Suddenly speed drops with message 'Disk nearly full 100%'

[FairwayKnight]

This evening got the weirdest case.

Running latest version 1.7.7 (build 8179) on XP Pro fully updated. Downloading partition 600GB, 450GB still free (but not for long....).

Running download 10 torrents at low speeds, but probably as expected, nothing unusual, at about 160 kBps in total. Upspeed about 50 kBps.

Suddenly I see out of the corner of my eye the Downspeed nearly zero. Also Upspeed 0.

Clicked uTorrent open and I see on the bottom bar a message stating 'Disk nearly full 100%' or something like that. Didn't write it down.

Never had that before. The strange thing is that the Free space on the downloading HDD is still give or take 450 GB, yes indeed GB. So, seems big enough.Since what I'm downloading doesn't surpass 5 GB in total.

I have in the configuration settings under Downloads the option: Claim file space in advance ticked (or something like that since I'm not running the English version). But that shouldnt matter.

I couldn't get anything running again at decent speed. So just exited uTorrent. Started it up again, it then took a while, but all seemed to be running again as usual after that.

Has anybody had this experience too or have any clue what may have caused it? :/

[jewelisheaven]

You're not seeing any message related to disk space. However if you check Ctrl-P -> Advanced -> Disk Cache you may try ticking the box "increase cache size when thrashing"... Verify your controllers haven't lapsed into PIO mode (Device manager, and check properties for the hard drive controllers both primary and secondary master and slave)... Heh, it also may be windows cacheing being stupid. The in-development 1.8 build comes with workarounds for this,buat as it's not stable or even beta, please try running it self-encapsulated in a testing phase before switching to it full-time.

[FairwayKnight]

OK, tnx for the help.

I put the tick on increase of cache in case of thrashing.

Checked Device Drivers for both IDE channels. Though both HDDs are on one channel in my PC.

This channel is now running for both device 0 and 1 in Ultra DMA Mode 5, whatever that may mean, but I guess that´s ok.

When I encounter this incident again, then I´ll check again if they reverted back to PIO.

[jewelisheaven]

Good deal. I'm surprised though at the presentation. Downloading @ 1.6 Mbit doesn't usually present the thrashing or cache problems that pane is to help with. Could I recommend turning off "dump pieces immediately to disk" as well. ESPECIALLY with running so many concurrent torrents. Is there a reason you run so many? I can max 1.5 Mbit down with just 3 torrents and 20 connected peers. (heck even 1 if it's from .jp or .se peers) There is INHERENT additional seektimes (the 100% message I THINK you got) so maybe you should lower the active torrents under Ctrl-P -> Queueing.

[FairwayKnight]

Mmm, interesting thought.

Succeeded in running even more torrents simultaniously... (more than 20). Since most torrents are quite slow (unless they are very recent and very wanted, which is not the case for the torrents I'm engaging). So, this was my way to try to get a higher load on my 12 Mbps download pipe and make the much of my sparse time to set in a number of downloads for stuff that I lost when my HDD melted down on me.

Well, how to balance this out towards an optimum is a bit of a mystery to me. Since I haven't enough knowledge about the mechanics of this and I didn't find anything around this in the FAQs/manual, I just assumed this wouldnt be an issue (maybe a bit naive =|).

But off course I could lower down the number of simultanious downloads. This doesn't make them faster though, I tried that a number of time: doesnt happen. So the total elapsed time till all the torrents finish will take longer, as far as I experienced.

[jewelisheaven]

Since you have 12 Mbit down and 1 Mbit is quite sub-par, have you tried running 1.8 with forced encryption and no legacy connections under Ctrl-P -> BitTorrent

Checking it with OpenOffice or Slackware would be using the best uT has to offer right now. If you can't hit that downspeed I'd make sure or check around if your ISP does limiting / shaping / filtering... :/

[FairwayKnight]

Might try that.

Had the problem again this evening without limiting the number of sim downloads. And also when limiting to 10 torrents.

It appears that when I patiently wait suddenly my HDD starts to ramble and then after 10 seconds the speed picks up again. So it seems to me that it's some kind of a buffer flushing issue, problem or maybe a bug. The increas cache in case of trashing is still ticked and IDE still has same setting. =(

Put legacy connections out already but I'm not sure if this has any noticeble effect on speed but certainly not on this issue. Think the low speeds on the torrents is mainly because of limited upload speeds from other seeds/peers (and for my torrents there are only few online anyway).

