DISK BUSY

[Histfire]

Something needs to be done about this.

It slows my system to a crawl and it is not my hardware. I've tried Steam on various operating systems and the same thing occurs. It only tends to happen on updates to particular games, but I'm not buying into the beliefs that some people hold that it is moving pieces of the game whilst downloading or overwriting other parts. Why "move" pieces? That's foolish.

When certain games update, i.e Payday 2 and Path of Exile (among others), the HDD is hit so badly to the point of it reaching 100%. Checking the system resource monitor points it towards the System processes, but it doesn't show which. However it is TRIGGERED by Steam on these particular titles. It not to do with anti-virus.

The disk usage total goes to 100%. The read totals are low and the write totals don't even equate to anywhere NEAR 2MB, so the question is, why is it that certain games or a particular Steam update sometime last year, made this client so fecking annoying to update particular games with?

Total DISK I/O thread saturation is occuring when this happens. Originally I thought it was Windows in the past but I always see it is Steam that is the problem.

When is this going to be solved? It's been like this since some time last year... whoever did that stupid ass update needs to get rid of it because it's made updates to certain games very slow and it drastically effects the performance of my computer.

Note: No my HDD is not dying. It is not slow. It is not overfilled. It is not anti-virus related. Yes my drivers are up-to-date. Yes my controllers are up to date. Yes I've ran Windows update. Yes, Steam is up to date as well and no my disk is not actually "busy", but Steam thinks it is.

I read a list somewhere that pointed to a particular set of games that trigger these problems, can't remember all of them but it's somewhere in the region of about 10-15 games that trigger this issue.

Fix it Valve. You may have cheaper games but I often find your client to be lacking.

[Discussions_Acc]

What is wrong with some peoples HDDs? I have a library on a NAS and it handles delta updates without a problem...

Just use search. You'll find enough threads about this.

[Histfire]

Not helpful. It isn't my HDD. It is Steam and particular games within Steam. Use Google. Funny how this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ occured after the Steam Update that introduced disk monitoring.

[Crypto Carlos]

Originally posted by Capt. Baldy:

Not helpful. It isn't my HDD. It is Steam and particular games within Steam. Use Google. Funny how this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ occured after the Steam Update that introduced disk monitoring.

I can tell you that it almost certainly IS your hard-drive - I was having a problem with steam game updates/general sustained hard drive usage slowing my system to a crawl, and it was an issue with the SSD I was using in a caching scheme via the Intel Storage Manager. Disabling the caching/the SSD solved the problem. Also, the way Steam updates work (as has been posted by others in the past), is it downloads the pieces of files it needs to update, then applies those changes to the original files rather than re-downloading large files a second time unnecssarily.

This saves the end user/Steam bandwidth, but if you're having issues with your hard drive/have a slow drive it will of course bog down your system to a moderate degree. I would run something like Scandisk/HD tune etc. on your drive to make sure there isn't anything wrong with the drive. I have had "Path of Exile" do several updates over the last week(s) just fine without my system becoming unusable, so I don't think it's a widespread issue with Steam, but local to certain users software/hardware configurations.

[Histfire]

Not my HDD. I'm not an idiot or an 75 year old woman who is using a computer for the first time.

It could be setup oriented but it isn't a fault with my hardware. Like people with certain configurations who get poor frame rates in games, others with similarly powerful setups seem to get high frame rates. Just like the HDD.

That specific update to Steam was the cause. I find it incredibly hard to predict that several thousand people got this magical issue overnight when the update came out on a very narrow range of games. How do you explain that?

Again, not my HDD.

Of course, it can't possibly be Steam.

[greg_chow_13]

Originally posted by Capt. Baldy:

Not helpful. It isn't my HDD. It is Steam and particular games within Steam. Use Google. Funny how this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ occured after the Steam Update that introduced disk monitoring.

He was not talking about a Google search,,,here Ill help you even more
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/search/?q=disk+busy

[Histfire]

Originally posted by greg_chow_13:

Originally posted by Capt. Baldy:

Not helpful. It isn't my HDD. It is Steam and particular games within Steam. Use Google. Funny how this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ occured after the Steam Update that introduced disk monitoring.

He was not talking about a Google search,,,here Ill help you even more
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/search/?q=disk+busy

I still don't find that helpful. The point to this is highlighting an issue that is evidently triggered by Steam. If none of you can accept that then that's up to you.

