How to make steam decompress files only after downloading the entire game/update?

[Cloud]

I'm not sure if this is a stupid question or not, but when I downlead an update or a game, my write amount on my SSD is significantly higher than the download speed on steam, making me think there is compression. The issue is that the decompression(I assume) maxes out my SSD to 100% and really screws with downloads to the point that I have to limit download speeds to not max out my (modem) SSD. Is there a way to make it so steam really only unpacks files once the game/update is fully downloaded?

[Azure Fang]

Sadly there's no control over patterning. Steam unpacks after each chunk and there's no way to change that.

[Satoru]

It’s irrelevant as steam stops downloading any other files while the decompression and patching process occurs. Limiting the bandwidth doesn’t do anything other than make the entire process slower

[Muppet among Puppets]

Originally posted by Cloud:

The issue is that the decompression(I assume) maxes out my SSD to 100% and really screws with downloads to the point that I have to limit download speeds to not max out my (modem) SSD.

What is your download rate?
Its likely not the ssd usage that makes something 100% when downloading.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

Originally posted by Cloud:

The issue is that the decompression(I assume) maxes out my SSD to 100% and really screws with downloads to the point that I have to limit download speeds to not max out my (modem) SSD.

What is your download rate?
Its likely not the ssd usage that makes something 100% when downloading.

My guess it’s a QLC drive where once you kill the cache the performance tanks

[Muppet among Puppets]

Originally posted by Satoru:

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

What is your download rate?
Its likely not the ssd usage that makes something 100% when downloading.

My guess it’s a QLC drive where once you kill the cache the performance tanks

That still requires download rate of 200 - 500 mbit. Depending on decompression rate.

[Cloud]

I figured out a fix. I found that disabling write caching in the ssd properties in device manager fixed it.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

Originally posted by Satoru:

My guess it’s a QLC drive where once you kill the cache the performance tanks

That still requires download rate of 200 - 500 mbit. Depending on decompression rate.

Once Steam stars patching a file you can easily saturate the cache. The OP plays a lot of online games which updates a lot of large files

The fact that the OP disabled write caching more or less signifies this being the case

[Muppet among Puppets]

Isnt write caching in windows? I get the impression write cache is benefitial for qlc

[Cloud]

Originally posted by Cloud:

I figured out a fix. I found that disabling write caching in the ssd properties in device manager fixed it.

I take that back, apparently this only worked for one day. Currently my SSD is reading 200 KB/s and writing 127 MB/s at 100% even though the download itself is going pitifully slow, all of this taken up by the system and the steam processes, although the system process lowers with steam if I pause the update, so I imagine they're linked.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Cloud:

Originally posted by Cloud:

I figured out a fix. I found that disabling write caching in the ssd properties in device manager fixed it.

I take that back, apparently this only worked for one day. Currently my SSD is reading 200 KB/s and writing 127 MB/s at 100% even though the download itself is going pitifully slow, all of this taken up by the system and the steam processes, although the system process lowers with steam if I pause the update, so I imagine they're linked.

Again your write speeds are limited by

1) your cpu
2) your disk IO
3) your antivirus

I’m going to guess you have a QLC drive that saturates the cache quickly causing you to write out to the slow QLC

Either that or your anti virus is constantly reading the files causing the performance to tank

[Muppet among Puppets]

Originally posted by Cloud:

I take that back, apparently this only worked for one day. Currently my SSD is reading 200 KB/s and writing 127 MB/s at 100%.

QLC read with normal ssd speeds all the time. So 200kB read is definitely something wrong.

[Cloud]

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

Originally posted by Cloud:

I take that back, apparently this only worked for one day. Currently my SSD is reading 200 KB/s and writing 127 MB/s at 100%.

QLC read with normal ssd speeds all the time. So 200kB read is definitely something wrong.

Second update: I believe it was the compression of that certain game's files. I was downloading Titan Fall 2 and I was getting like 13MB/s max with stops and then I would pause and switch to downloading CSGO2 and I would get like 70MB/s smooth both with max SSD usage.

[гвоздежар]

Originally posted by Cloud:

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

QLC read with normal ssd speeds all the time. So 200kB read is definitely something wrong.

Second update: I believe it was the compression of that certain game's files. I was downloading Titan Fall 2 and I was getting like 13MB/s max with stops and then I would pause and switch to downloading CSGO2 and I would get like 70MB/s smooth both with max SSD usage.

Hi, did you fix this?

[76561199209629721]

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