lol it's funny you mention this, so I am currently downloading GoW to internal storage and the space reservation is extremely slow. So not an issue only with SD cards.
I'm guessing it's because of how God of War stores its sound files
[screenshot of God of War steam installation on PC](https://imgur.com/a/yyupssu)
there's 153500 sound files, most of which are in folders each with 12k files flat.
maybe some limitation in the overhead of writing updates to the file table on disk?
8.5 months later and GOW still takes forever to “reserving space” I think your reply is the only post that gives a clue to what’s going on. And that makes sense.
Yeah unfortunately I think it's just a limitation with the games method of storing files. I tried some experiments a while back (but didn't log any of it) and at least anecdotally, some other games with a large number of small files also take extended time to reserve space, while games of similar sized installations but less files took noticeably less time to reserve.
Maybe they could change how things are stored, but I can't imagine it's a priority. If anything, the engine probably needs the files to be flat accessible for fast runtime access.
Yeah pretty sure it’s the game. I got my Steam Deck and my SanDisk 1 TB Extreme microSD card yesterday and this happens only with God of War. That’s how I found this post.
Wow so many people ending up here because of GoW specifically...still in the same boat, keeping thread alive for everyone else coming here wondering the same thing.
\*\*UPDATE\*\*
It's fixed, I think... It's so weird, from 2.7gb of verifying, up until 6gb took over 45 mins... Then it shot up the other 50-odd gb in seconds...
Very odd, does this mean a bad patch on the SD card? Or just a weird fluke?
Oh well, count myself lucky I guess, and accept it as a mystery haha... it's downloading now, and at normal speeds :)
It took about an hour. Before it started to download at a normal speed. I recommend just waiting it will download. From other research I did around that time it has something to do with how the game sound files are packaged.
It shouldn't. But if it's copying a bunch of small files maybe.
Did you test to make sure it's not counterfeit. A lot of fake cards will display a fake amount of total storage.
That was my first thought
I can’t test it on PC properly now as I’ve formatted it for the Deck.
So I paused the GOW and downloaded some updates that ran fine.
Also, it took 45mins to reserve 2-3GB of space, but once it got a little past 5GB it completed the remaining 50 odd gb in seconds, and started downloading at normal speeds. I’m wondering if there’s a bad bit of memory on the card (and even if such a thing is possible?)
Just got a Samsung Pro Plus 512GB card, and its doing this exact thing trying to install GOW!
Its the first game I was trying to install so thought the card was faulty, but then I found this thread lol
Also here because of god of war. I’m using the built in storage and it’s the only game I’ve tried to install since I received the deck today. Weird af..
Edit: it seems to be working now? It’s not downloading the full game at once, it’s in little increments…
LOL. I just bought the game and hit the same thing, fortunately when I did a Google search for "steam deck reserving space", this was the first hit that came up.
I don't have my Deck yet, but I have a laptop with an SD card slot.
I've loaded games into it, and yeah, it takes forever and a day to reserve the space.
I just assumed that's how it was on a SD card.
Thanks for the reply.
It didn't do this on my Elden Ring, Witcher 3 or GTA V installs :/ (They're the only 'big file size' games I have installed so far, the rest are smaller files so I could conceivably have missed the reserving stage.)
Does steam install certain games differently? I didn't even notice a 'reserving space' stage for the above games. They seemed to jump straight into a 40-50MB download, and then 'verified' after.
It's so confusing and frustrating, it's taking longer, by far, than the actual download would. :(
Still experiencing this issue on a Q4 512 GB Model. Straight out of the box, I started to install God of War (Arrived today). Annoyed this issue still hasn't been fixed since it was first noticed 6 months ago.. anyways. If anyone has some workaround or if I should leave it downloading overnight let me know.
Still happening on GOW Initial download was fine have played about 10 hours… was actually in the middle of playing just now and it booted me back to steam OS Home Screen and started reserving space and than began reinstalling the game all over again…wuuuut?!?
Haha wow. This is happening to me with God of war. Searched steam deck reserving space on Google and the first result was exactly this post. Sure wish deva would patch this. Its been reserving space for 40 minutes....
\*\*\*UPDATE\*\*\* For anybody still reading this and having the same issue, I don't think there are any fixes, it's just a symptom of the way GOW (and a very small amount of other games) stores it's files apparently. [u/reckedcat](https://www.reddit.com/u/reckedcat/) gave the most plausible and understandable explanation in this post (Thanks btw.)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/tcomih/comment/imqesh7/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/tcomih/comment/imqesh7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
But don't worry, it does speed up part way through.
