Steam downloads updates normally, but applying the patch can take an extremely long time. A roughly 500 MB update recently took almost an hour to finish patching after the download was complete. The game is installed on an older 1 TB Crucial BX500 SATA SSD. During patching, Task Manager reports 100% active time, but the drive only manages about 1 MB/s reads and 5 MB/s writes, with average response times reaching around 8500 ms. Steam reports disk usage of only about 1.8 MB/s. Windows is installed on a separate NVMe drive, and the rest of the system is mostly idle. Some games and updates are affected much more than others. CrystalDiskInfo reports 97% health, about 5,200 hours of use, roughly 4.8 TB written, and no reallocated or uncorrectable errors. The drive has only about 79 GB free out of 931 GB. Could the BX500 simply be struggling with Steam's patching process, or are these signs that the SSD is failing?
3 Answers
Check the full SMART information with CrystalDiskInfo or a similar tool, and also check whether the SSD has a newer firmware version. The reported health and lack of reallocated or uncorrectable sectors are reassuring, but they do not necessarily explain poor sustained write performance. Some BX500 models can become extremely slow during heavy writes once their cache is exhausted.
This may be a limitation of the particular SSD rather than an imminent failure. Older or lower-end SATA SSDs can run out of write-cache headroom during large, fragmented writes and then slow down dramatically. Steam patching can involve reading, modifying, and rewriting large files, so the workload varies a lot between games. A healthy SMART status does not guarantee good performance under this kind of sustained write load.
That makes sense, especially since the problem is much worse with some games than others. I’ll make more room on the drive and compare its behavior afterward.
Being nearly full could be a major factor. SSDs need spare space for garbage collection, wear leveling, and maintaining write performance. With only about 79 GB free, the drive may have very little working room, especially during Steam patches that rewrite large portions of game files. Freeing up substantially more space and then testing again would be a good first step.
CrystalDiskInfo shows 97% health, around 5,200 hours, about 4.8 TB written, and no reallocated or uncorrectable errors. The firmware is M6CR061, so I’ll check whether a newer version is available.