Fix Steam Slow disk usage issues
1Here's how to Fix Steam Slow disk usage issues:
- Defrag your hard drive using the built-in disk defragmentation tool in Windows. This will optimize file storage and access times.
- Go to Steam's Settings - Downloads and limit the download region. Setting it to a region close to your physical location can improve download speeds.
- Close any other programs using disk resources while Steam is running. Things like video streaming, torrents, etc can hog bandwidth.
- Pause any in-progress Steam downloads before playing games. Downloads running in background eat disk usage.
- Consider upgrading to an SSD if you currently use a mechanical hard drive. SSDs have faster read/write speeds.
- Check for and remove any malware or viruses that could be slowing disk performance. Run an antivirus scan.
- Open Task Manager while Steam is running and sort processes by disk usage. Identify any other high usage tasks unrelated to Steam.
- Verify your disk is not too full. Having over 85% disk utilization can severely impact performance. Uninstall unused games or move files off disk.
- Launch Steam client in Administrator mode. Right-click and Run as Administrator. This may help with permissions issues.
- As a last resort, try reinstalling Steam client entirely. Back up games first. A clean reinstall can fix underlying issues.