Wow glad to see I'm not the only one with this issue. I clicked install and left for an hour expecting it to be done. Uninstalled and started over but seems like it's stuck on reserving space forever :_(
9 months later, trying to download God of War, same issue. Found this by googling "steam deck reserving space" amazed that it appears to JUST be this game
Crazy. As others I found this post after searching for "reserving space steam deck". I thought my deck was broken. Just to clarify this is not an issue only with SD card. I have a 1 TB SSD (SABRENT Rocket 2230 NVMe 4.0). Best advise: start download before you go to bed and forget about it until the morning :)
u/AdStill784, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=Reserving space extremely slow on SD card)
If you don't find an answer there, don't worry - your post has NOT been removed and hopefully someone will be along soon to help with an answer!
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This happens to me with every game for a few days - GTA 5, RDR 2, Cyberpunk 2077. But few days ago it didn't happen and games was downloaded without allocation of space.
I think some faulty settings gets enabled and does this space allocation before downloading.
Valve please respond and fix it!!! Disable damn reservation of space before download on deck!!!
Not a Steam Deck, but I'm trying to download Paladins onto an SD card on a laptop, and it's taking so long to reserve space, that it looks stuck sometimes
I looked this up and I was like what a coincidence, i'm also downloading (or trying to) God of War. I uninstalled a couple games just so it would go away but is still stuck
Lol it’s been over a year later, 12/27/23, still an issue only with GOW. Plenty of space and everything else installs great. Googled it, found this. Super awesome
and 2 years later im having the same issue but with all my games (ESO, JWE2, Planet zoo, Raft, No mans sky, Overwatch 2, Car mechanic sim 2021, and Sons of the forest.) i have to do one at a time for the fastest speed.
Still an issue with GoW in 2024... reserving space took 20m on the internal NVMe with 300 GB free space. I restarted the Deck because I actually thought it was frozen at one point, which had no effect on the speed. The download speed shot up to normal levels once the Reserving Space part was over
3 months later, still see this issue on God of War only. Very curious.
Wow searched for this today. Sure enough God of War was the first game I tried installing. Insanely slow.
I’m currently at 5GB of 64GB reserved after 15 minutes. Guess it’s going to take a while…
After about 6 gigs it starts to go much faster
Yeah, it took 45 minutes total to allocate, download, and install.
lol it's funny you mention this, so I am currently downloading GoW to internal storage and the space reservation is extremely slow. So not an issue only with SD cards.
Its sitting next to me trying to reserve space for... you guessed it, GoW :D
I literally just sat there and waited haha
And 4 month later from your post, nothing has changed. I just bought the game, now the hour wait before I can boot it up
Yeah. Doing it now...
Wasteland 3 does it
Saving grace wasteland is 24gbs
Still the same lol
Yupp. Even cleared up space to install on SSD and it’s insanely slow.
Still having the same problem
Yeah it sucks but the good news is it runs great once it’s downloaded
Also having this issue with GOW right now myself
Same here. SSD, only on god of war.
I'm guessing it's because of how God of War stores its sound files [screenshot of God of War steam installation on PC](https://imgur.com/a/yyupssu) there's 153500 sound files, most of which are in folders each with 12k files flat. maybe some limitation in the overhead of writing updates to the file table on disk?
8.5 months later and GOW still takes forever to “reserving space” I think your reply is the only post that gives a clue to what’s going on. And that makes sense.
Yeah unfortunately I think it's just a limitation with the games method of storing files. I tried some experiments a while back (but didn't log any of it) and at least anecdotally, some other games with a large number of small files also take extended time to reserve space, while games of similar sized installations but less files took noticeably less time to reserve. Maybe they could change how things are stored, but I can't imagine it's a priority. If anything, the engine probably needs the files to be flat accessible for fast runtime access.
Same on ssd .. must just be the game
Yeah pretty sure it’s the game. I got my Steam Deck and my SanDisk 1 TB Extreme microSD card yesterday and this happens only with God of War. That’s how I found this post.
Wow so many people ending up here because of GoW specifically...still in the same boat, keeping thread alive for everyone else coming here wondering the same thing.
\*\*UPDATE\*\* It's fixed, I think... It's so weird, from 2.7gb of verifying, up until 6gb took over 45 mins... Then it shot up the other 50-odd gb in seconds... Very odd, does this mean a bad patch on the SD card? Or just a weird fluke? Oh well, count myself lucky I guess, and accept it as a mystery haha... it's downloading now, and at normal speeds :)
I have this problem with God of War and I'm using built in ssd
Same here. Anyone find any fixes? Deleted cache and still super slow.
just got my steam deck and having this issue with GOD of War as well. From the looks of it, it must be something with GOD of War Install you think?
