Problem with Restoring Steam Back Up

[Harper]

Could some one explain to me why restoring backed up games via steam requires you to chug bandwidth. I used the steam back up and restore feature for all my steam powered games. However the ugly thing that i did discover was that I was chewing through bandwidth just to restore my games.

Even though I was only got around to restoring Half Life 2, Lost Coast and Episode 1 and 2, I still managed to blow around about 500Mb worth do bandwidth.

I can understand that steam wants you to log on before restoring your back up. However I would like to know what needs to be downloaded from the internet in order for these locally stored back up files to be restored.

Orginally I thought it was windows updates at it was a clean install. However that did not even start yet.

Any ideas one what/why is steam trying to download while I am restoring my games?

And from now on, I am just going to back up my steam directory instead. I nearly got shot by my landlady last night for blowing bandwidth.

 

[95BlackGA]

Could some one explain to me why restoring backed up games via steam requires you to chug bandwidth. I used the steam back up and restore feature for all my steam powered games. However the ugly thing that i did discover was that I was chewing through bandwidth just to restore my games.

Even though I was only got around to restoring Half Life 2, Lost Coast and Episode 1 and 2, I still managed to blow around about 500Mb worth do bandwidth.

I can understand that steam wants you to log on before restoring your back up. However I would like to know what needs to be downloaded from the internet in order for these locally stored back up files to be restored.

Orginally I thought it was windows updates at it was a clean install. However that did not even start yet.

Any ideas one what/why is steam trying to download while I am restoring my games?

And from now on, I am just going to back up my steam directory instead. I nearly got shot by my landlady last night for blowing bandwidth.

The only thing I could think of is monitoring the installation to verify the backed up data to make sure nothing is corrupt. Have you tried disabling your network adapter, and installing the games to see if the bandwidth is actually needed?

 

[Oreo]

Controls, settings, steam achievements are all stored online on steam servers, as well as the game patches and more. You may find these were being downloaded, Steam probably doesn't back up 100percent of the game to avoid pirating games ? i'm not to sure.

Still, it's only 500mb. I don't know about where you live, but ISP's over here seem really relaxed about imposing download limits each month, i'm supposed to be capped at 10gb a month but i know for a fact i am actually downloading around 60 to 80gb per month as a family. They sent us one letter asking us if we could cut down, but we didn't and they havn't said anything since.

 

[Harper]

The only thing I could think of is monitoring the installation to verify the backed up data to make sure nothing is corrupt. Have you tried disabling your network adapter, and installing the games to see if the bandwidth is actually needed?

Tried that. And the restore process stops.

Controls, settings, steam achievements are all stored online on steam servers, as well as the game patches and more. You may find these were being downloaded, Steam probably doesn't back up 100percent of the game to avoid pirating games ? i'm not to sure.

Still, it's only 500mb. I don't know about where you live, but ISP's over here seem really relaxed about imposing download limits each month, i'm supposed to be capped at 10gb a month but i know for a fact i am actually downloading around 60 to 80gb per month as a family. They sent us one letter asking us if we could cut down, but we didn't and they havn't said anything since.

No. That was 500mb when I stopped it. I might of only had about 20% of my games restored at this time.

 

[synergy]

I'm wondering if it's much like the decryption process that takes place on a newly installed Steam game. It could be that when backed up there is encryption placed on the files and it needs to connect to the servers to decrypt it. Still though, to have a system like that server based seems pretty ridiculous.

 

[Harper]

I'm wondering if it's much like the decryption process that takes place on a newly installed Steam game. It could be that when backed up there is encryption placed on the files and it needs to connect to the servers to decrypt it. Still though, to have a system like that server based seems pretty ridiculous.

That sounds like the best suggestion yet. Like I remember when HL2 orginally came out. I got home, I installed with in 2 minute, I was then waiting 3 hours for the game to decrypt.

It would not suprised me that they do the same with the steam back up process as it takes forever to do. Like if I am ever backing up games via steam, it's a set and forget over night process. Normally don't mind this. However this part where it chugs the bandwidth while restoring is uncalled for.

I am just going to back up my steam directory from out via simple copy paste.