Extremely low disk usage

[Super_Platypus787]

Hello, I've recently been having issues with my disk usage. I've used CrystalDiskMark 8 to see the writing and reading speeds of my disk, yet they show no problem there. Though here on steam, my downloads use at most 20 mbps for my disk and extend the download time to ridiculously long wait times.

I'd like to explore a solution that doesn't involve me having to delete steam, since I have a lot of games installed at the moment. Thanks for the help.

[Sergeant Tuff-Stuff]

Doesn't low disk usage apply to how much space is left on the disk,not its speed?

[Elucidator]

An analogy:

You own a company.
The employees of that company arrive at a slow pace one by one causing most of the employees to arrive late; too late in your opinion.
Now you're asking us for a solution.

Here's the thing: We don't know the cause.
I am making this analogy, because it can literally be anything at this rate. We don't know how big or small the company is, where it is located and how easy it is to reach, how much the workspaces look for each employee, who the floorboss is and how they behave towards the employees, how much the employees get paid, whether they get the time to visit the bathroom or not, etc.

In case of your computer, this translates to "We have no clue about your PC. How it is connected to the internet, how much space you have left or the bandwidth of your connection, what the settings are of the involved stuff, whether or not parts of your system get enough power or if there are power saving setting / green power settings involved, whether your disk needs to do other tasks, etc."

Yes... you can see how complicated a computer is and that you can indeed compare it to a company.
and with it you can also hopefully see that we can't really tell you anything if you don't tell us anything.
but perhaps you now have an idea where you could look to find a solution to the problem.

[Super_Platypus787]

Originally posted by Sergeant Tuff-Stuff:

Doesn't low disk usage apply to how much space is left on the disk,not its speed?

Not really, I have a 2 Terabyte SSD with 279 GBs of free space, so that's not the issue (can use 1.8 TB, and have 1.52 TB occupied)

[Super_Platypus787]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

An analogy:

You own a company.
The employees of that company arrive at a slow pace one by one causing most of the employees to arrive late; too late in your opinion.
Now you're asking us for a solution.

Here's the thing: We don't know the cause.
I am making this analogy, because it can literally be anything at this rate. We don't know how big or small the company is, where it is located and how easy it is to reach, how much the workspaces look for each employee, who the floorboss is and how they behave towards the employees, how much the employees get paid, whether they get the time to visit the bathroom or not, etc.

In case of your computer, this translates to "We have no clue about your PC. How it is connected to the internet, how much space you have left or the bandwidth of your connection, what the settings are of the involved stuff, whether or not parts of your system get enough power or if there are power saving setting / green power settings involved, whether your disk needs to do other tasks, etc."

Yes... you can see how complicated a computer is and that you can indeed compare it to a company.
and with it you can also hopefully see that we can't really tell you anything if you don't tell us anything.
but perhaps you now have an idea where you could look to find a solution to the problem.

2 TB SSD with 279 GB of free space (can use 1.8 TB, and have 1.52 TB occupied), reading speed of 3.6 GB/s and writing speed of 2.9 GB/s, internet speed of 10 mbps to 80 mbps. Instead of writing a whole analogy you could've asked for the specs mate.

As for settings, I've tried setting steam in a higher priority in task manager, but it's had no effect. All other software runs with normal disk speeds

[Elucidator]

Yes, I could have, but I know people complain very often about slow speeds. I know they look for other people's threads and then hijack them, and I also know almost none of them share anything.
My analogy isn't directed at you, but rather pre-emptively directed at anyone who wants to talk about this or related stuff.
>speak of the devil, another one showed up:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/4511003079823508993/
just saying. Anyway..


If you're used to it downloading faster, then
try running Drive Optimizer on the SSD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Drive_Optimizer


I don't see why you're suspecting the SSD to be the cause for the slowdown honestly.
If the SSD has its own driver, try updating it.
Try looking at the software your SSD seller provides. (Most companies have some kind of firmware update tool for their SSD at least, perhaps that helps. Some companies also provide software that help increase its efficiency.)

Look through Hardware Monitor at your SSD's driver settings. You can likely disable power saving settings somewhere at least.
Feel free to turn off 'write caching on the device' and see if that helps.


Edit:
I am suspecting it's a bit more than this though. I am suspecting its Windows and whatever settings you have on it doing it; slowing down the downloads I mean.
Why? because Windows being Windows likes green power, power saving, etc. And also companies are pushing this with their hardware.

Steam, the steam client, runs in a rather odd way on your system.
Steam.exe isn't the program that downloads the file. It's likely one of the Webhelper.exes


The NIC, the CPU, and the SSD all work inside your computer to deliver whatever file you're downloading.
Aside this, you have the cable (of wifi), the router, the internet access provider, also influencing it.

Usually, slow downloads are caused by Windows, the OS. Simply because of some settings.
Steam is more or less seen as a not important background task by Windows, because of the Steam Client Service and nonsense it pulls.
thanks to that, it by default downloads slower than your browser.
which is great if you want to watch youtube I guess...

but anyway this is why you need to intensively tweak your system, especially the driver settings (hardware monitor) to prevent it from running on lower power when in use.