Steam is "grinding" my HDD while installing Terraria

steamclosed reviewed

ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#4153 · opened 2015-11-22 by silviucc · updated 2022-04-22 · 3 comments · github

Ssilviucc 2015-11-22 github

While installing Terraria I notice that disk usage as showed by Steam is extremely low all while the HDD is active and extremely noisy. The install takes a long time too despite Terraria being about 250MB in size. Even after the download is complete Steam still grinds the HDD while the transfer rate remains very low.

steam_terraria_install_low_transfer_rate

I copied a bunch of big files from another drive to that one and that task completed very fast.

hdd_transfer_rate

I saw the same thing happen while attempting to restore Terraria from a backup. An estimated time of 2 hours to restore 250MB of game data.

What the heck is Steam doing?!

TTele42 2015-11-22 github

This is an mildly extreme example, Terraria is ~250MB, but that is across 9300 files, which is what steam is having a harder time processing.

Kkisak-valve maintainer 2022-04-22 github

Hello @silviucc, are you still experiencing this issue on an up to date system?

Ssilviucc 2022-04-22 github

Hi.

I don't think this bug is relevant anymore. Terraria itself went through changes and my system now is more powerful and uses an nvme SSD. I installed Terraria with no issues and very fast.

Nothing extracted yet.