Question Anyone know why Steam doesn't like my laptop's "D" drive?

So this has happened on both my current gaming laptop and also on the laptop that I had before. If I try to install a game on the D drive with Steam, the download keeps stopping and starting, and when it does download, it goes very, very slowly. Downloading to that drive from other places, like Ubisoft, Epic and Game Pass, works perfectly fine. It's just Steam. Steam doesn't have any problems with my C, E or F drives.

I have a 500 GB NVMe C drive and the D is a 1.5 TB HDD 7200 rpm. The E and F drives are external SSDs.

I've done what Steam suggested and emptied the download cache, and I even went so far as to reformat the drive. I just don't get it.
 
Right, I forgot about the laptop. Brain switched to desktop mode. Regardless, laptop's can have more than one SATA port, considering we don't know make and model of the laptop in question. Some people use 2ndary drive caddy's as well to increase storage options(in place of the ODD) while higher end laptops have options for more than 1x2.5" HDD.
 
it can depend on the games too, where the update contains tons of files. Usually, the update is downloading and unpacking at the same time and it can get clogged up with the low bandwidth of a HDD

its less obvious on ssd

Thanks. I guess it must have something to do with the way Steam handles downloads/unpacking being too much for the HDD since it doesn't do it when I download from other sites.
 
something to do with the way Steam handles downloads/unpacking being too much for the HDD
It looks that way, but I doubt it—Steam is usually the best of the game distributors on the tech front. Suspect correlation rather than causation.

I assume you have an up-to-date Steam client on the new laptop?
Might be worth uninstalling it, downloading again and reinstalling.

D is a 1.5 TB HDD 7200 rpm
How much free space, and do you defrag it periodically?

Do you mostly download from Steam, and only occasionally from the others? If mostly Steam, then whatever's wrong would naturally seem like a mainly/only Steam problem.

Anyone know if Steam does a file verification test as it's downloading, which maybe the others don't?

In Steam client:
Steam > Settings > Downloads.
Click 'Steam Library Folders' & make D: default.
Is 'Download Region' set to one near you? If yes, change to another.
In 'Download Restrictions' area, is 'Limit bandwidth to' ticked—if so, untick.
Untick the 'Throttle' setting.
Click the 'Clear Download Cache' button.
 
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could be related -

The patches are delta files. They basically tell steam "hey go look at this part of the file and change these bits". Rather than "here is the entire file again, even though we added like 1 digit at the end of the file"

This allows the download itself to e much smaller.

The down side is that locally it uses more CPU and disk to process these files. It essentially

1) Gets a list of 'changes' it needs ot make from the patch file
2) reads the entire original file
3) processes what parts need changing
4) writes out the new file with the changes

This process is both CPU and disk intensive. I have a 1GBps connection but I can only realistically get 400mbps off Steam. This is mainly due to the high compression of the files so basically my CPU is capping out how fast I can really download games from steam not my overall connection. With a fast enough CPU and an SSD drive I can get better speeds closer to my 1GBPs connection.

ssd much faster to make those changes than on hdd.
 
It looks that way, but I doubt it—Steam is usually the best of the game distributors on the tech front. Suspect correlation rather than causation.

I assume you have an up-to-date Steam client on the new laptop?
Might be worth uninstalling it, downloading again and reinstalling.


How much free space, and do you defrag it periodically?

Do you mostly download from Steam, and only occasionally from the others? If mostly Steam, then whatever's wrong would naturally seem like a mainly/only Steam problem.

Anyone know if Steam does a file verification test as it's downloading, which maybe the others don't?

In Steam client:
Steam > Settings > Downloads.
Click 'Steam Library Folders' & make D: default.
Is 'Download Region' set to one near you? If yes, change to another.
In 'Download Restrictions' area, is 'Limit bandwidth to' ticked—if so, untick.
Untick the 'Throttle' setting.
Click the 'Clear Download Cache' button.

It's almost empty and it didn't need defragging because I'd just reformatted it. Now it's about half full because I've been using it for Game Pass and Ubisoft games (I did try Steam a few more times but it was the same as always). All those other downloads go fine. It's got something to do with Steam and my laptop non-SSD drives because, as I said, it did it on my last laptop as well, but it doesn't do it on my C drive or my external SSDs or on my main PC. I'm not saying it does this on all laptops, just that it's done it on this one and my last one, as well.
 

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