer equipment and same will a ISP say.

not the First time i have even said to End customer , contact you IT department.

in some case's i have said i give you under 5 minute , if i can spot the cause. and you take own respondsible for it. ( i have nothing to do with customer own equipment. ( CPE border line edge )

and then you think of it, its same here. ( gather proof before claim something about steam DL and ISP transfer issue. )

and thats why you test something , and make ticket then you have something.

gl with it OP and eyelesstoby2021 witha nba issue.

[StarChief]

Guessing no real solution to this? Steam at random times, for random games, takes literal years to install 100MB patch. My internet is fast, my PC and drives are fast. There is no crapware.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by StarChief:

Guessing no real solution to this? Steam at random times, for random games, takes literal years to install 100MB patch. My internet is fast, my PC and drives are fast. There is no crapware.

Impossible to say with so few details. Could be anything.

However, many do make the mistake of thinking that when downloads take a while it's predominantly either Valve's end or internet related. It ain't.

Steam games are encrypted and compressed, so because of this, it's often the case that your limiting factors are your CPU and your hard drive.

So I have to ask - are you using different hard drives, and what games are we talking about specifically?

[McLaren (StatTrak): 2 Kills]

I too have slow disk-write speed when updating Mordhau at times. An update that might take some few minutes, or even seconds can end up taking half an hour to even more. It sounds very exaggerated but its true. I think op is right, it must be the packaging of games. Its not a coincidence that I, op and many others have the same exact issue with Mordhau.

Some further research shows its apparently a bug confirmed by a moderator:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/629760/discussions/0/2968397584551460628/

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by McLaren (StatTrak): 2 Kills:

I too have slow disk-write speed when updating Mordhau at times. An update that might take some few minutes, or even seconds can end up taking half an hour to even more. It sounds very exaggerated but its true. I think op is right, it must be the packaging of games. Its not a coincidence that I, op and many others have the same exact issue with Mordhau.

Some further research shows its apparently a bug confirmed by a moderator:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/629760/discussions/0/2968397584551460628/

While bugs can indeed exist, that does not mean it applies to ALL cases or even close.

Steam games work differently to everywhere else (yes, even the SAME games sold on other platforms).

Games here are both compressed and encrypted. That requires them to download and unpack, sort and finally write the data to it's final destination. SO downloads are dependent NOT upon your internet speed but your drive speed and CPU etc.

You can witness this by looking at the graphs on your downloads page.

Also, games behave differently. Payday 2 and Ark are notorious for having a weird way of downloading a chunk, stopping, doing work before starting the download again.

Just to be clear here.

[10,000 Bees]

Glad to see no one is answering anything. I know I've had the same problems for a multitude of games, but not all. The most egregious are newer games the last year or two.

I had a similar problem with CoD BO:CW and came to find out that when the game messed up downloading for X reason, crash files were being dumped in the same directory of this downloader, and because multiple instances of this check were technically being asked to run, it was consistently making CoD scan all 100+ gigs of the game instead of the 3 it needed to, so I had to delete the repeat files and everything was fine.

Might want to look at similar problems in those game files in the steamapps folder your games are in.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by No Heresy Plz:

Glad to see no one is answering anything. I know I've had the same problems for a multitude of games, but not all. The most egregious are newer games the last year or two.

I had a similar problem with CoD BO:CW and came to find out that when the game messed up downloading for X reason, crash files were being dumped in the same directory of this downloader, and because multiple instances of this check were technically being asked to run, it was consistently making CoD scan all 100+ gigs of the game instead of the 3 it needed to, so I had to delete the repeat files and everything was fine.

Might want to look at similar problems in those game files in the steamapps folder your games are in.

We ARE answering things. Just because either it doesn't work for you, or you don't LIKE the answers, doesn't make it wrong.

These are the usual fixes for the usual problems - we HAVE to go through them because that's how basic troubleshooting works. I'm sorry if you don;t understand that, but nothing changes reality I'm afraid.

In your case, based on what you've just said if it's behaving differently with different games then that does indeed indicate what we've already said.

As games download differently on Steam AND each game can be different in the way they download and write, you absolutely can get variances between games, and that does indeed indicate the I/O, hard drive, CPU et al are the things bottlenecking.

