horrible disk write caching hogging all virtual memory

[fluffylon]

Disk write caching is _disabled_ and cache size set to 260MB.

After the write cache had gobbled up 287MB extra ("write statistics, cache: 287MB of 0.0KB") I stopped the download in a desperate attempt to keep the computer from crashing. To no avail. A little while later windows ran out of swap space as well and utorrent crashed. Taking the 287MB unsaved downloaded data with it down the drain of course.

This isn't the first time this has happened. It seems like every time you've been just uploading for a while and the read cache is full (I'm not sure this is a requirement), starting a download really fucks things up. The downloaded data doesn't get written to disk but instead gets buffered in an ever-increasing cache (which you've told utorrent not to use for writes...) until either a) utorrent eventually starts writing the cached data to disk, or you run out of swap space and utorrent crashes. I have the same thing happening on two different computers, one running win2k sp4 and one running winxp sp2. Oh, and the upload gets cut off (drops to 0) while the write-cache hogging goes on.

While there's no sign of a "Disk Overloaded" msg in the status bar, the problem does appear to have a connection to the phrase

However, if this happens when adding a torrent, it is normal, and due to a design limitation in µTorrent, which will be fixed in the future, not because your disk is actually overloaded. It will disappear after a few minutes.

in the FAQ. If that's the case, is there any ETA on a fix for this? It's very annoying.

[Switeck]

I want to say it's probably a firewall, "security suite", or overloaded hard drive causing the problem...but I just don't know as I don't have that problem.

[fluffylon]

It's definitely not a firewall or security suite. Why would it be? Shouldn't be a disk problem either -- looks more like a flaw in utorrent.

[Switeck]

It really doesn't happen to enough other people to localize the problem, so most likely it is a software conflict.

And is there even any software firewall or security suite on your computer?

[fluffylon]

System 1: only router (hw firewall), win2k.

System 2: (another) router + win xp firewall.

No security suites whatsoever.

I really doubt it's a software conflict either as the two systems have pretty much nothing in common except utorrent. The win2k box doesn't even run much else apart from utorrent.

I figure the fact that the write cache increases to 287MB (when it's set to be completely disabled) ought to give the developer a hunch as to what's going on.

If that's the intended behaviour then there really should be a configurable hard limit that specifies the maximum memory utorrent is ever allowed to use. It's quite bad when it suddenly starts allocating several hundred megabytes extra (running out of swap space and causing a crash, no less).

[Switeck]

I'll let someone else look into this. (Ultima please help!)

[Ultima]

lol I'd love to help, but it has me stumped as well. To be honest, this problem doesn't sound like a case of software conflict (though I can't be too sure). fluffylon's conclusion seems reasonable; whether it's correct, I don't know, since I don't know how the disk cache works in the situation as described above ;\