Download Hell (Help).

[Bezerck01]

I've been having a persistent issue with steam downloads taking forever to actually download things weather this be updates or the games themselves, not due to slow internet speeds but due to what I can only describe as "Blips". My download screen looks like a heart rate monitor if that makes it easier to visualise.

To clarify, my internet speed it's 800+Mbps Download and 300+Mbps Upload and doing speed tests show this. I'm using ethernet with CAT 7 cables so it's not a connection issue.

I have tried everything Google has suggested this being:

Clear download Cache
Change region
Unlimit bandwidth
Disable throttling
Disable anti virus'
Re-Install steam.

None of these methods have had any effect.

Even when the downloads pick up I'm still only obtaining speeds of around 100mbps and they do not stay there for long before dropping to 0 again.

I am pulling my hair out over this, please help.

[Ogami]

Do you download to a oldschool HDD or a modern SSD?
Because Steam uses a download system where files are downloaded in "chunks", then unpacked and written in real time to the drive and then the next "chunk" follows and so on.
Especially if you have a slow HDD it may simply be that it cant keep up with the unpacking/writing files/downloading more files at the same time and basically gets "stuck" till everything is resolved. That mainly happens if you have very high download speed with HDD.

Whats also a possibility is that your antivirus program, be it standalone or Windows Defender if you are on Windows 10/11 are aggressively scanning freshly downloaded files which could also lead to the described behaviour, even on faster drives.
One reason i recommend whitelisting your Steam installation/library in your anti virus software.

Thats the first two things that come to mind with a problem like yours.

Edit: I overlooked that you already tried the antivirus thing,sorry.

[Iceira]

Steam event sale is not over , end 2 November

that man any Isp partners partner that vcant keep up with all them steam user DL, can be a bootleneck, and why you try change steam DL will not work if its your ISP taht doing it.

sense you are in england you can point at EU or US or denmark, you can even go to a zone where they are sleeping, then most heavy load are should be reduce, wont help you if its own ISP that is the bottleneck.

ps.
dont forget this has take years of steam event sale to learn sure all the clues was there always, but you forget we as user also require skills to see them, and read a network book might no be enough or be educate , you still need to see all them, little clues.
and typical only happend then steam has evetn sale , do note i and other did not say steam is the problem we suspect its our ISP's that is the weakest link ( if we can call it that )

just wait to you have past 2-3 after the event sale then most steam user have DL all and i bet your problem vannish, sure i can make mist you can have other issue in top of this same time, but ask any helper here they can tell you we see incresed network issue doing steam event sale.

even Disable anti virus( asa i said you sound slike you did all the possibilities, maybe.

All steram users should enable lan transfer to anyone on own lan atm. if other steam user is on own network ( multi source DL to you ) we can hope someday will be other pc outside own lan even , then it will be even faster.

also reduce wan line dl then many pc try dl from steam same game.

[Bezerck01]

Publicado originalmente por Ogami:

Do you download to a oldschool HDD or a modern SSD?
Because Steam uses a download system where files are downloaded in "chunks", then unpacked and written in real time to the drive and then the next "chunk" follows and so on.
Especially if you have a slow HDD it may simply be that it cant keep up with the unpacking/writing files/downloading more files at the same time and basically gets "stuck" till everything is resolved. That mainly happens if you have very high download speed with HDD.

Whats also a possibility is that your antivirus program, be it standalone or Windows Defender if you are on Windows 10/11 are aggressively scanning freshly downloaded files which could also lead to the described behaviour, even on faster drives.
One reason i recommend whitelisting your Steam installation/library in your anti virus software.

Thats the first two things that come to mind with a problem like yours.

Edit: I overlooked that you already tried the antivirus thing,sorry.

To be fair this makes sense what you are saying with the HDD, I am downloading it onto a Hardriver however its by no means old, it's a 3tb Seagate Barracuda and I've never faced issues like this in the past with any of my drives.

[Iceira]

speed test
https://www.speedtest.net/
bad packet test
https://packetlosstest.com/

ipv6
https://test-ipv6.com/
rule is if you isp use it, then you need it also.

[Iceira]

You will not find kind word on Seagate Barracuda here, you can find 1000 of pc user that lost things over and over with them disk in the past, and maybe why we dont buy them today ever.

