Steam not downloading to secondary Hard Drive

[Mr Redwall]

So I have this situation where games will either be stuck in the stopping phase of downloading forever until force quit or it will be downloading for very long time with 0 Mbs on hard drive. To get to keep going I have to force quit every 5 to 10 minutes and sometimes have to restart the whole computer and sometimes that doesn't work.

When a game eventually downloads, it loads very slowly. Load screens that usually take 15 seconds now take upwards of an half an hour.

Things I have tried:

• Changing Steam Download Region
  
• Repairing Steam Library Folder
  
• Verifying Folder
  
• Reinstalling Steam on Primary SSD
  
• Reinstalling Steam on Secondary HDD
  
• Formatting Secondary HDD on Full and Quick
  
• Defragmenting Secondary HDD
  
• Clear Download Cache
  
• Run as Admin
  
• Adding exceptions to firewall
  
• Reconnecting via restart in offline mode
  
• Used SMART to see if drive is faulty, it was healthy on all accounts
  
• Resetting Internet
  
• Synchronizing time server
  
• Adjust Steam Bandwidth Settings
  
• Updating Drivers

The secondary drive is a 7200 RPM hard drive and is internal. I haven't had this issues on my older 5 year old laptop that also has a primary hard drive but no secondary hard drive.

Specs:

OS: Windows 10 Home
CPU: i7-9750H at 2.60 Ghz
GPU 1: Intel UHD Graphics 630 - 16 GB
GPU 2: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 - 22 GB
RAM: 32 GB
SSD: SATA Western Digital 512GB
HDD: NTFS Seagate 1TB
Network Adapter: Intel Wireless-AC 9560 160MHz

[crunchyfrog]

There are a couple more things to consider.

For a start are you SURE this is behaving wrongly? Because many games SHOULD download a bit, stop, unpack and decrypt, write, then start again, and so on. If you have a slower drive or a more "tired" drive, then more so.

Generally speaking, the limiting speed of Steam downloads IS the hard drive itself, not the internet because of this. Games like Payday 2 and Ark SE are notorious for this stop/start behaviour.

Also, hard drive space. You're supposed to run any drive with Steam on it NO MORE THAN 90% full. On top of this, when you download a game, you should allow up to THREE TIMES the total file size because it needs to uncompress and decrypt before writing the final data (Workspace in other words).

I metnion this because many people fall foul of this problem, where they may have a 1TB drive say, and have 850GB used, and go to download a 50GB game thinking they're fine, but they won't be.

And when you get too full guess what typically happens? Downloads stop, or get confused, or start writing in another place.

I know these might seem obvious points, but I have to ask.

[Mr Redwall]

I'm sure it should not behave this way. Certain games take even a week to download, if they do download. For internet speed I usually see around 30 to 100 Mbps. Even my older 5 year old computer with an HDD for primary drive doesn't see these issues. Furthermore, when they download, it takes much longer to load, even when on lower graphical and video settings than on the older computer.

For the HDD, it was completely empty, formatted, and had 1 TB (911 GB) when downloading. After trying to install Steam into the HDD directly and then downloading, it still had around 910 GB left

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by MrRedwall:

I'm sure it should not behave this way. Certain games take even a week to download, if they do download. For internet speed I usually see around 30 to 100 Mbps. Even my older 5 year old computer with an HDD for primary drive doesn't see these issues. Furthermore, when they download, it takes much longer to load, even when on lower graphical and video settings than on the older computer.

For the HDD, it was completely empty, formatted, and had 1 TB (911 GB) when downloading. After trying to install Steam into the HDD directly and then downloading, it still had around 910 GB left

Ah now, if you're saying it takes longer to load when downloaded then I think we're onto suspecting the hard drive is at fault, because that's nothing to do with Steam or the downloads. It's the only common denominator in those two scenarios.

I know you said you've tested it, but tests don't always show stuff. If you've got sectors failing, that's normally pretty indicative, but if you just have a slowly failing board in there, it often doesn't get reported.

Assuming you've addressed the very things I spoke of because your answer didn't say anything about them.

[Mr Redwall]

I used Crystal Disk and it shows it to be healthy

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by MrRedwall:

I used Crystal Disk and it shows it to be healthy

Did you read either answer?

Because you haven't responded STILL to my first one, and you haven't answered the second as I addressed that. I CLEARLY said failures of the kind I mentioned typically won't (or might not) show up.

The fact remains that there is one common denominator in downloading and playing - the drive itself. Not Steam. Steam is only used at the start for DRM purposes.

[Mr Redwall]

How do I determine if the drive is faulty. I have used other applications and files on the drive before and they have worked fine. This includes large files, videos, and even Origin for certain games.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by MrRedwall:

How do I determine if the drive is faulty. I have used other applications and files on the drive before and they have worked fine. This includes large files, videos, and even Origin for certain games.

There's a couple of ways.

Perhaps the easiest is to get another drive to swap it out with. If it's your OS drive, you'll have to clone it,. undoubtedly. Then see if things change.

You can do more intensive scans which will likely take a few hours,but even then it can be sometimes difficult to find errors like the one I suspect you are maybe suffering from.

So you can do either I guess, but swapping out would be more of a definitive result.


And note, the problem I suspect doesn't mean there's any errors or anything that you can pick up as I don't think there's anything wrong with the platter or read/write head. My concern is in the circuitry. If something is going bad, that could be slowing things down. Bad onboard cache for example.

Lastly, can you just confirm you understood the point about disk usage under Steam in my first post?

[Mr Redwall]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Lastly, can you just confirm you understood the point about disk usage under Steam in my first post?