[greg_chow_13]

Well whats your setup? HDD, SSD, Both. steam on C and games installed to another drive? drive(s) size,speed,manufacture(preferably model), CPU. Last time you did a defrag, amount of free space on each. Ram. page file size/location

[Crypto Carlos]

Originally posted by Capt. Baldy:

Not my HDD. I'm not an idiot or an 75 year old woman who is using a computer for the first time.

It could be setup oriented but it isn't a fault with my hardware. Like people with certain configurations who get poor frame rates in games, others with similarly powerful setups seem to get high frame rates. Just like the HDD.

That specific update to Steam was the cause. I find it incredibly hard to predict that several thousand people got this magical issue overnight when the update came out on a very narrow range of games. How do you explain that?

Again, not my HDD.

Of course, it can't possibly be Steam.

There are a lot of people out there who don't know how to/can't be bothered to maintain their systems, have drives full to the brim and fragmented etc. I'm not saying Steam is perfect, but this really sounds like a HD issue to me, and as I said I had a similar issue and was ready to blame it on Steam, but it turned out to be an issue on my end. You can throw a tantrum at Vavle/everyone on here all you want, but if it's a configuration/hardware problem on your end (and you seem unwilling to even entertain that it could be), it won't do you any good. Also, if you want anyone to help you you might want to tone it down a bit.

[Satoru]

Again Disk busy means that the game is being patch which means I/O is being used. Unless you can show that tah disk busy light is on but there's zero IO being used that's different.

But the symptoms you're describing are 100% consistent with the patching system which is why teh disk busy light is on. STeam is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, patch the file

Payday2 has to patch 25GB OF FILES. This requires
1) Downloading the 1GB patch
2) Staging 25GB of patched files, which means 25GB of READING the original file, doing a patch diff, and writing the destination 25GBs
3) Then moves the 25GB of staged files to the destination

SO yes its' your hard drive because it has to effectively move around close to 75-100GB of data to patch Payday2. Unelss you think that can happen instantaneously via Seagate hard drive magic, its going to take time.

Path of Exile is similar, it has to patch several GB of data. Unsuprsingly that doesnt happen instantaneously

The alternative is to download the unpatched file game data pre-SteamPipe. For Payday2 it would mean you'd be downloading 25GB of data every single patch. SInce bandwidth is a limited and costly resource in most of the world, trading bandwidth for local disk space/CPU cycles is a better trade off.

[greg_chow_13]

Its not steam its the GAME COMPANY and the way they distribute patches.

Originally posted by Bobmuffins(reddit.com):

Payday 2 packages its files into giant, useless files- known as .bundle files. Pretty much nothing can open these except the PD2 engine and programs designed to crack these files.
These files have ridiculous levels of encryption on them- for example, here's a big ranty post I made on my Tumblr account about a month ago about it.
So, what Steam is doing is the following:
1) Decrypt ha8fd7qhkuias890sj2kas8sfdi3.bundle
2) Check what files are in that .bundle
3) Compare them with the .bundle files on Steam's servers
4) Download any inconsistencies
5) Recrypt the .bundle file

http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1z53my/the_new_disk_busy_problem_is_seriously_getting/

[aiusepsi]

I wrote a guide about what "disk busy" means and why it happens: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=233980713
Also, do note that the behaviour wasn't changed by adding the disk indicator. The indicator was created to explain the existing behaviour. See for example these threads that predates the indicator:

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/864957912685598059/
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/864976837937745457/

Edit: A couple of the points made above are slightly inaccurate. Satoru's step 3) is basically free; moving an entire file from one place to another on the same partition is an incredibly inexpensive operation, it doesn't add great expense to the process.

And the problem isn't the idea of bundling files in itself, it's that if the dev isn't careful when doing their bundling, they can cause small changes to be distributed over a large number of files, which gums up the works. Here's a post from indie dev Jonathan Blow talking about packaging, with reference to Steam: http://the-witness.net/news/2012/08/fun-with-package-sorting/

[Histfire]

Originally posted by yellowblanka:

Originally posted by Capt. Baldy:

Not my HDD. I'm not an idiot or an 75 year old woman who is using a computer for the first time.

It could be setup oriented but it isn't a fault with my hardware. Like people with certain configurations who get poor frame rates in games, others with similarly powerful setups seem to get high frame rates. Just like the HDD.

That specific update to Steam was the cause. I find it incredibly hard to predict that several thousand people got this magical issue overnight when the update came out on a very narrow range of games. How do you explain that?

Again, not my HDD.

