Mods keep redownloading, how to stop it?

[Eluq9]

I'm subscribed to A LOT of mods (around 500) for a game. When I download any new mods, I copy them to an external hard drive for preservation purposes (in case they are ever deleted) and remove them from the downloads folder on my PC. This never gave me any issues.

I play the game on my desktop computer and keep ALL the mods on the external hard drive, completely disconnected and locked away in a drawer. I only re-connect the external hard drive to my PC whenever I want to use a certain mod and need to copy it from the drive. When I'm done with it, I delete that copy from my PC. My PC only has the actual game installed most of the time, all mods are stored away in the external hard drive.

I remain SUBSCRIBED to every single mod I have, even though the files aren't technically in my Steam folder at all. I do this so I can keep track of which mods get updated by the author (I can't mentally keep track of hundreds of mods and magically know when they get updated).

Normally, when I start up Steam after a while, it automatically downloads all the "new files" corresponding to each mod that got an update. Only the new files, though, not the whole mod. So I delete those files, make notes on which mods got updated, unsubscribe from them and subscribe again to re-download the whole mod with the update included. Then, I replace the copy on my external hard drive with the new version of the mod.

The problem is that sometimes (not always, seems to happen only after the Steam Client updates itself), when I start up the Steam client, it attempts to download EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE MODS I'm subscribed to, probably because the files are not anywhere in my PC and Steam tries to keep my mod folder updated. This results in a massive 100+GB download I cannot cancel. I can only pause it or clear the download cache, but it resumes every time I start up the client, over and over again.

Unsubscribing from the mods is not an option, because I want to remain subscribed to them all so Steam can automatically download the updated files and let me know that the update exists. Otherwise I would never know (we are talking about hundreds upon hundreds of mods). This method never gave me any problems.

This issue resolved itself once in the past, somehow, so there has to be a solution. Steam kept working perfectly and downloading ONLY the updated mods since then. But it's happening again after another Steam Client update, which I suspect must be the cause. It seems to "reset" my downloads and prompt every single mod to download. Normally, the mods can remain deleted from my PC without Steam prompting a redownload, only doing so when a mod is updated. I want it to work like that again.

Is there a solution for this? Any way to permanently cancel this mass download and prevent it from being triggered on start up? As I said, I managed to do it once in the past after tinkering with the options, but I have no idea how. And no, it didn't involve letting the massive download finish before deleting everything. Although I guess it would permanently mark the mods as "downloaded" and never trigger a download again. But I have no space for all that stuff at once.

Thank you in advance!

*Edit: Looking in the settings I noticed this option named "Clear download cache". If I'm not mistaken, clicking this would "uncheck" the downloads so to speak and redownload every file my folders are missing, whether they are updates to the game itself, whole mods, etc. Is this correct? I'm saying this because maybe the Client update somehow "unchecked" all my downloads, doing exactly the same as that option and triggering the mass download. I only had this issue the two times the Client updated. It's possible that every single download was unchecked and the client attempted to "correct" the missing files, even though it normally would only uncheck downloads and trigger them when the item itself got an update (mainly mods). Whatever I downloaded remained "checked" forever and it never attempted to download again, even if I removed the files. That's what I want.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Only keep subscribed to what you want to install.

Mark as favorite instead