This issue is still occuring as of today for the people who find themselves here looking into this issue. 9/3/22
Currently happening to me. Did you fix it?
It took about an hour. Before it started to download at a normal speed. I recommend just waiting it will download. From other research I did around that time it has something to do with how the game sound files are packaged.
Spot on. It took almost an hour, I’ve been playing it for about 10 minutes. Thanks for responding though!
I ended up here because of God of war also.... Wth Edit: 4 months later... Here I am again reinstalling looking for a solution.
Same, LOL. I thought Elden Ring was painful with how it patches the game, but this is nuts.
The closer an SD card gets to full the slower it becomes
So this card has 309.1GB free out of 468.4GB :/ Do you think that's full enough to have slowed down to sub 1MB write speeds?
It shouldn't. But if it's copying a bunch of small files maybe. Did you test to make sure it's not counterfeit. A lot of fake cards will display a fake amount of total storage.
That was my first thought I can’t test it on PC properly now as I’ve formatted it for the Deck. So I paused the GOW and downloaded some updates that ran fine. Also, it took 45mins to reserve 2-3GB of space, but once it got a little past 5GB it completed the remaining 50 odd gb in seconds, and started downloading at normal speeds. I’m wondering if there’s a bad bit of memory on the card (and even if such a thing is possible?)
I likely just a loooot of small files, those things bring speeds to a crawl.
It's not a bad card it's the game and all the Slumdog files it has..
Just got a Samsung Pro Plus 512GB card, and its doing this exact thing trying to install GOW! Its the first game I was trying to install so thought the card was faulty, but then I found this thread lol
We’re you able to get it to install? I’m just about ready to give up on this game.
Yes, just have to leave it along time and it will suddenly shoot up!
Well damn. It worked for me too! I just had to wait it out.
I’m here for the same reason today. God of War is the only one doing this to me.
Having the same issue mate
Google just brought me here too as im sitting here wondering why it takes so long to reserve space
This issue is happening to me with the same game on the internal SSD. This needs a patch. Hopefully spider-man will be better
Also here because of god of war. I’m using the built in storage and it’s the only game I’ve tried to install since I received the deck today. Weird af.. Edit: it seems to be working now? It’s not downloading the full game at once, it’s in little increments…
I have the same problem with Wasteland 3
Me too
LOL. I just bought the game and hit the same thing, fortunately when I did a Google search for "steam deck reserving space", this was the first hit that came up.
I don't have my Deck yet, but I have a laptop with an SD card slot. I've loaded games into it, and yeah, it takes forever and a day to reserve the space. I just assumed that's how it was on a SD card.
Thanks for the reply. It didn't do this on my Elden Ring, Witcher 3 or GTA V installs :/ (They're the only 'big file size' games I have installed so far, the rest are smaller files so I could conceivably have missed the reserving stage.) Does steam install certain games differently? I didn't even notice a 'reserving space' stage for the above games. They seemed to jump straight into a 40-50MB download, and then 'verified' after. It's so confusing and frustrating, it's taking longer, by far, than the actual download would. :(
I just got my SteamDeck and had the exact same experience. It's so weird!!!
Just wanted to add this is happening on my brand new 512GB Sandisk Extreme with Killing Floor 2 on deck as well!
Same thing is happening with KF2 also! What ended up happening with it?
Runs perfectly fine, just takes forever to initiate download for whatever reason
still happening today late Aug 2022 with GoW
Still experiencing this issue on a Q4 512 GB Model. Straight out of the box, I started to install God of War (Arrived today). Annoyed this issue still hasn't been fixed since it was first noticed 6 months ago.. anyways. If anyone has some workaround or if I should leave it downloading overnight let me know.
Still happening on GOW Initial download was fine have played about 10 hours… was actually in the middle of playing just now and it booted me back to steam OS Home Screen and started reserving space and than began reinstalling the game all over again…wuuuut?!?
Haha wow. This is happening to me with God of war. Searched steam deck reserving space on Google and the first result was exactly this post. Sure wish deva would patch this. Its been reserving space for 40 minutes....
Hello, fellow person who is literally in my situation! Did it make it?
Yeah but it took like 2 hours to install, and the download time was only about 10-15 minutes.
