Network Drive Library Keeps Disappearing

[Doctor]

I use a network mapped drive to hold almost all of my games. The share runs on a Debian based server running ZFS and Samba and works great. The mapped drive on the Windows client seems to always be present on the system. I've never seen it in a disconnected or missing state. The server is always online.

I have this mapped drive added as "storage" in Steam with most of my games installed on it. Every once in a while, after a reboot of the Windows client machine running Steam, the "storage" location in Steam will be missing and none of the games will show as installed. The fix is simple, just open the storage settings and add the mapped drive again. All of the games show up and are available to play immediately. I do have Steam set to startup minimized on log on so that the games can update in the background

The problem is intermittent and more annoying than problematic. Has anyone else had this problem? I'm wondering if what's happening is that Steam occasionally can't access the storage for some reason initially on boot, but by the time I eventually open steam to play a game the mapped drive is accessible, but Steam couldn't access it initially and removed it as a storage repository.

[Satoru]

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4578-18A7-C819-8620

External Hard Drives

External hard drives are not recommended for use with Steam or Steam's games.

Aside from many potential performance issues, external hard drives may connect or disconnect from the computer at inopportune times as part of their normal operations. If you encounter this issue with an external drive, install Steam and your games to an internal drive instead.

[Yujah]

I'd expect that, yes, every once in a while the network mapping isn't ready before Steam is. You could test by seeing if it ever happens when you start Steam manually rather then automatically and if not, arrange to start it automatically on a delay. In Windows I believe this is to say through Task Scheduler.

[Vaemer-Riit]

You could disable the auto launch in steam and then use task sheduler to launch steam 30 sec or 1 min or so after logging in to allow your network drives time to reconnect.