Ugh.... Steam

[Shru1kan]

So, I made a decision from my other thread and went with TF2. I buy it, hit download, and go shoot some pool with some friends. Now I come back and see my bandwidth isn't being eaten anymore, so I get ready to play me some team fortress 2. I go check and the download was suspended. Apparently my HDD got so fragmented from 2/3rds of the download, it refuses to download. So now I get to run my defragger that takes ages. I started the download and it got another MB of data before it suspended again (no surprise, wanted to see how much time it was gonna take after the slow ass vista defrag). The estimated time is now THREE HOURS (more than the original estimate for the entire game!) and my speed isn't any lower than before.

Is this a normal steam thing? Because if so they can say goodbye to any further purchases online. In fact, I wouldn't use it but for the three games I have that need steam to play. It's impossibly infuriating, too, because I can't play it till near midnight tomorrow now, too busy in the day.

 

[OpiateChicken]

Shoulda just bought the Orange Box

it's like $12 and there are 3 games in it and it doesn't take any time to download

 

[Rusty pumpkin]

uh, no. my experiences with steam is rather smooth. maybe you have to much stuff stored up in your drive?

 

[DefunctTheory]

Never happened to me. Steams downloads have always treated me right, file stability AND speed.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

Perhaps you too much data like Images and Music in your computer already? If so whittle those down a bit and then you should be fine.

 

[Dys]

Shoulda just bought the Orange Box

it's like $12 and there are 3 games in it and it doesn't take any time to download

Unless you're a PC gamer and you have download some hefty updates for TF2, in which case he's in the exact position he's in.

Given he said he has other games utalizing steam, there's a chance he's bought the orange box (or a similar pack).

This is not a usual thing for steam (despite all it's flaws). I've been using (and hating) steam since it's release, and while it does have many, many unforgivable, horrendous flaws (that other platforms worked out years ago), fragmenting hard drives during download is not one I've ever seen or heard of before.

 

[Johnnyallstar]

I've never had a problem with steam at all

 

[Wakefield]

I love steam. I've never had any of the problems your experiencing. Everything's always been smooth and I've been using it since it came out.

 

[insaneHoshi]

How much memory left do you have on you hard drive

 

[Infinatex]

Never had a problem with Steam. Sounds like an issue with your machine.

 

[Internet Kraken]

I've had problems with Steam before, but never ones so drastic that it made me want to uninstall it. Mos of the time Steam works fine and I find it to be very convenient. Also I find that may of Steam's estimated times turn out to be wrong with it being much quicker than predicted.

 

[Avaholic03]

I had an issue with suspended downloads when I got Portal for free, but everything else has been smooth. I didn't research it much, I just figured it had to do with their servers being overloaded with the Mac release and the increase in traffic from that. It eventually resumed by itself and downloaded just fine, just took longer than normal. But oh well, I've never been the foaming-at-the-mouth type of gamer who can't wait for a while to play something that's been out for years.

EDIT: I meant to ask, why do you believe it was a fragmented hard drive causing the problem? Could it have been something else?

 

[Heart of Darkness]

Don't complain. I have to download TF2's frequent updates through pathetic WiFi, so it takes ages just to download. It once took me a WHOLE DAY to get one update on the freaking game. ONE. WHOLE. DAY. For a fucking gigabyte of data.

Three hours is nothing compared to what I've been through.

 

[Shru1kan]

I had an issue with suspended downloads when I got Portal for free, but everything else has been smooth. I didn't research it much, I just figured it had to do with their servers being overloaded with the Mac release and the increase in traffic from that. It eventually resumed by itself and downloaded just fine, just took longer than normal. But oh well, I've never been the foaming-at-the-mouth type of gamer who can't wait for a while to play something that's been out for years.

EDIT: I meant to ask, why do you believe it was a fragmented hard drive causing the problem? Could it have been something else?

it told me my data was fragmented severely.

@ EVERYONE I have over half my HDD free


Oh and it turns out my ISP (AT&T) is choking my bandwidth. I'm watching them do it and there's gonna be a phone call tomorrow to them, thats for sure.

 

[lacktheknack]

Yeah, it's probably not Steam. Keep trying, eventually everything will get fixed.

 

[Catalyst6]

I've never had that problem. It's most likely something wrong with your system, where it's taking downloaded files and shoving them *everywhere*. Have you changed any setting recently?

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Sounds to me like the problem is with your computer, not with Steam.

 

[Actual]

I haven't had to defrag a HDD in years, I didn't think modern drives ever needed it. Something seems to be amiss with something.

Possibly the thingy? Yeah try that.

 

[feather240]

I had an issue with suspended downloads when I got Portal for free, but everything else has been smooth. I didn't research it much, I just figured it had to do with their servers being overloaded with the Mac release and the increase in traffic from that. It eventually resumed by itself and downloaded just fine, just took longer than normal. But oh well, I've never been the foaming-at-the-mouth type of gamer who can't wait for a while to play something that's been out for years.

EDIT: I meant to ask, why do you believe it was a fragmented hard drive causing the problem? Could it have been something else?

it told me my data was fragmented severely.

@EVERYONE I have over half my HDD free


Oh and it turns out my ISP (AT&T) is choking my bandwidth. I'm watching them do it and there's gonna be a phone call tomorrow to them, thats for sure.

They do the same thing to me, but "uh" what do I do about it?

 

[sheic99]

How often do you defrag your computer normally? It may just be that your drive was already fragmented severely, especially since you said it takes hours. That process really shouldn't take that long ever.