Ok, so I tried downloading a game on Steam the other day, and it got 85% through the download before it stopped. When it stopped, it said it was because of a disk write error.
First, I deleted all local files of the game that didn't finish downloading, and tried the download again. Same disk write error.
Then, I deleted the unfinished download again. Next, I went through the Windows 10 error checking scan on my hard drive, then defragmented it. I then tried to redownload the game, and it does the same thing.
Is my hard drive failing? It's a WD 1TB 7200rpm hard drive, and I've only had it 2 years now. Anything I'm missing?
Few questions.
Is it being saved to C: drive or another drive?
If another drive, make sure the folder doesn't have any wonky permissions.
Make sure Steam is pointed at the right folder.
Test it with another program, or try to write a different file to said hard drive of similar size as the game if you can and see if said program has similar problems.
If so, it's your drive.
Check S.M.A.R.T. It will have tons of info for you, and can tell you if the drive is close to death. You can google what to look out for.
Lastly, if you're afraid that all of that isn't catching your drive dying and you're really worried about it. Transfer all of the date to a new drive, and get rid of old one.
If you're saving to the C: drive, make sure Steam is running in Administrator permissions. Otherwise it won't be able to write anything to that folder per Windows permissions issues.
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Dumb question maybe, Does the disk have enough free space?
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In the Command Prompt window, type the following commands, pressing Enter after each:
wmic
diskdrive get status
Windows doesnt have the best smart data but is a quick check
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@Smerrills Yes, it's the C: drive.
I'll run those tests when I have some spare time.
@Dexter_Kane yes, I have enough space.
@mutation666 I will try that as well
Thanks for the help guys, I'll update when I find out more.
It sounds like a failure is quite possible. Bad sectors being a likely culprit. Do you have another drive in the system you can download the game to? May be another test to try to see if something is wrong with your C: drive.
No, unfortunately that's my only drive. I'm gonna order a couple more soon.
I've got other expenses to take care of first. My car just crapped out, so I'll have to take care of that first.
If your drive tests good, and you don't have another drive to try it on, maybe try downloading another game of about the same size and see if you get the same error? That would at least help rule out the drive as the culprit.
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Ok, since it's your C: drive, right click on the icon that you're running Steam from and click Run as Administrator. See if it can do it then. Windows may have changed the permissions on your folder. It tends to do that to folders in the C: drive. I don't know why it does this.
Get a second drive for games. It prevents that in most cases with Windows.
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I get errors like this because i have my steam folders backed up to my nas with bittorrent sync, or resilio sync, whatever its called now. it doesn't have shadow volume copy, so it interferes with steam downloading stuff.
Do you have something that might be interfering with the files, like a crytolocker? Backup tool? Anti virus?
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UPDATE:
I've tried everything in the book, as well as the stuff that you guys have suggested. I even uninstalled Steam and tried reinstalling it under a different file path. No luck, still getting Disk Write Errors on large game downloads. Which for the most part is strange, because I'm not seeing any indications on the error checking or any other HHD checking program.
As a result, I've got a 2TB HDD and a 525GB SSD drive on the way. It's sad that this drive only lasted about 2 years. Then again, I should have had a separate boot drive and game drive from the beginning.
Oh well, the last thing I'll try is reformatting this drive. Doubt that will help, but it's worth a shot if I can still salvage it.
hmm well to recap, I think it has to be bad HDD or interference on write.
Here are some more things to test.
I take it windows is not freezing randomly, a tell tale sign of bad a HDD.
CrystalDiskInfo will give you more SMART info, more than "OK". You want to see error counts, spin up cycles, things like that.
SMART is terrible, you can't always take it at face value. It usually says everything is fine until everything is no longer fine and the drive is dead.
What if you use a tool to check all disk access while steam is downloading, say the sysinternals suite. You can monitor all HDD access, filter it out and see what is accessing what files. This may help identify for sure if there is any process interfering with steam's downloading.
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Everything on the computer runs just fine with the exception of downloading files. Boot up and normal operation seems to be solid.
I'll have to do more testing once I get my new drives.
Sounds like either steam runs into a bad sector, which has not been detected on your harddrive, or your harddrive is full.
Bad sectors are baaaaad and will cause software to throw execption since the hardware will have a redicules response time.
Full harddrive well not really alot to say there.
Try running a chkdsk /F (Drive Letter) i believe M$ called it in their console or even better use something like minitool partition wizard, which does a better job then M$ at detecting these errors.
It can be as simple as an undetected bad sector, which S.M.A.R.T will handle once detected by a FS checker.
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@Lauritzen may also be right.
Steam may be running into a bad sector, and for some reason Windows and or SMART isn't dealing with it. Usually Windows does a chkdisk sweep every couple of days. But like @Lauritzen said, it may not be finding it. Use another program that checks disks for errors. It may be able to tell SMART to relocate any data on that bad sector, or may be able to mark it as bad.
I should have thought of that too. Lord knows I've run into that problem many times in the past. Window's SMART stuff is rather dumb compared to many of the other utilities out there. And most hard drives aren't even OPTIMIZED to use SMART wisely.