Steam - Allocating disk space taking much longer than it used to

[MustISO]

Just noticed for the past week or so when I download a steam game in my library the "allocating disk space" process takes much longer than it used to. It used to take maybe 30 - 40 seconds, just now it took about 8-9 minutes for a 5GB game. Anyone know if they changed the process or is this happening to you as well?

 

[Markbnj]

I've never seen 8-9 minutes, but I have seen longer times for that step, which is curious given that it takes probably 1-2 ms to create a folder under the steam install. They must be pre-writing data to make sure all the space is usable, or something along those lines.

 

[manimal]

as your drive fills up it takes longer for it to happen.

Its also part of Steams behavior for me if I am trying to install a bunch of games at once. The more games I try to install in a session the longer the allocation takes. I assumed its an algorythm to prevent people from hammering their servers and quieing up an entire 200 game library in 12 seconds. Imagine how bad steam would be if you could do that?

 

[futurefields]

some games take longer than others imo

 

[WiseUp216]

Might be worth running some SMART tests and see if the drive is OK.

Just recently, I had my Steam HDD fail around 3-4 weeks after I started experiencing the same symptoms that you have.

 

[TheRyuu]

They must be pre-writing data to make sure all the space is usable, or something along those lines.

They do this, at least they do this for me, not sure if it's selective with certain system configurations (e.g. SSD's). I'm not sure if they did this in the past but I don't think they did. It seems like a fairly recent addition (past year?). It may be to prevent fragmentation or something. I'm not sure what the problem was/is with using sparse files.

 

[CuriousMike]

Well, let's say you have 10GB free on your harddisk.
You want to download a 9GB game.
You "have enough space."
But let's also say you're on a slow internet connection - maybe that 9GB will take you 8 hours to download.
If steam did not pre-allocate that 9GB, it's conceivable you being you would use up > 1GB of space in that time, and then what happens to your download?