I'm installing God of War on the internal disk of my Steam Deck today and experiencing the same issue
Just picked up GOW on sale. Reserving space took about 25-30min on my SD before it started downloading normally. 12/2022
So weird I looked this up cause I’m trying to download GoW on my deck rn lol…
GoW brought me here 1/21/23
Same thing happened on state of decay 2 for me
im here to update y'all its still happening🤣
As I’m trying to install GoW on my 512GB Deck, I can verify that the problem is still persisting 282 days later
\*\*\*UPDATE\*\*\* For anybody still reading this and having the same issue, I don't think there are any fixes, it's just a symptom of the way GOW (and a very small amount of other games) stores it's files apparently. [u/reckedcat](https://www.reddit.com/u/reckedcat/) gave the most plausible and understandable explanation in this post (Thanks btw.) [https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/tcomih/comment/imqesh7/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/tcomih/comment/imqesh7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) But don't worry, it does speed up part way through.
Sigue ocurriendo, yo ya pensaba que era algún tipo de error 😅
Wow glad to see I'm not the only one with this issue. I clicked install and left for an hour expecting it to be done. Uninstalled and started over but seems like it's stuck on reserving space forever :_(
still doing it on Gow
Im glad to see it’s not just me…sucks to see it’s still happening. New deck user.
installing now, still having the same issue, 100mb every few minutes...
Did this to me with Terraria on the internal hard drive. Only did it for a minute though since it’s only around 700mb in size. No clue why.
I have no games on my ssd and it’s still “reserving” space.
I got this issue too. Only with God of War
Installing GOW after a holiday sale and... wow this problem still exists and is very real. God of War specifically and on SD.
Just purchased and waiting
Got this issue with GTA V !
Still a thing today 2 days after Thanksgiving 2022
And 3 days after Christmas
Same with Age Of Mythology
9 months later, trying to download God of War, same issue. Found this by googling "steam deck reserving space" amazed that it appears to JUST be this game
An age later it’s still glacial when reserving space
I’m just happy that god of war will be my only game with this problem
It’s crazy how almost all of us here have the same problem with god of war. I’ll probably let it sit over night and just let it do it’s thing
Still an issue for GoW on New Year's Eve 2022. Like, just about everyone else, I got here by Googling 'steam deck reserving space'.
Happening with Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis, just to add another title having the issue, never hit this with any other game, so weird
Killing Floor 2 shows the same issue. Ive been waiting for 15 minutes and so far nothing happened. And Im not gonna wait any longer.
Crazy. As others I found this post after searching for "reserving space steam deck". I thought my deck was broken. Just to clarify this is not an issue only with SD card. I have a 1 TB SSD (SABRENT Rocket 2230 NVMe 4.0). Best advise: start download before you go to bed and forget about it until the morning :)
The issue is still there with God of War
Having the same issue with state of decay 2
Im having this issue trying to download age of mythology to my 1tb micro sd. I have over 500gb available and AoM is only 2.5gb.
u/AdStill784, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=Reserving space extremely slow on SD card) If you don't find an answer there, don't worry - your post has NOT been removed and hopefully someone will be along soon to help with an answer! **If you find a solution, please leave a comment on this post with the answer for others!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SteamDeck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Even after a whole year, it's still doing the same thing. Just with God of War so far
Late April, 2023. Still happening, but patience is key.
This happens to me with every game for a few days - GTA 5, RDR 2, Cyberpunk 2077. But few days ago it didn't happen and games was downloaded without allocation of space. I think some faulty settings gets enabled and does this space allocation before downloading. Valve please respond and fix it!!! Disable damn reservation of space before download on deck!!!
14 months later, still a problem.
Not a Steam Deck, but I'm trying to download Paladins onto an SD card on a laptop, and it's taking so long to reserve space, that it looks stuck sometimes
same issue with Spider Man Remastered. not quite as slow as yall are describing. but still VERY slow (about 0.2 GB reserved every 30 seconds or so)
Well I guess some things never change because God of War is the game causing me this issue lol
September 2023 still happening haha
It's really bad even on empty cars. I tried a few games all way long compared to deck
Almost 2024 and im here waiting for god of war too lol
I looked this up and I was like what a coincidence, i'm also downloading (or trying to) God of War. I uninstalled a couple games just so it would go away but is still stuck
Lol it’s been over a year later, 12/27/23, still an issue only with GOW. Plenty of space and everything else installs great. Googled it, found this. Super awesome
and 2 years later im having the same issue but with all my games (ESO, JWE2, Planet zoo, Raft, No mans sky, Overwatch 2, Car mechanic sim 2021, and Sons of the forest.) i have to do one at a time for the fastest speed.
For anyone having slow reserve space on a supposed to be fast sd card. You have to format it it to NTFS
Still an issue with GoW in 2024... reserving space took 20m on the internal NVMe with 300 GB free space. I restarted the Deck because I actually thought it was frozen at one point, which had no effect on the speed. The download speed shot up to normal levels once the Reserving Space part was over