Download speeds to external drive agonizingly slow

[MisurePidgeon]

Yes, I know that HDD's are not as fast as SSD's, but this is well beyond that.

This is a problem I've had for a while now and have just lived with, but it's incredibly annoying so I was wondering if anyone has a possible solution. I have google fiber internet which speedtest clocks at 920 MBPS. When I download to my laptop's SSD, everything downloads at the speed one would expect. However, whenever I try to download anything to my external HDD (Its a 5TB drive, less than a year old, name brand) it is abysmal. The "creating local game files" step takes a really long time, and then the actual download takes even longer.

To give a frame of reference, I decided to run a little test with Amnesia Dark Descent, which in the downloads page is said to be 1.2 GB. When I selected my internal drive, the Creating Local Game Files screen lasted 5 seconds, and the download was two minutes fifteen seconds start to finish. When I tried the same game on my external, the Creating Files page took about five minutes and the actual download took a whopping 45 minutes. Again I know my SSD is obviously going to be faster, but I can not accept that that is a normal separation between the two.
Steam says the Network Usage speeds are the same during both tests, but the Disk Usage is much lower on the external or sometimes just out of wack in general. It seems to work at a normal speed for a few minutes then it plummets to something ridiculous like 40 KB/s for a while than repeats the cycle.

Whenever I use my external for anything else its usually pretty zippy, for example transferring a 5GB movie from my laptop to the external usually only takes a minute or two, and the windows progress bar says its transferring at a rate of 140 MB/s.

Everything I've been able to find doing research on the topic all seems to posted in 2017, which leads me to believe something was changed in an update then and hasn't been fixed since.



Does anyone have any thoughts? Tips? Tricks?

[Illusion of Progress]

The first thing to check is to make sure you're using USB 3.1 or USB 3.0 at least, as USB 2.0 is far too slow.

Beyond that (meaning, if you are), it's probably just how it goes. In your case, a network connection that fast is probably fast enough that a slower storage drive can bottleneckek just the download process (and that is just accounting for downloads, whereas Steam also has to unpack things and set them up). This will apply especially if this is some 5,400 RPM external drive.

Hard drives can be VERY slow relative to SSDs at some tasks. If you've ever run a check disk on an SSD versus a larger HDD, you'll see. My 1 TB SSD (SATA III, so not even the faster M2/NVMe stuff) took like... it was in the neighborhood of 15 to 30 minutes, (I didn't count so this is a seriously rough estimate but it was half hour-ish or less). Meanwhile, my 5 TB HDD (which is an internal 7,200 RPM Western Digital Black so not a slower one) took like 8 hours. I have a 5 TB external drive also (Western Digital Elements). It is fine for storage backup, which is all I use it for, but it's awfully slow. I'd never use it for games or active disk space.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Download games to ssd. When done verify it. Then use the move option to move the game to secondary drive if you like.

[_I_]

yes
usb has horrible iops
steam hammers the drive when downloading/installing
it downloads to the drive, and also reads/unpacks/writes to the drive all at the same time

install the game to the internal drive
after its installed you can use steam move it to the external

[[☥] - CJ -]

Are you using the USB port on the back of the MB or the Front headers?

I would also use Crystal Diskmark to bench the drive and see what read/write speeds it comes up with.

140MB/s is typical for a decent HDD

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Never download directly to externals. Download to internal drive, then when done and data is verified, copy or move it to the external.

[yungskayda]

Bad 💀 Motha eredeti hozzászólása:

Never download directly to externals. Download to internal drive, then when done and data is verified, copy or move it to the external.

i tried doing this and it made me "update" the game, it started from the beginning on my new dreive

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

yungskayda eredeti hozzászólása:

Bad 💀 Motha eredeti hozzászólása:

Never download directly to externals. Download to internal drive, then when done and data is verified, copy or move it to the external.

i tried doing this and it made me "update" the game, it started from the beginning on my new dreive

Use the Storage Manager to move the game.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

yungskayda eredeti hozzászólása:

Bad 💀 Motha eredeti hozzászólása:

Never download directly to externals. Download to internal drive, then when done and data is verified, copy or move it to the external.

i tried doing this and it made me "update" the game, it started from the beginning on my new dreive

No it does not, you clearly did something wrong then.
Do I have to go through each and every step?

cSg|mc-Hotsauce eredeti hozzászólása:

yungskayda eredeti hozzászólása:

i tried doing this and it made me "update" the game, it started from the beginning on my new dreive

Use the Storage Manager to move the game.