[Bezerck01]

Publicado originalmente por Iceira W10:

You will not find kind word on Seagate Barracuda here, you can find 1000 of pc user that lost things over and over with them disk in the past, and maybe why we dont buy them today ever.

I've never heard anything bad about them in the past not have I ever had any issues with the drive.

[Iceira]

Publicado originalmente por Bezerck01:

Publicado originalmente por Iceira W10:

You will not find kind word on Seagate Barracuda here, you can find 1000 of pc user that lost things over and over with them disk in the past, and maybe why we dont buy them today ever.

I've never heard anything bad about them in the past not have I ever had any issues with the drive.

its in the past, we dont forget such as gamers here.

taken from toms hardware
Seagate gained a bad reputation for disk failures over the last few years

i was not rude here, we are NOT here to smack product down they did this to themself.
but they get caught in how can i say it all went online back then and then we could see all them Brand with gear thats simple dont live up to high standard.

well this was in the past what you have there start test with other disk or test dsk in other pc to make sure its not the disk.

this is how we learn it back then, do check seagates own support page on that drev also.

gl with it, cant say its that or network that has nothing to do with your current disk issue.

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

Publicado originalmente por Iceira W10:

You will not find kind word on Seagate Barracuda here, you can find 1000 of pc user that lost things over and over with them disk in the past, and maybe why we dont buy them today ever.

Never had a problem with a seagate drive ever. now western digital black drives i have. Damn thing squeaks like a mouse. I got their firecuda hybrid drives and they are still going years later.

[Iceira]

well they have learn form the past here,, we all know how disk internal software has been upgrade so, we dont see so many disk issue anymore, and yet we do see a new raised issue atm with alot of disk write error, atm its all from firmware issue to cable and so on, its a good mix of all and not so easy to ID. ( and we are not support here we are only user.

but if you ask other helper here they can see last 1-2 year more disk issue then before.

[Ettanin]

Publicado originalmente por Bezerck01:

To be fair this makes sense what you are saying with the HDD, I am downloading it onto a Hardriver however its by no means old, it's a 3tb Seagate Barracuda and I've never faced issues like this in the past with any of my drives.

You need a M.2 or PCIe SSD (SATA is too slow) to reliably download with speeds beyond 100 MBit/s (12.5 MByte/s), the reason is the high I/O effort Steam has on its downloads:
1. Decrypt the diff
2. Unpack the diff
3. Read from old file and diff chunk by chunk and compare, rebuild the affected file so it contains the alterations declared by the diff.
4. Delete old file

This is very efficient when it comes to download sizes, but slow if your I/O cannot cope with what comes in from the server side.

Spinny disks (HDDs) suck at random access because at the worst case, the next relevant 4 KB sector is ~10ms away.

Most other platforms either use BitTorrent (which works by chunk and infohash so is technically fine, but steals your upload), replace whole files (which is wasteful on bandwidth compared to Steam's solution) or come with patch executables (which is technically similar to what Steam does but unlike Steam, cannot detect and redownload damaged files).

[Bezerck01]

Publicado originalmente por Ettanin:

Publicado originalmente por Bezerck01:

To be fair this makes sense what you are saying with the HDD, I am downloading it onto a Hardriver however its by no means old, it's a 3tb Seagate Barracuda and I've never faced issues like this in the past with any of my drives.

You need a M.2 or PCIe SSD (SATA is too slow) to reliably download with speeds beyond 100 MBit/s (12.5 MByte/s), the reason is the high I/O effort Steam has on its downloads:
1. Decrypt the diff
2. Unpack the diff
3. Read from old file and diff chunk by chunk and compare, rebuild the affected file so it contains the alterations declared by the diff.
4. Delete old file

This is very efficient when it comes to download sizes, but slow if your I/O cannot cope with what comes in from the server side.

Spinny disks (HDDs) suck at random access because at the worst case, the next relevant 4 KB sector is ~10ms away.

Most other platforms either use BitTorrent (which works by chunk and infohash so is technically fine, but steals your upload), replace whole files (which is wasteful on bandwidth compared to Steam's solution) or come with patch executables (which is technically similar to what Steam does but unlike Steam, cannot detect and redownload damaged files).

To be fair I've been meaning to switch to SSD's the only thing putting me off has been the price over a HDD. I'm looking to get an M.2 anyway for the newer games that require stupidly fast load times (Cough cough Forza Motorsport). But in any instance looks like I'll just have to cough up some cash lol.