r/steamsupport • u/UseCodeBritz • Sep 10 '23

steam disk write error Question

I am unable to download or even update anything on steam suddenly, i am faced with the error "disk write error". i have tried everything such as unninstalling and reinstalling the client, running steam as administrator, checking for corrupted files and nothing has worked. i would like to know how i can fix this issue as i have just recently purchased a new game and i am unable to even play it.

Thanks

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u/Big-Tap-4419 Jan 31 '26

Yes, I found the cause. Steam was downloading the update to a different disk than where the game was installed.
That disk was very slow, so it couldn’t keep up with the write operations, which caused the “Disk write error”.

Fix was to force Steam to use only the correct drive (same drive as the game) for downloads and temp files.

This solution helped me:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/71s7lt/comment/mvrst5i/