Why is updating so slow?

[nautofon]

Note that "anti-virus" can really slow things down. (It's also probably snake oil, but that's another discussion.)

Other than that, this issue may just be Steam being Steam ... which is, of course, not very helpful.

[flight50]

Please read the OP. I said the download is fine. It's the patching process that's the problem. Patching takes over an hour. Uninstalling and reinstalling takes about 30 mins.

Gotcha. I mis read. Apologies.

[Steve Pitts]

Have you tried watching what Steam tells you is going on during the patching? (click on the Downloads link in the bottom of the Steam window and initiate the update from that screen)

FWIW the last updates for both ATS and ETS2 took 35 seconds on my system (which is hardly bleeding edge - a Ryzen 7 5800X with the game installed on a Samsung SSD 980 PRO on an NVMe connection) and I run with the snake oil AV active