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Topic Starter Topic: Steam High I/O Writes, HDD Thrashing
obsidian
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PostPosted: 07-11-2012 06:32 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I noticed that my hard drive keeps thrashing, so I decided to take a look at the cause. From the task manager, it looks like Steam is the culprit. It keeps doing I/O Writes to the disk for whatever reason, and no, it's not downloading any games, it just keeps thrashing the disk for some reason. Closing Steam and my disk activity stops.

See the screenshot below, if you're trying to find the I/O columns in Task Manager, you have to enable them from the "view" menu. Note, I had actually shut down Steam earlier so the number has since reset. It seems to increase I/O writes at a rate of about 10 writes per second. In the time it took me to take that screenshot, upload it and write this message, it has already climbed up to 43K.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k8rxspwlingg5 ... mwrite.png

WTF is Steam doing and how do I stop it?



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Captain Mazda
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PostPosted: 07-11-2012 07:56 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Mine has been running for about 4 hours now and the writes are up to 80,000—and that's with no Steam games active.

I'm sure they're just virtual writes, not sure though.



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GONNAFISTYA
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PostPosted: 07-11-2012 08:30 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Steam does a ton of shit and is constantly monitoring a bazillion things. Hell it's even got it's own chat client prolly doing a bazillion checks just on that alone.

Dunno really...just spitballin...
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duffman91
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PostPosted: 07-12-2012 11:43 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I would equate high I/O writes with page file usage. Do you have enough RAM? What is the size of your page file?
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Captain Mazda
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PostPosted: 07-13-2012 12:04 AM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


6GB. I set my page file to a custom size on the SSD: 1024–1024.



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obsidian
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PostPosted: 07-13-2012 09:22 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


12GB RAM, default page file. I think we can rule that out.



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DooMer
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PostPosted: 07-13-2012 01:20 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


The I/O read/write column in the task manager includes network and other shit.
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Whiskey 7
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PostPosted: 07-13-2012 02:09 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Tried mine for interest here and by way of a comparison for you and mine is steady at 110,690 &80,380

{PS} Haven't been to steam for some time so lots of updating (activity?) happening



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duffman91
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PostPosted: 07-13-2012 10:34 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


obsidian wrote:
12GB RAM, default page file. I think we can rule that out.


Not quite. The default setting is to have a page file that auto adjusts as necessary. This is a resource intensive operation if the OS needs to perform it. Could you set it to a fixed max/min value? Preferably 1.0x or 1.5x the amount of RAM you have. Reboot and see if the issue persists.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 96653.aspx
Download Process Explorer from the link above. Soft the processes by Disk Reads column and then by Disk Writes column. Is Steam taking up both?
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Scourge
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PostPosted: 07-14-2012 06:32 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Mine has been doing the same. It would severely lag my pc for around 10 seconds and killing Steam seems to have ended it. It would usually happen several times an hour. I wouldn't have any problems while in games. Only when at my desktop or browsing.
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Kaz
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PostPosted: 07-14-2012 07:09 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Bring it up with LordHavoc in #darkplaces he works on the linux Steam port these days.
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seremtan
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PostPosted: 07-15-2012 12:23 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


^ the ultimate nerd post
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Plan B
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PostPosted: 07-15-2012 06:34 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


You'll sort it out.
You're one of the smartest [LOL RACISM] I know :)
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Kaz
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PostPosted: 07-15-2012 09:11 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


seremtan wrote:
^ the ultimate nerd post


:up:
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