Ark SE and Payday 2 are notorious examples for behaving oddly and throwing people off. You commonly get posts like "hey, my downloads keep stopping" but it actually isn't. Those games download in chunks, write a chunk before starting up again.

Once more, if you check your downloads page and the graph therein along with your task manager you can see this.

So tell me, when you download these games, what does the graph do and what are the resources doing under task manager? Anything getting close to 100%?

Whiel you may well have had a particular problem with THAT game it does not mean it applies to ther instanes - that was a unique situation by the sound of it.

[Iceira]

Feel free to buy Raid0 disk's, then it should not be I/O at disk anymore. then is its CPU or broadband that cant keep up, ( you need a livwe Antivirus security app or doing other task sae time before you notice a issue. if the pc support it or not i cant say but most laptop dont have it.

ps.
You are over in pc Build and what is best in performance. ( old reply like this was buy a better pc, but that actual require you know how things works. ) im not so sure we can explan it then ppl have 1gb wan lines today , but old pc with single disk can give issue , then steam use super compressed files, so you also need alot of core to unpack it. ( more disk writes )

CF already explan it, if disk is at 100% then disk is the bottleneck

[eminmetehan]

Originally posted by Iceira ( W10 64bit ):

Originally posted by eyelesstoby2021:

Seems like a lot of arguing on this thread but it still doesn't really answer the topic question. I'm having a similar problem with updating NBA 2k21 with a slow-disk write. Is this a problem I can attempt to fix myself or just a problem with how the developers designed the patch?

There is no arguing, ask any technician or IT-Supporter, no Disk can write that slow,
any from any games, to now some game that is a diffrent issue.

get a spare pc, or friends laptop, can you reproduce the error , i doubt it. thats why i and other think its hes pc.

and even then you have issue with diffrent game NBA 2k21 , but you dont say anything about free storage space, let make one thing clear , there is you and isp and there partners and steam in other end.

and if you can test with other pc , and get fast Download , then its that pc , end of argument and not a steam problem or isp , but hes pc that has a issue.

and if he can proof it take it up with own ISP , and let them proof its steam that cant delivere speed.

thats network in a nut shell, ( you always has a cause noone can use any excuess in where is the problem ) network point of view.

You are so full of nonsense trying to label a legit steam issue as ''their pc'', currently im trying to download a patch for New world which is only 82 mb and should take like a minute maximum. Indeed steam downloading the actual patch in a minute but somehow this 82 mb patch requires 17.6 GB disk usage!! How the heck is it even possible?? The worst of all writing speed constantly changes increasing to 100 mb then falling into BYTES while showing it will take over a year. The game is on nvme SSD so it can actually write 18gb in a minute as well but even then heavy HDD sound is coming from PC that only God knows what the heck steam doing there as windows, steam, the game are installed on the SSD so HDD shouldn't be even working!!! There is a huge bug somewhere like steam confusing game locations and unneccearly moving data around without any question, in fact for me this problem happens for only two games Bannerlord and New world that i installed both of them to HDD then later moved them to SSD, what a freaking ''surprise''...

If anybody wants to resolve this problem you have no option but wait steam to finish it's nonsese and next time don't move games because apparently in 2021 steam can't handle such a simple thing.

[Nx Machina]

Originally posted by eminmetehan:

You are so full of nonsense trying to label a legit steam issue as ''their pc'', currently im trying to download a patch for New world which is only 82 mb and should take like a minute maximum. Indeed steam downloading the actual patch in a minute but somehow this 82 mb patch requires 17.6 GB disk usage!! How the heck is it even possible?? The worst of all writing speed constantly changes increasing to 100 mb then falling into BYTES while showing it will take over a year. The game is on nvme SSD so it can actually write 18gb in a minute as well but even then heavy HDD sound is coming from PC that only God knows what the heck steam doing there as windows, steam, the game are installed on the SSD so HDD shouldn't be even working!!! There is a huge bug somewhere like steam confusing game locations and unneccearly moving data around without any question, in fact for me this problem happens for only two games Bannerlord and New world that i installed both of them to HDD then later moved them to SSD, what a freaking ''surprise''...

If anybody wants to resolve this problem you have no option but wait steam to finish it's nonsese and next time don't move games because apparently in 2021 steam can't handle such a simple thing.

