Why does Steam use my slowest drive as a temp to install new data for a game???

[RunForRest]

The game is not even installed on that HD, its not set as default (was in the past) and i have plenty of space on my default SSD and even mroe space on a NVME

[Iceira]

Have you fiddle with vdf file or assing letters some steam user did this in the past.
if not make steam ticket about, only them with the problem can get help.

[RunForRest]

Mm not that i would know

[Iceira]

Originally posted by RunForRest:

Mm not that i would know

thats why i ask you, only you know if you did this, make steam ticket because it seem you know right way and settings, and that why steam might want to look at this in whats wrong.


Feel free to try steam fluchh cmd ( google it )
do have account and pw rdy.

You can also try delete web cache and DL cache

I doubt its this but sometiems we have seen clean up fix things, that dont look like its part of outdate cookie/cache.

And its here we scrats our heads,

Not the first time webhelper cleanup solve alot of issue.

[RunForRest]

I canceled the install - now steam wants do download the whole game again (90GB) WTF

[Iceira]

Originally posted by RunForRest:

I canceled the install - now steam wants do download the whole game again (90GB) WTF

Do have plenty of free space. ( way more then needed ) DL size multipled by 2-3 )

[RunForRest]

i have
steam gets more and mroe annoying ffs

[Ferox_Stormdragon]

which drive is Steam installed? as that is where the downloading folder is.

[RunForRest]

Nah Steam is on C: (SSD) my slow HD is D: (was my old default), game was installed to M: (SSD) with plenty of room. Now moved the game to Q: my newest NVME since i have to redownload anyway - so far D: isnt used anymore by the install - i really wonder why that happened, really weird

[xarvn]

I've been thinking about this for a while and so this is just my guess so I could be completely wrong. When SSDs first became available, one concern was over the longevity of flash memory. Unlike hard drives which have essentially unlimited read/write cycles, flash memory cells have a limited number of times you can write to them. This was a big concern at the time considering how comparatively expensive SSD storage was. I would imagine that software was written so as to deliberately avoid excessive writes to SSD drives such as would be required for caching operations. It is also likely that this legacy code--which would deliberately prioritize using hard drives instead of SSDs for "temp" storage--still lives on.

[Cinemax]

Originally posted by xarvn:

I've been thinking about this for a while and so this is just my guess so I could be completely wrong. When SSDs first became available, one concern was over the longevity of flash memory. Unlike hard drives which have essentially unlimited read/write cycles, flash memory cells have a limited number of times you can write to them. This was a big concern at the time considering how comparatively expensive SSD storage was. I would imagine that software was written so as to deliberately avoid excessive writes to SSD drives such as would be required for caching operations. It is also likely that this legacy code--which would deliberately prioritize using hard drives instead of SSDs for "temp" storage--still lives on.

Seems plausible but yeah not what's going on. A few things - HDDs do not have a set number of writes, but they do have a mechanical failure rate that approaches 99.9%~ with enough writes,
actual # of writes to failure threshold varies significantly by OEM. SSDs have a lot more NAND flash than advertised to replace failed gates that become locked in RO after enough write/erase functions, governed by the controller and device firmware, again, the amount of extra NAND varies by OEM, sometimes up to 2x advertised. Most likely, the SSD will outlast the computer with the typical 7 year lifecycle under normal use, including high frequency write functions like memory paging (which will cause exponentially more damage than Steam ever could).
Generally it should use the downloading folder on whatever drive is targeted. Previous installs, moving games between steam directories, and most often failed partial downloads can trip it up.

[RunForRest]

Mmm weird if steam would use just any drive without asking first
Or mabye i was wrong and it was a coincidence that the system did something on the drive while steam was using another and because the new drives are so fast i didnt see the workload in taskmanager because its so low compared to a slow HD drive. Il keep an eye on this

Originally posted by Cinemax:

Generally it should use the downloading folder on whatever drive is targeted. Previous installs, moving games between steam directories, and most often failed partial downloads can trip it up.

Jea this could be. My Win10 install is very old and i moved stuff around quite alot. Not the Steam install on C though. The SSD should be fine, i checked a few month ago with CrystalDiskInfo

[Cinemax]

Originally posted by RunForRest:

Mmm weird if steam would use just any drive without asking first
Or mabye i was wrong and it was a coincidence that the system did something on the drive while steam was using another and because the new drives are so fast i didnt see the workload in taskmanager because its so low compared to a slow HD drive. Il keep an eye on this

I bet it's memory paging while the cabinet is unpacking. In Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory > Change... Does your HDD say "System Managed"? If so that's your problem boss.

[RunForRest]

Jepp ur right, so i move the pagefile to the fastest NVME? Although thats not the OS drive ?

[xarvn]

@Cinemax: You make good points which I agree with entirely. However I was only touching on perceptions of Steam users in the past when SSDs first became available. The priority at the time was to limit unnecessary writes to SSDs otherwise users would complain. Technology has found ways to alleviate many problems of the past and do away with customers' concerns by-in-large.

OP:
Here is a similar discussion but I am not sure if the "solutions" discussed therein will help:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/4337600100422348998/

[Cinemax]

Originally posted by RunForRest:

Jepp ur right, so i move the pagefile to the fastest NVME? Although thats not the OS drive ?

Yes I would move the page file to an SSD, that is not your primary, with plenty of space. I usually set it to fixed sized 2x my amount of RAM, ex I have 64GB of RAM so I set my Pagefile to 131072MB to 131072MB on my NVMe that only stores Steam Games. The page file adds a non-negligible amount of wear, but the Steam games, which are Read Only aside from sporadic updates, don't contribute much wear at all (as we established - the erase function is what slowly causes the logic gates to fail, not read operations). That way, the disk space used doesn't change (no surprise low disk space) and there is enough paging available to cover whatever you need to keep enough RAM free for ops. The system managed seems to go from like 4GB to 3x total memory if it has enough space, which is just needlessly chaotic if you do things that actually fill up disks, like modern day games. So fixed size on your preferred drive, min and max both set to double your available RAM, should cover almost all use cases. Make sure you click "Set" to apply the change.