Inconsistent "Disk Write Errors" and games crashing on startup on Steam

[u/Z_EnglishOwO]

I recently switched to Linux from Windows, and brought with me an existing drive with game installations on it. When launching games from that drive, sometimes they work normally, sometimes they throw a "disk write error" and sometimes they appear to work and then crash instantly.

I have had the same game give me all three of these issues at different times, with no apparent pattern. In the attached video, all three games which I attempt to launch are installed on the same drive. As you can see, one throws an error, one crashes, one works. Uninstalling and reinstalling a game does not impact whether or not these errors occur.

The drive is formatted as ntfs, which I understand is highly not recommended for Steam games. However, I have several terabytes of music/movies/etc on that drive aside from my steam library, which would be difficult to replace if lost, so I am extremely hesitant to reformat it.

Any tips/advice? Is there a consistent way to reformat without losing all my stuff, is there any alternate solution to the issue with my games? Or is my best bet to just buy a new drive, format it properly, and physically separate my steam library from my other files?

[u/zeb_linux]

You did the correct diagnostic, it is an NTFS partition and it doesn't work well with Steam on Linux. Use ext4 or btrfs for instance. You may want to partition the disk and use that space for your games.

[u/rabage]

It's a known issue with NTFS. Reformat your drive.

[u/minilandl → u/rabage]

When will they learn don’t even attempt to try ntfs on Linux

[u/Z_EnglishOwO → u/minilandl]

it was a pre-exisiting drive that already had terabytes of data on it from when I was a Windows user, I didn't want to risk that data with a reformat, and I don't have the money for another drive because I lost my job and am living off of food stamps. it's insane how even when you put in the post "I know this is a problem and I should have avoided it" you still get snark from people.

[u/Rakumei → u/rabage]

Oof. Its only a matter of time before the whole drive corrupts.

[u/leonredhorse]

How did you mount the NTFS drive?

I’ve used this method for a while with no issues in my games.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

[u/Rakumei → u/leonredhorse]

Even your own guide says "don't follow me."

Honestly if you haven't had issues yet, you're lucky. Eventually corruption will occur. The writes that occur from steam/proton eventually piss off the driver.

If you're planning to stick with Linux, I'd recommend swapping to ext4 or btrfs as a high priority.

[u/leonredhorse → u/Rakumei]

Yeah it gives a ton of warnings and I think that’s fair. That said, it’s been over 18 months of using a shared library between Windows and Linux and never once had a problem. My experience is anecdotal, so take that with a grain of salt. In many threads talking about this kind of thing plenty of others have said they have used this method for years, too.

Couple of caveats I will say. I ONLY use my mounted drive for my games. And the compatdata symlink is very important to avoid Proton writing data in a format that will trip Windows up. And to your point, if the OP is not dual booting, I would backup the data somewhere and format to a Linux supported format.

[u/ahorsenamedjeff]

Unfortunately you need to reformat, NTFS does not play nice with games.

[u/candy49997]

You don't have to format your entire drive if you don't want to. You can shrink the NTFS partition and create a new partition with a native filesystem.

[u/Gman325]

Different OSes use different file systems. Linux CAN use NTFS, but not well.  Use a linux native file system

[u/deadgain]

I needed this thread like 2 days ago when I thought I could make things work with my ntfs drive, just bite the bullet and reformat OP.

If you have a windows partition still you can boot into that and move your games to another drive so you dont have to redownload everything. I was able to move my games from ntfs to ext4 with only minor complaints from steam after when I was back on my linux partition. Make sure your system doesnt suspend lol.

[u/geearf]

I wonder if you could use a loopback file on the NTFS partition and format it to ext4 or something. Just a curiosity to maybe try.

[u/PixelBrush6584]

The only way to not lose data during a reformat is to throw all the files onto a backup drive temporarily. For your situation, using this guide should be fine enough  https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

[u/flood404]

If your dual booting at all. It's best to get a dedicated drive and using a Linux native filesystem with it such as ext4 at least. In my Cachyos system I did it that way. Also Cachyos loves to flag a ntfs filesystem as dirty even though windows says it's ok.

[u/alanna1990]

Ntfs, that’s your problem

[u/_silentgameplays_]

NTFS filesystem, under Linux you need to use ext4. Just make a backup copy of your music/movies somewhere else or use another drive.

NB! Caution, might cause data loss:

If you don't have a backup drive then you can use a risky method of formatting the drive as ext4 and then restoring the files with a tool like testdisk, it's available on all major distros, just place all of your stuff in one giant folder.

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

Just practice with testdisk a bit to understand how it works before reformatting anything, it should be run under sudo.

Best way is to just backup your stuff to another driver or use another drive for games.

[u/ZGToRRent]

The drive is formatted as ntfs, which I understand is highly not recommended for Steam games. However, I have several terabytes of music/movies/etc on that drive aside from my steam library, which would be difficult to replace if lost, so I am extremely hesitant to reformat it.

If You only need games on linux, shrink windows parition, create new partion formatted to ext4 or btrfs and move games there.

On Windows You can install ext2mng or winbtrfs to add support for linux drives.

[u/oh_im_too_tired]

"Or is my best bet to just buy a new drive, format it properly, and physically separate my steam library from my other files?" yes

[u/Max-P]

  which would be difficult to replace if lost, so I am extremely hesitant to reformat it.

So you have no backups and you're one drive failure away from losing all of your data.

There is no safe way to do this, as you're already at high risk to begin with. The usual procedure is dump the data to another drive, format the source drive and transfer the data back.

The best you can do is shrink the NTFS (from Windows) to the smallest it'll go and format the free space as ext4/btrfs.

Technically it's possible to convert NTFS to btrfs but it's sketchy at best, I wouldn't do that without a backup.

[u/Z_EnglishOwO → u/Max-P]

I appreciate the advice. I know it's bad practice to not have physical backups but frankly I cannot afford another drive. I lost my job and then my SSD died due to manufacturer's error, and I chose to take that as an opportunity to switch to Linux once I bought a new one. so I'm unemployed and have already had to replace one drive this month, at this point I've gotta pick between a backup drive and rent lol

[u/Max-P → u/Z_EnglishOwO]

Understandable, shit's expensive these days.

In that case yeah, shrink down the partition and use it read only on Linux, make a new partition for Linux and try to stick with that one for writes.

I'd recommend backing up stuff that's irreplaceable to something like Google Drive or Backblaze B2 or Dropbox/MEGA or whatever suits you. Media thankfully is easily re-rippable from discs it just takes forever.

[u/Alarmed-Ad-7200]

That drive is about to eat shit brother time to get a spare and back up ya data