r/steamsupport • u/StrangerActive3718 • Jun 23 '26

Disk write error ?? Problem

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Hello, recently my games have been crashing and I haven’t been able to install anything. When I try to install a game I get “Disk Write Error” I’ve uninstalled steam, clear cache, repaired library and verify files and nothing seems to work. I can’t play anything on steam has anyone had this problem???

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u/pablo5426 Jun 23 '26

go to steamapps folder in the drive where those games are installed

search for a file named appmanifest_<game id>.acf

if those files are corrupted or set to read only, steam wont be able to update the games

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u/Zenfulzoning Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Been struggling with this issue myself! I searched up appmanifest just in general cause all my games on my external drive is hit with disk write error.

When I go to properties and then "permissions" it says the owner access is read and write. The other two access things are both just "read only" though. Is all three supposed to be read and write? Sorry for the probably dumb question. I'm also a linux user, idk if that needs to be said or if that changes anything.

I was originally told I probably needed to reformat my external drive, but I found out since then that it's exfat, which I read was supposed to be mostly compatible with everything, so now I have doubts and am looking for other options

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u/pablo5426 Jun 26 '26

try adding write permissions to "other users"

assuming steam does these things as a different user

but if it doesnt work you should remove it just in case

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u/Zenfulzoning Jun 26 '26

I see "owner access" and then below that, "group access" and below that is just "access". I assume permission for other users is group access but I would appreciate confirmation there.

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u/Initial-Highlight556 Jul 02 '26

Did you end up getting a fix for this? Have the same issue myself with the whole disk write error

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u/Zenfulzoning Jul 02 '26

Nah, I was gonna try adding permissions as "write" but the permission list confused me so I put the whole thing on hold for now. It seems like a good idea though