That 82mb is been integrated into the game install. It is not simply a case of put it at the end, the middle or the beginning. Secondly how a game is structured and how it is patched is entirely on the developer of the game. Steam is only the tool.

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by eminmetehan:

currently im trying to download a patch for New world which is only 82 mb and should take like a minute maximum. Indeed steam downloading the actual patch in a minute but somehow this 82 mb patch requires 17.6 GB disk usage!! How the heck is it even possible??

Because whatever data is contained in the small patch is required for the 17.6GB of the game files. However the game was built, the developer was able to push out a small patch as opposed to full files. If it wasn't for the ability to patch games, you'd be here wanting to know why your game as 17.6GB of updates!?!

Relax. Patching has been around for decades. The only reason you're noticing it now is Steam never spelled out exactly what was being done during the updates. Countless posts asking why it's taking so long to update a game when the update was only a few KB. Well, Steam made it possible for you to know. It's patching.

[J4MESOX4D]

Originally posted by eminmetehan:

Originally posted by Iceira ( W10 64bit ):

There is no arguing, ask any technician or IT-Supporter, no Disk can write that slow,
any from any games, to now some game that is a diffrent issue.

get a spare pc, or friends laptop, can you reproduce the error , i doubt it. thats why i and other think its hes pc.

and even then you have issue with diffrent game NBA 2k21 , but you dont say anything about free storage space, let make one thing clear , there is you and isp and there partners and steam in other end.

and if you can test with other pc , and get fast Download , then its that pc , end of argument and not a steam problem or isp , but hes pc that has a issue.

and if he can proof it take it up with own ISP , and let them proof its steam that cant delivere speed.

thats network in a nut shell, ( you always has a cause noone can use any excuess in where is the problem ) network point of view.

You are so full of nonsense trying to label a legit steam issue as ''their pc'', currently im trying to download a patch for New world which is only 82 mb and should take like a minute maximum. Indeed steam downloading the actual patch in a minute but somehow this 82 mb patch requires 17.6 GB disk usage!! How the heck is it even possible?? The worst of all writing speed constantly changes increasing to 100 mb then falling into BYTES while showing it will take over a year. The game is on nvme SSD so it can actually write 18gb in a minute as well but even then heavy HDD sound is coming from PC that only God knows what the heck steam doing there as windows, steam, the game are installed on the SSD so HDD shouldn't be even working!!! There is a huge bug somewhere like steam confusing game locations and unneccearly moving data around without any question, in fact for me this problem happens for only two games Bannerlord and New world that i installed both of them to HDD then later moved them to SSD, what a freaking ''surprise''...

If anybody wants to resolve this problem you have no option but wait steam to finish it's nonsese and next time don't move games because apparently in 2021 steam can't handle such a simple thing.

82mb is the size of the update - the core file architecture still may require a complete re-write to accommodate the patching. You should try and consult the patch notes if available which may provide further information but just because something is small doesn't mean that's all there is to it. Some updates on the likes of Ark may only be 9mb but require a 60gb write. Not a bug.

[ArchangeQc]

Originally posted by CHAO:

I have checked my drive for issues and speed and it's fine, so when I download any game from Steam the write to disk speed is very slow, and it also throttles my internet speed because it cannot download more than it can write.
Any idea to fix that?

I hope I will help some of you :

From what I understand steam is using the drive on which it is installed to manipulate the files prior installation. For example, If you have installed steam in d:/steam (HDD 8 mo/s) but installing game in e:/steamlibrary (SDD 300 mo/s), then you are limited to 8 mo/s

For everyone having the same problem here is what I did to fix this :

Deinstall steam from the disk where it is but keep the games installed on the SDD drive (or whatever disk you want them on), then reinstall steam on the same disk.

[my new friend]

Originally posted by ArchangeQc:

I hope I will help some of you :

From what I understand steam is using the drive on which it is installed to manipulate the files prior installation. For example, If you have installed steam in d:/steam (HDD 8 mo/s) but installing game in d:/steamlibrary (SDD 300 mo/s), then you are limited to 8 mo/s

For everyone having the same problem here is what I did to fix this :

Deinstall steam from the disk where it is but keep the games installed on the SDD drive (or whatever disk you want them on), then reinstall steam on the same disk.

Or just use a symbolic link to the better drive for the downloads folder.