Steam "Allocating disk space" at update takes forever lately

[Legraphista]

Hi,

 

I've noticed that lately the "pre-allocating storage space" step takes quite a while.

I've had an BeamNG update of 8MB and it took 10 minutes to pre-allocate space, during which it was constantly writing 40-50MB/s to my SSD

Right now I'm doing a 1.5 GB update to Cyberpunk and it's been like this for the past 30 minutes, chewing at my SSD:

 

 

Has anybody encountered/fixed this before?

This is ridiculous! 

[Kilrah]

How full is the drive?

For CP2077 its update method is trash, instead of just changing the couple of affected files and leave the rest untouched it basically makes a complete copy of the entire game to patch it then deletes the original files...

[Legraphista]

So you think it's game based? This one does the same too 

 

Also, for the CP update of 1.5GB I estimate that it must have written at least 200GB to my SSD

 

LE #1: The update above took 6 minutes of grinding for 22MB...

[Kilrah]

Yeah, just updated 4 steam games which didn't do that, but CP2077 did and Warzone/BO4 did that too now while they didn't use to... 

Guess it's the new "trend" in game distribution, with the "nice" side effect of requiring freaking 50+GB free just to be able to update a game...

[Morrie Sells Wigs]

17 hours ago, Legraphista said:

Hi,

 

I've noticed that lately the "pre-allocating storage space" step takes quite a while.

I've had an BeamNG update of 8MB and it took 10 minutes to pre-allocate space, during which it was constantly writing 40-50MB/s to my SSD

Right now I'm doing a 1.5 GB update to Cyberpunk and it's been like this for the past 30 minutes, chewing at my SSD:

 

 

Has anybody encountered/fixed this before?

This is ridiculous! 

I've had it too...gets on your tits after a while, doesn't it?

 

However, the most important question, the one we really need answering, is what is Golf It doing on your computer?

 

...and don't use the "it's my (insert young relative) who plays it" excuse, as that won't wash.

[Legraphista]

On 4/30/2021 at 7:12 PM, Maury Sells Wigs said:

I've had it too...gets on your tits after a while, doesn't it?

 

However, the most important question, the one we really need answering, is what is Golf It doing on your computer?

 

...and don't use the "it's my (insert young relative) who plays it" excuse, as that won't wash.

 

It's actually a fun game ... if you have friends to play with

[Mark Kaine]

i did notice something similar, sometimes even a 100mb patch would take forever...  verifying... copying... and then just randomly stops...  i think it took 1 hour or more last time...

 

something seems just odd/buggy, and its not my internet (seemingly)

 

Ironically exactly that sort of thing why i stopped playing on modern consoles...  

 

 

 

On 4/30/2021 at 1:52 AM, Kilrah said:

with the "nice" side effect of requiring freaking 50+GB free just to be able to update a game...

Aaaand i noticed this too, but its a different thing (maybe) because that doesn't explain why some ~50mb patches take forever...  not sure i want to entirely blame this on Steam, but its just something that literally never happened 1-2 years ago, Steam used to max out my internet, and simply has always been  blazing fast (except for occasional server issues , but this seems different, because it doesn't even try downloading, it simply "hangs")

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

that doesn't explain why some ~50mb patches take forever... 

See my post above, on a 100GB game even if the patch is 50MB it will copy the entire 100GB to a different location on the drive while applying the patch, then delete the original data... so you temporarily need 100GB free and it will take long, ages if you're on an HDD...

 

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

not sure i want to entirely blame this on Steam, but its just something that literally never happened 1-2 years ago, Steam used to max out my internet, and simply has always been  blazing fast (except for occasional server issues , but this seems different, because it doesn't even try downloading, it simply "hangs")

It's not a Steam problem, Steam's distribution and patching system is actually very good, but the issue likely comes from the fact that we now have a zillion different game stores/launchers, many games are on more than one, and the devs roll their own patcher so they can use the same on all platforms instead of doing custom work to use each one's much better native solution....

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

See my post above, on a 100GB game even if the patch is 50MB it will copy the entire 100GB to a different location on the drive while applying the patch, then delete the original data... so you temporarily need 100GB free and it will take long, ages if you're on an HDD...

Oh, yeah, that explains most of this i suppose, but i have the suspicion something else is going on as well... 

last times this happened (on the same day) it was 2 really small patches, but the games were on SSD, and there was only about 10GB left on it, so it couldn't possibly have copied stuff elsewhere (unless it did? )

i dont really recall it exactly anymore, but i took some screenshots, because it was baffling lol (gotta check later if i find them)

 

 

@Kilrah

 

check this out... your explanation would work out wonderfully, except the game is like 80GB, and there was never enough additional space on the SSD for that.

 

Also see the last pic... "downloading content 9%" *except* the bar is at like 90%... thats also where it got stuck iirc.

 

And regardless over one hour for 900mb is just not ok (imo)

 

Also , there was another patch for this game around that time (few days) that took literally 5 minutes... quite curious! 

 

 

PS: same thing happened with another game with a ~100mb patch, dont have pics of that though

 

 

[Kilrah]

6 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

check this out... your explanation would work out wonderfully, except the game is like 80GB, and there was never enough additional space on the SSD for that.

Maybe the patcher is able to do it in chunks, patch 5GB, delete, patch the next 5, delete,... so that it doesn't need the full size in one go, but still needs to write all the 80GB. 