I think I understand. For the part about that a game can take upwards of 3 times its size to download, I think I should be fine. I have 711 Free GB on the HDD and the largest game I have is 100 GB.

For the part about certain games may start and stop when downloading, I acknowledge that but games that are even just 10 GB or around that, would be downloading for over a day even on 50 Mbps for Internet speed, which should download it at around an hour or so.

Maybe I'm looking at any of this right. I don't know.

[Iceira]

And we are still back on not in full Performance. or in Battery mode or Balance ode = Reduce disk I/O.

do note OP complain over time spend on it,

it will be downloading for very long time with 0 Mbs
thats sounds like Antivirus blocking issue ( make steam.exe to allow rule. ) reboot pc require.

dont get me wrong here OP, this is a common mistake many steam user do.
and you can find several argued debat on this. ( you will even seen some as me got enough of this, if you cant DL then is possible AV app = ANTIVIRUS APPS or proxy settings
or your ISP has VIP portal that need to open traffic, but either Way if you have disk issue
simple test make a huge test copy if you can get past 40-60mb/s on own disk write on same deisk with read /write. then you have a issue with the disk.

rest is unpacking as crunchyfrog point out and do have free room enough.
i hve a 10 yeard old laptop thats faster then yours. ( if that is not proof enough, nothing will help you, to understand there is alot of bad choise, Laptop owners can do that reduce speed on disk. )

do note ( seen from a Laptop point of view if we can call it that )
do not have task that take CPU power m do not have things running write at disk all the time.
do not have Multi access , such as have game installed same place as OS or partition disk so you do access same harddisk with app or OS (only Laptop with 1 disk have no choise in this)

well that was best show case. ( try get ride of preinstall apps you dont use or need, some laptop is filled with it )

all this still end up with is laptop update and most new laptop has automatic check for Driver and Bios.

then all this is done
Try Iobits Driver booster, this is to show you how bad our Brand Support is.
we have so many onboard device that they have newer optimized drivers that manufatory dont care about. its like they focus on Stability, and give a ratts butt about new improved Drivers
just because i have no issue with it, dont mean you cant get into trouble with it.

ps.
dont feel bad about the smacking in a nice way im doing here.
you need to be a very educated and skilled person with alot of experience, you can find alot of diffrent tech person that dont agree with me , and i burn them all, so do get a own friend that has tech skill, this is complaicated and same time walk ina park, then you know what you are doing. a standard pc support will solved this within 1 hour.


do note there is a diffrence in Laptop experts and desktop experts.

and desktop experts, seem to think they are same, and they are not.

Laptop is build for max power saveing , and desktop is not.
even I/O on disk is effect by laptop, the performance mode is part of this.
or scematic option if you change them.

[Mr Redwall]

As far as performance goes, I've kept my laptop plugged in at all times and changed all the settings to max performance instead of anything close to battery saving. In this regard, I've done everything short of trying to overclock it. I also changed the settings in the control panel to make sure it doesn't sleep, hibernate, turn off, or even let the hard drive disk rest for over hours.

I already made the antivirus allow steam.exe. I also did in the firewall and vpn. I've tried disconnecting vpn and connecting vpn to see that the results are largely the same with or without vpn connected.

For the bloatware and unused apps, I deleted them day one. For the secondary hard drive I am installing them on, there is no apps on there expect steam. For steam I've tried having it installed on the primary drive and installing games on secondary drive and also tried installing steam on secondary drive and installing games on the secondary drive.

I've tried closing all programs and any unnecessary processes during installing to make sure it doesn't take away CPU power during installing.

I have updated my OS, drivers via driver booster 8 and checked manually on device manager and properties, and also updated BIOS.

[crunchyfrog]

Ah silly me, I didn't pick up on it being a laptop.

I've encountered an issue on my laptop as soon as I got it, and oddly enough my youngest daughter got it on her laptop too.

There seems to be a problem with Windows 10 where some computers that have power saving settings (so especially laptops) will royally ♥♥♥♥ up the disk usage, so it maxes out even when it's not in use.

So you could first check to see what's happening by bringing up your task manager when you're trying to donwload. If it sits at rock solid 100% on disk usage without fluctuating, then this IS likely to be it.

There's a registry settings to fix this and if this is the case, I can dig it out for you.

[Mr Redwall]

Yeah, that seems to be that. What are the registry settings?

[crunchyfrog]

Thank god for that!

The one I'm referring to is step 6 of this guide.
https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/100-disk-usage-windows-10-fixed/#g

Though if it still persists (and note from personal experience it took a couple of reboots of Windows for it to work), the other methods are worth checking too as they will impact performance.

Best of luck.

[Iceira]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Thank god for that!

The one I'm referring to is step 6 of this guide.
https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/100-disk-usage-windows-10-fixed/#g

Though if it still persists (and note from personal experience it took a couple of reboots of Windows for it to work), the other methods are worth checking too as they will impact performance.

Best of luck.

As i recall last time cruncy aient that a specific MSI issue.
but i bet OP will reply to MSI , and give hes warm friendly complain to them if thats the case.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Iceira:

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Thank god for that!

The one I'm referring to is step 6 of this guide.
https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/100-disk-usage-windows-10-fixed/#g

Though if it still persists (and note from personal experience it took a couple of reboots of Windows for it to work), the other methods are worth checking too as they will impact performance.

Best of luck.

As i recall last time cruncy aient that a specific MSI issue.
but i bet OP will reply to MSI , and give hes warm friendly complain to them if thats the case.

That's what I originally thought.

Until I realised my daughter's Lenovo laptop had it as well, and then started seeing more people with different laptops suffer it as well. There may have even been a desktop too though I can 't be sure.