I guess we're all waiting for SDSL to take off :rolleyes

[jewelisheaven]

Can you get the exact error message or press Alt-PrntScr on your keyboard to take a picture of it?? I still don't see any disk full message :/

The reason I mentioned unencrpted connections, is IF your ISP does take a blow outta them... then you encrypt them so they need DPI hardware. If encrypted packets aren't raising the flow even on 1.8 it's likely you are being shaped BECAUSE of the encrypted traffic. Well, there's two places cacheing might be an issue between the uT and Windows or windows and the disk. 1.8 in-development build ALSO has methods to get around Windows Cacheing, so that may be a check to see if that's the reason for the "halt" while the windows buffer flushes. However in most cases of seeing this reported I've gotten the gist that the reason the buffer fills is due to the bottleneck from the hardware. Prior to moving to RAID0/0+1 hard drive sets people have gotten "disk overload 100%" when writing @ 12-18 MiBps. Afterwards I have seen reports of uT working @ 60MiBps sustained >< And I thought my 100BaseT was fast, lol

[FairwayKnight]

I'll take a snapshot when I encounter it again. Can I paste that in this dialogue or do I send it somewhere?

It may take a while, be patient; since I'm not downloading for some days to come.

[jewelisheaven]

sure thing I use http://imageshack.us to upload my pictures. This forum doesn't allow attachments. Not a problem for the delay. I'm just confused because I searched through possible messages and I didn't see one regarding hard drive space :/

This isn't in the popup dialog for "add new torrent" is it? It's in the bottom left part of the status bar (F6) in the main uT UI right.

[FairwayKnight]

OK.

No, it´s not the popup.

Indeed it´s in the bottom status bar in the section just left of the DHT status section.

[Maroseli]

I am getting a similar problem that i can't resolve.

The message is "Disk Overload 100%". I am fairly new to all this and cannot get rid of it.

Occasionally i don't get ot and downliad at good speed but more often than not it starts ok and then the message appears and the speed drops through the floor.

Can anyone please help this idiotic englishman?

[jewelisheaven]

Actually that's the problem FairwayKnight was reporting. It happens when you are downloading / writing to disk faster than your hardware supports. I'd make sure your hard drives aren't running PIO (much slower than (U)DMA mode) from the hardware properties... aka "Device Manager". Additionally you can see it Ctrl-P -> Advanced -> Disk Cache override default size, OR "increase disk cache when thrashing" helps. NOTE: both options will result in increased RAM usage of uT.

What kind of speeds are you downloading at? Is your hard drive setup unique in any way?

[Maroseli]

After i had posted the query i found the answer (i hope) and have done what was suggested and seem to be ok at the moment.

Thanks for the reply

[jesus29]

now i am facing same problem since two days,but happens only when i downloads 6 or higher no. of torrent at the same time,but when i downloaded only 2 torrent or 4 my speed goes at max,when there are 10 torrent my speed just become half,and every torrent shows message disk overload or an error in open of socket or queue is full,what can i do to download simultaneously 10 ar more torrent,because there is low seeders no.for every torrent thats why i am downloading 10 or more at the same time,may i increase disk cache up to 500mb and check both the box under disk cache,i have sata hard disk with 250GB space and have 2GB ram,graphic card 8600GT,cpu 3Ghz pentium d dual core,what should i do friends?

[jewelisheaven]

If you're trying to download more than 3 torrents at once you better have a RAID or be downloading to separate drives. Seeking and bottlenecks are rampant with a default Cache size. Ifyou raise cache size it should reduce the overload.. i.e. it won't always say 100% I can get up to disk overload 30% while watching a movie and uT keeps chugging because I have my cache auto-resize

[jesus29]

i have no problem of ram,i can give ram as much as utorrent need,like up to 1GB,can ram solve this problem

[jewelisheaven]

That's the question. Try it to see

Additionally if you try out the 1.8 beta found in the Announcements forum it has the ability to bypass Windows Cacheing which may also help raise throughput. However it may also be that you can reduce overload currently due to your high speeds by going to Ctrl-P -> Advanced -> Disk Cache and unchecking "dump complete pieces immediately. This slows the write process to happen every 20 seconds which allows more time for disk seeking (which is essentially what the "disk overload" means... it's also at the FAQ)