Of course, it can't possibly be Steam.

There are a lot of people out there who don't know how to/can't be bothered to maintain their systems, have drives full to the brim and fragmented etc. I'm not saying Steam is perfect, but this really sounds like a HD issue to me, and as I said I had a similar issue and was ready to blame it on Steam, but it turned out to be an issue on my end. You can throw a tantrum at Vavle/everyone on here all you want, but if it's a configuration/hardware problem on your end (and you seem unwilling to even entertain that it could be), it won't do you any good. Also, if you want anyone to help you you might want to tone it down a bit.

Wow, such speculation. Dude, I've already said I'm not a technophobic old biddie. I maintain my system on a frequent basis. I have little fragmentation and again, it only effects a small number of games. I have 70 games installed, no other games other than THOSE two, regardless of how big the update is (or how small, could be something pathetically small like 20MB) are effected.

I cannot see how it my computer when the issue and the effects are so narrow. If it happened on many more games then I'd be more open to the claim that it was my disk, unless there are updates methods which differ (somehow) compared to the large majority of games on Steam.

I didn't suggest the indicator was the cause, I figured that the update itself had an effect on how Steam handled updates with certain games. Again I only got this issue on few game after that PARTICULAR UPDATE. Someone please explain to me how that is possible. If it is merely coincidence (and since it has happened to so many others, again on a very narrow band of games), then it is by the far the biggest coincidence Humans have ever witnessed on the face of the planet.

Edit: and the assumption that 100GB of data is moved is you just stabbing in the dark at the idea and it is wholey ridiculous.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Capt. Baldy:

I cannot see how it my computer when the issue and the effects are so narrow. If it happened on many more games then I'd be more open to the claim that it was my disk, unless there are updates methods which differ (somehow) compared to the large majority of games on Steam.

The games you mention, Payday2 and Path of Exile are the anomalies because theri patches frequently touch the ENTIRE game. Payday2 in particular because of their data struture means that any patch requires updating ALL GAME FILES. WHich now go north of 25GB.

You don't normaly see this issue because, for example, a 100MB SHogun2 patch may only patch a 2GB file, which is likely to go fairly quickly. Or a 500MB Skyrim patch may not touch that many files.

The behavior you are seeing is normal behavior for how the system operates, but are the edge cases due to the way the data in those games is arranged and how they have to update their games. All games patch in the exact same way. You're simply noticing the edge cases. But the system is working as intended. Nothign is 'wrong'. There is nothing to 'fix'.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

Edit: A couple of the points made above are slightly inaccurate. Satoru's step 3) is basically free; moving an entire file from one place to another on the same partition is an incredibly inexpensive operation, it doesn't add great expense to the process.

That is true if steam and your library are on the same drive. Though for me I have steam installed on a different drive than my main Steam library, so it does end up having to move the file generating I/O. But you're right that moving a file on the same drive is basically 'free'.

And the problem isn't the idea of bundling files in itself, it's that if the dev isn't careful when doing their bundling, they can cause small changes to be distributed over a large number of files, which gums up the works. Here's a post from indie dev Jonathan Blow talking about packaging, with reference to Steam: http://the-witness.net/news/2012/08/fun-with-package-sorting/

If the devs arent' careful with how they bundle files you can end up like how Starbound was. Where each patch was effectively 'download the entire file again'. But they fixed that a fwe months ago. Jonathan Blow's issue was pretty similar to what the Starbound devs were encountering.

http://playstarbound.com/nother-update-new-unstable-branch-on-steam/

Though i don't get the benefit of putting all your assets in a zip/pak file. I mean before that kinda made sense but it seems kinda redundant now. Well I assume they have a good reason.

You can argue that the Diesel Engine for Payday2 is horribly designed and such, but the fact that they only have to download a 1GB patch to get to all game files, means they're actually packaging things correctly. It's really the way the engine itself works and how those assets are packaged that make Payday2 so gigantic.

[Histfire]

I don't need to argue that the Diesel Engine sucks, because it does. Hit through walls by cloakers. Desync is common. Patches seem impossible because apparently Overkill say they don't ignore bugs, but they don't seem to be fixing the VOIP and sound loop problems so evidently they can't be patched... oh no wait a minute, they're just busy being ignorant.

Well it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ engine if it requires patching like that. A poor graphic game, which is piss easy to run, raped hardcore because it doesn't have an SSD solely for patching. That is ridiculous. Another reason to hate Overkill.

I really do hate Swedish developers.