Steam problem with HDD

[Michaelsws]

Recently i have been having problems with my steam downloading new games on to my 2nd storage drive which is my HDD (just less than a year old).

Whenever I download/update a game that is located in the HDD, i get DISK WRITE ERROR, hear a buzzing noise from the disk and the HDD crashes (not showing up in File explorer for a few mins).

 

Initially, I thought it is just failed/died but I just downloaded Valorant and I can play it perfectly fine. I even reinstalled Valorant on the same disk and everything is ok. It made me suspect that it could be steams problem but im not sure. I do have some Steam games downloaded into my C drive which is a SSD. The SSD does not crash when I download/update Games into it.

 

If anyone has any tips on how to solve this problem, a reply would be greatly appreciated.

If you are going to suggest to buy a new disk please recommend models/brands while keeping in mind that in my country PC parts are quite expensive (so no HDD + SSD partitioned as cache). I do not need much storage just around 512gb is enough for the next year or so.

[Michaelsws]

13 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

Not sure exactly what your problem may be, but what I do generally is download all games to my SSD so it downloads more quickly, and then move it to the HDD if I don't play the game too often. That may solve your issue if you move it after the fact.

Thanks for the reply. After reading your tips I tried to download a steam game to my SSD then move it to my HDD. Unfortunately, when its identifying game files the same DISK WRITE ERROR occurs. BUT the transfer of the game files is perfectly fine, all 20gb if game files transferred to my HDD. Pretty strange.

[Guest]

" hear a buzzing noise from the disk and the HDD crashes "  I'd remove something that did that in my computer.. lol

[Michaelsws]

1 minute ago, si1enze said:

" hear a buzzing noise from the disk and the HDD crashes "  I'd remove something that did that in my computer.. lol

Thanks for the reply. Yep but its only when downloading/reading steam games using steam client. When i transfer files from my SSD to the HDD it does not have any noises. It if not for me being able to use the HDD without errors/noises for every other use I would have gone straight to the conclusion that I need to replace it.

Indeed I will replace it soon if the buzzing occurs more. Buying online is unreliable here so Im looking for solutions I could try first.

[Guest]

Ah ok.. How is the drive mounted right now, orientation-wise?

[Michaelsws]

1 minute ago, si1enze said:

Ah ok.. How is the drive mounted right now, orientation-wise?

Tucked securely in a drive rack horizontally.

[Guest]

Sounds like you got a bad drive unfortunately.. =\

[Nasty Clean Poncho]

Before you replace any of your hardware, I would make sure that your computer is looking at/trying to read the files from the correct location. I have seen similar problems from people that will download a game to their SSD and then move it to their HDD (or vice versa for some reason) and then when trying to launch/install the game things can happen such as "game downloads to location 1, gets moved to location 2, and then when trying to launch the game your computer tries to do this from location 1" or "game downloads to location 1, accidentally gets installed to the same location, and then gets moved to location 2." There is basically a number of different ways that your computer can end up looking for something it knows is there but can't find. This doesn't usually create problems that people can hear but it's not completely out of the realm of possibility.

[Michaelsws]

15 minutes ago, Nasty Clean Poncho said:

Before you replace any of your hardware, I would make sure that your computer is looking at/trying to read the files from the correct location. I have seen similar problems from people that will download a game to their SSD and then move it to their HDD (or vice versa for some reason) and then when trying to launch/install the game things can happen such as "game downloads to location 1, gets moved to location 2, and then when trying to launch the game your computer tries to do this from location 1" or "game downloads to location 1, accidentally gets installed to the same location, and then gets moved to location 2." There is basically a number of different ways that your computer can end up looking for something it knows is there but can't find. This doesn't usually create problems that people can hear but it's not completely out of the realm of possibility.

Thanks for the reply. Well when i moved it to my HDD it detected it. It was just identifying files which were already there, then it crashed. You might have misunderstood the initial post as the problem was not Game not detecting, but actually disk drive crashing when downloading/updating/accessing steam game. I see your tips are very useful but unfortunately that was not the problem in this case.