Pretty much the only way it could have taken an hour on an SSD, writing a gig or so on an SSD even if close to full would never take that long, but repeatedly filling an almost full SSD definitely could since performance tanks in that situation.

 

Anyway it's pretty much impossible to know unless you actually look at what's happening during the process like I did with CP2077, here it was clear free space on the drive went down by the game's size after the download, the SSD was writing at 300MB/s for several minutes, and free space went back up to what it was before once done. 

[Mark Kaine]

8 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Maybe the patcher is able to do it in chunks, patch 5GB, delete, patch the next 5, delete,... so that it doesn't need the full size in one go, but still needs to write all the 80GB. 

Pretty much the only way it could have taken an hour on an SSD, writing a gig or so on an SSD even if close to full would never take that long, but repeatedly filling an almost full SSD definitely could.

Ya, that could be, its just particularly weird with this game cause sometimes the patches will be faster, and its not necessarily content patches that are slower, its just frustrating, and they dont seem  to stop with the updates ever, which is understandable , gotta milk the little fanbase they have, but to me its just frustrating lol...

 

i thought of the patching in chunks too, but i didn't think its possible.

 

Ah well, if this keeps happening i'll just buy even less on Steam, seriously i dont remember this happening ever few years ago (unlike on PSN etc)

 

 

 

[Kilrah]

Again it's not a Steam thing, most likely if you buy the same game on another platform it's going to do just the same.

 

The Steam version of FS2020 has a crappy updater - but it's just the same crappy updater the native WS version has.

CP2077 on Steam has a crappy updater, but it's just the same you get on native GOG. 

 

Just something we'll have to live with if we want to game on PC it seems. 

[Legraphista]

It may be the games, but it's definitely 100% Steam too.

 

A 5.3GB new season update just dropped in Destiny 2, my friend updated it in 1 minute and 30 sec, mine was stuck in "Pre-allocating space" for 23 minutes (constantly writing 200+MB/s to my SSD)

 

later edit #1: we're on the same internet connection 

later edit #2: it also took me 1 minute to update after the "Pre-allocating space" step 

[NekoBubbles]

On 5/11/2021 at 12:27 PM, Legraphista said:

It may be the games, but it's definitely 100% Steam too.

 

A 5.3GB new season update just dropped in Destiny 2, my friend updated it in 1 minute and 30 sec, mine was stuck in "Pre-allocating space" for 23 minutes (constantly writing 200+MB/s to my SSD)

 

later edit #1: we're on the same internet connection 

later edit #2: it also took me 1 minute to update after the "Pre-allocating space" step 

How loing have you had the SSD?

 

[NekoBubbles]

I'm mostly asking cause SSD's do eventually wear out after a number of Writes to them. >.> And this could be it slowly dying. 

[Legraphista]

Just now, NekoBubbles said:

How loing have you had the SSD?

 

6 months, but the performance is good. (for SATA)

My friend pushed past the "Pre-allocating space" in a couple of seconds. Taking that out of the equation, both our updates took the same amount of time. but my steam just took 23 more minutes to burn my SSD into the ground (it probably wrote 50GB+)

 

[NekoBubbles]

9 minutes ago, Legraphista said:

6 months, but the performance is good. (for SATA)

My friend pushed past the "Pre-allocating space" in a couple of seconds. Taking that out of the equation, both our updates took the same amount of time. but my steam just took 23 more minutes to burn my SSD into the ground (it probably wrote 50GB+)

 

How full is the SSD? Mostly want at least 10% to 25% free.

[Legraphista]

14 hours ago, NekoBubbles said:

How full is the SSD? Mostly want at least 10% to 25% free.

it's 20% free (plus the un-provisioned parts that SSDs have by default in their firmware)

 

but i don't believe the SSD is at fault here, since its steam that's hammering it with 150-200MB/s writing for 20 minutes for a 5Gb update... 

[Legraphista]

I randomly found a fix for this on the interwebz

 

What fixed it for me was to go to Steam's settings, then Downloads and hit the "CLEAR DOWNLOAD CACHE" button, then restart Steam as Admin.

 

Now all the games that updated very slow in the past and were re-writing everything, update very fast and without unnecessary overhead.

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, Legraphista said:

I randomly found a fix for this on the interwebz

 

What fixed it for me was to go to Steam's settings, then Downloads and hit the "CLEAR DOWNLOAD CACHE" button, then restart Steam as Admin.

 

Now all the games that updated very slow in the past and were re-writing everything, update very fast and without unnecessary overhead.

Interesting !

 

I didn't encounter this anymore,  I kinda just stopped buying steam games hah.

 

Also uninstalled Tekken 7 which was by far the worst offender,  and am not going to buy another Namco game ever either. Because it is clear its the games themselves *and* whatever steam is doing (same reason i sold my ps4 btw!)

 

But, if I encounter this again I'll try this for sure. (Does it log you out of steam ? I suppose it does)

 

 

[OhioYJ]

On 4/29/2021 at 7:04 PM, Legraphista said:

So you think it's game based? This one does the same too

 

Also, for the CP update of 1.5GB I estimate that it must hae written at least 200GB to my SSD

 

LE #1: The update above took 6 minutes of grinding for 22MB...

 

Yeah it depends on the game, and how it's updating. BeamNG, is one that you'll notice is generally always pretty slow. Golf It is fun. Golf with your Friends is also pretty fun.  I'm going to try clearing the cache thing you found though. Although mine don't take as long as you are listing.