:qr:

What "storage manager" are you referring to?
It doesn't get any easier. Game Properties > Local Files > Move.
Select SSD Steam Library.

If you are going to put LARGE games on any mechanical drive, you're going to have issues. Now most if any of those issues are just going to be the fact that it's painfully slow. Well duh. Most mechanical HDDs can not write above 120MB/s or so. If you buy retail box externals, those are even worse cause all of those are junk. Most of those are very slow speed 2.5 inch laptop HDDs. If you are buying external HDD that are smaller then 3.5 inch; you're buying junk. Sorry I have to call anything that is too slow, junk. That's just me. It's what I consider people doing the same as just taking money and setting it on fire, or flushing it down the drain.

If you have a fast ISP, you are never using that speed if you are downloading to a mechanical HDD. Why? Hmm because it can't keep up. It's that simple. So it can only download as fast as your drive can perform writes.

So always download everything to an SSD *shrugs*
Then move it where ever you want.

[Zef]

You already answered your own question in your topic.

Why are you making your own life miserable doing direct transfer to USB with low IOPS instead of internal storage first.

If you want to keep everything external just setup/get your self a NAS or server and use that to move and store your data on.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes NAS is very easy to use and it will give you the benefits of external storage, but with near SATA SSD speeds when using drives like WD Black, Red Pro or Seagate IronWolf; especially in a RAID config.

Steam has no problems creating and using a Steam Library housed on NAS, as long as you have a stable drive and network. And know how to properly configure this within your OS. I no longer install internal HDDs, only SSDs. I have a NAS w/ 5x 8TB 7200rpm SATA HDDs in RAID. Not only houses most of my Steam Games (as Backups) but I can play them from other devices in the home, such as on a Laptop that only has a small amount of internal storage.

Anything is better then directly downloading to any kind of HDD over USB. Even if you had the best performance SATA HDD on the market, you'd be cutting the performance drastically by connecting it through USB.

If you lack funds, downloading game (one at time if need be) to SSD first, then verify it, then using the Steam Move option to move it to your Steam Library on external storage is the way to go if you lack funds to add more internal SSD storage for your Games.

Also in case you or others do not know, Steam allows you to transfer your Games from one device to another via network. So one could have a cheap Laptop w/ SSD for example sit there on the same Steam Account and download the game, while you do other stuff on your Gaming Desktop, then when the game is finished downloading to the Laptop, simply transfer it over to the Gaming Desktop, then verify it when done and play. Yes it is some extra work and all, but if that better suits your needs so you can enjoy doing other stuff on your Desktop, such as maybe streaming a show/movie or doing some work; etc.

[Fenny]

Bad 💀 Motha eredeti hozzászólása:

yungskayda eredeti hozzászólása:

i tried doing this and it made me "update" the game, it started from the beginning on my new dreive

No it does not, you clearly did something wrong then.
Do I have to go through each and every step?

cSg|mc-Hotsauce eredeti hozzászólása:

Use the Storage Manager to move the game.

:qr:

What "storage manager" are you referring to?
It doesn't get any easier. Game Properties > Local Files > Move.
Select SSD Steam Library.

If you are going to put LARGE games on any mechanical drive, you're going to have issues. Now most if any of those issues are just going to be the fact that it's painfully slow. Well duh. Most mechanical HDDs can not write above 120MB/s or so. If you buy retail box externals, those are even worse cause all of those are junk. Most of those are very slow speed 2.5 inch laptop HDDs. If you are buying external HDD that are smaller then 3.5 inch; you're buying junk. Sorry I have to call anything that is too slow, junk. That's just me. It's what I consider people doing the same as just taking money and setting it on fire, or flushing it down the drain.

If you have a fast ISP, you are never using that speed if you are downloading to a mechanical HDD. Why? Hmm because it can't keep up. It's that simple. So it can only download as fast as your drive can perform writes.

So always download everything to an SSD *shrugs*
Then move it where ever you want.

Literally logged in at 1am because your entitled attitude pissed me off so much. Grow up.

[[☥] - CJ -]

Old Thread.

[Sikobae]

Bad 💀 Motha eredeti hozzászólása:

Well duh. Most mechanical HDDs can not write above 120MB/s or so.

The one I have is running 140 at 60% filled. Dead empty its more like 180.

Even if this were actually true, you're still barely undersaturating a gigabit connection (125). So no, you're not throttling a steam download much if at all unless your hardware is really old, really cheap, or failing.

[Lord Flashheart]

My guess is that it is an SMR drive. Shingled magnetic Recording is the term I think.

[Cathulhu]

The USB protocol as the middleman isn't helping matters either.