How would I make uTorrent to pressure the HDD as little as possible?

[sc0undrel]

First off, I'm loving uTorrent! Best torrent program ever.

Okay, I'm using uTorrent on this machine:

MB: ABIT KN8 Ultra

RAM: 2GB DIMM 400 PC3200 DDR Dual-Channel

CPU: DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ socket 939

HDD: WD Caviar SE 250GB SATA2 7200rpm 8MB cache

PSU: 450W ATX Chieftec P4 ATX 2.0

Most of the time this computer is not being actively used, and just about 300MB of RAM is being used by windows, leaving the other 1700MB almost always untouched. I'm seeding quite a lot torrents on several different trackers at the same time, and I see the HDD light flashing pretty often.

Now, my questions would be: Exactly which settings should I use in order to make the most use of my RAM, thus relieving the high pressure from my HDD?

Currently I have the disk cache settings set up like this: http://www.hidebehind.com/9DC5088

Are these settings good? Is it safe to increase the automatic cache size even more?

And I'm not sure about the settings in the "Advaced [do not modify]" section". Is there anything in there that I could modify perhaps?

/Edit: Forgot to mention a few things:

I'm using uTorrent 1.6 build 474 (the latest stable version).

My internet connection is: 12Mbits/s downstream and 0.75Mbit/s upstream

The total size of torrents I'm seeding at any time is about 150GB.

[dAbReAkA]

increase the cache

it's safe to experiment with it.. it's safe to do anything expect messing around with the advanced section

[sc0undrel]

Thanks for the advice , but the when increasing the cache (which should sit directly in RAM, right), I see that the pagefile usage (which is on the HDD) is also steadily growing. Screenshot: http://www.hidebehind.com/F14F0988

Is it supposed to be like that? Should I worry about this?

And an another suspicious thing is that when I bring up the Task Manager, I can see that the VM size is always the same as the cache value I have set in uTorrent (screenshot: http://www.hidebehind.com/664D600), but the "Mem Usage" (which should be RAM, right) is constantly going up and down. Clarification: When I start uTorrent, it begins to use RAM more and more (which is good, because that's what I want), BUT when it hits the cache value I have set in my Disk Cache settings (384MB in my case), it immediately drops DOWN to 5MB and starts rising again when it is 384MB, then drops down to 5MB and repeats this over and over again.

Is this normal?

[µtorrent-Guest]

since windows itself has a terrible RAM usage behaviour and µt used windows functions heavily, I assume this bad performance is normal.

(but I have no knowledge, just hearsay assumptions!)

[Ultima]

Eh I don't see any evidence of the pagefile usage increasing steadily. It increased a tiny bit, and remained stable -- stuck right below 768MB, which I can only assume to be the pagefile size limit set in Windows.

[Switeck]

sc0undrel,

It sounds like you set µTorrent's cache to flush/dump info if not used constantly. That might explain the rise and fall of MB useage.

[dAbReAkA]

u can safely disable the pagefile with that much memory..

[jamesford]

Although some applications might not work OK with the pagefile disabled

About the original poster's PF usage question:

The headings for those performance graphs are WRONG.

You see 700+ MB used, but look at the size of the total graph.

That's right, 4000+ MB.

Now check what ur total RAM (Physical RAM + Pagefile) is.

That's right, 4000+ MB.

So you can't actually read usage of pagefile.sys from that graph.

My graph reads 600MB right now, but when firing up XP Pagefilemon i see a usage of 200MB.

That's right, my 600MB is the *total* memory usage which is exactly the same as the "Commit charge" value you see in the boxes underneath the graphs. (this is excluding Windows filecache etc)

In your screenshot situation is exactly the same

[dAbReAkA]

i stumbled upon on this picture yesterday..

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/1193/gbitcacheng6.png

i'm using exactly the same thing, except for the memory value.. 100mb seems enough cache for me..

the pagefile is disabled, everything works fine.. no apps problems or anything.. only photoshop complains that there's no pagefile, and requires one more click to open it, but it works fine.. that's on a PC with 1.5 gigs..

disable the pagefile and check how it works for u..

[jamesford]

Except for the memory amount, that's the same setting as the original poster.

I'm using the same settings too, with a 256MB size.

Harddrive is used a lot though, but i guess that's not that weird while sharing a few multi GB torrents