TheCloudlessSky Posted January 21, 2009 Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 Hello,I've been using utorrent for a while now with no issues. My max download speed is around 620kB/s which is nice to download a lot at once. I've been downloading with utorrent for about 2 years now. I have a 250 GB partition (from a WD Caviar SE hdd) that I use for downloading to. The drive is about 80% full right now. Since about a week ago I've been noticing that utorrent will stop downloading for a little while, my computer will lock up and then it'll go back to normal. If I monitor the speed you can see it go up and up to the 620 kB/s and then drop. Then I found out there was a "Disk Overloaded 100%" message down at the bottom. Then I watched the following:It's very interesting to see that the Disk Cache DOESN'T get written to the partition. The cache keeps increasing and increasing until it hits the 32 MB and then this is when the disk overloaded 100% error comes up.If there is anything else I can provide to aid I will do so! If someone can help me it would be greatly appreciated.Thanks!TCS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skimmy_jimmy Posted January 21, 2009 Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 i was having the same problem, luckily i got help here and for the most part got it figured out. i still get the disk overload if i am trying to download LARGE files or many larger files at once, due to the fact it is preallocating the files on the hard drive and it just takes time. i am not sure what your settings are, but this is what i have mine at and has helped significantly: under preferences, go to Advanced/Disk Cache Override automatic cache size - set to 64 MB, or play around with the numbers reduce memory usage all boxes for enable caching of disk writes all boxes for enable caching of disk reads except increase automatic disable windows caching of disk writesand make sure that after you set those, you exit and restart utorrent. hope that helps! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreadWingKnight Posted January 21, 2009 Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 Also, double-check the drive transfer mode in device manager on the properties of your IDE channels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted January 21, 2009 Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 When you get the Disk Overloaded message, are you usually running torrents with 2-4 MB piece size?uTorrent doesn't want to write to disk until it gets completed pieces, then writes the complete piece all at once. But if you've only got 32 MB ram cache and 10 pieces that are 90+% complete (over 3 MB each)...the ram cache could already be full, triggering a Disk Overloaded message.2nd link in my signature ironically could help some. It will tend to get more speed from a few peers instead of typically much lower speeds from slightly more peers. Which should mean pieces complete faster instead of getting stuck at >60% done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCloudlessSky Posted January 21, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 DreadWingKnight - I've set the cache to 64MB and all the settings you recommended and it's still failing at the same place. Also what should the settings be for the transfer mode of the IDE channel?Switeck - As stated above I upped the cache and it STILL fails... should I try increasing it further?I've NEVER had this problem before last week. I tried defragging my harddrive with Contig and it went and defragged the whole thing. It just really doesn't make any sense since I was able to download at this rate just last week. I never had any problems like this. EventViewer doesn't display any disk warnings or errors. My whole computer just comes to a halt when it tries to write the cache to the disk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sluggie Posted January 21, 2009 Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 I also have a similar problem with disk overload and my system hanging. I also checked my event viewer and found that at the same instance i was getting paging file errors on my main hard drive, even though i am downloading to a separate drive. Please help someone, i have just switched to utorrent and dont want to have to switch again! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCloudlessSky Posted January 21, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 Ok check out this image. Switeck you may be onto something. It seems as though the pieces aren't being written to the harddrive after they're completed... they're just staying in the cache. This only happens after a while. I monitored it for a bit and the cache was properly being cleared and writing the pieces to the disk. But then I started another torrent with 256kB pieces and then the following happened:Could this be something wrong with the physical disk? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreadWingKnight Posted January 22, 2009 Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 IDE channels current transfer mode (not the drop-down) should be a DMA mode.If you're looking at "DMA if available" you're looking at the wrong box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCloudlessSky Posted January 22, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 Hi DreadWingKnight,As an FYI, I'm not using an IDE harddrive; it is SATA. Also, I checked the SATA controllers and the DMA mode is set to let the BIOS select it.I can't see this being a problem though as just last week it was working fine...Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreadWingKnight Posted January 22, 2009 Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 Screenshot the settings pages for the controllers. Drives sometimes lapse into PIO without your knowledge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCloudlessSky Posted January 22, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 This is the harddrive in question (hope this is the screenshot you mean ): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted January 22, 2009 Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 What are all your cache settings?Either list the checked ones in numerical order or just screenshot it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberdmeon Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 I am having the same problem. I currently have my cache set to 2GB and none of it is writing to disk. I do not believe it is a HD error because utorrent is the only program affected on my pc. I am sure it has something to do with Utorrent or Windows and the way cached data is written to onto disk from Utorrent. P.S.This problem only started for me when I upgraded to Windows 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCloudlessSky Posted January 23, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 Sorry for the long delay Switeck! Here's the screencap: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 Uncheck:2.Reduce Memory usage4.Write out untouched blocks7.Turn off read caching8.Remove Old block from cache10.Disable Windows caching of disk writesAlso test with Windows caching of disk writes and read BOTH enabled and disabled.If you can, test that also with a MUCH larger disk cache ram size...like 400-1000 MB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCloudlessSky Posted January 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2009 Ok so I unchecked all of those settings. Then I started to download the newest episode of The Office since it wasn't already in my utorrent queue. I stopped all other downloads and downloaded it. It went perfectly fine... the cache was being properly written to disk even at my max of 620kB/s... until 99.9% where it almost FROZE and then about 5 minutes later.. it completed. So I thought I'd continue with the other downloads since this seemed to have fixed it... but alas the other downloads did the same OLD thing where the cache would keep building and building... and then it would drop the speeds back down.Could this maybe be to piece size difference? How can I tell the difference between The Office episode that has completed and one that is still in progress (for this one I just check the pieces tab obviously)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted January 24, 2009 Report Share Posted January 24, 2009 Each torrent has info in the General tab.Also, antivirus, antispyware, media/file indexers could be part of the cause of your problem...they INSIST on reading everything uTorrent is writing to disk, vastly delaying what should be a relatively quick disk write.So...what antivirus, antispyware, media/file indexers are you using?(Process Explorer + uTorrent's DLL list might be helpful at this point.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCloudlessSky Posted January 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2009 I've already turned my AV off (McAfee 8.5i Enterprise) since this initially started happening. I also used process explorer to monitor utorrent... I only noticed the memory increasing as the cache was increasing.I'm starting to think the drive is bad since I've seen many "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation." (the D partition is the one I'm downloading to) warnings in event viewer... I just don't want to have to get the drive replaced since it also holds my windows partition... and *ugh*... this is causing so many issues... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted January 24, 2009 Report Share Posted January 24, 2009 That error message:"An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation."...sounds like a failing hard drive. But at least you're closer to the cause of your problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheCloudlessSky Posted January 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2009 Bah...I was afraid someone else would think it's the HDD also ... I think instead of waiting for warranty... I'll just buy another one Anyways Switechk... I REALLY appreciate all the help! Support like THIS is exactly what a community should be all about! :cool:Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted January 25, 2009 Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 Do a scandisk and/or chkdsk /r on the drive in question. It could be a soft corruption (lost allocation units, cross-linked files, etc)...something fixable or hopefully at worst mark a small section as bad blocks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cambrant Posted January 25, 2009 Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 I have the solution ... update your serial ata controllers or whatever. I had the same problem after a format and reinstallation of Vista. Before i had no problem at all. But now it works fine after windows update gave me 3 important updates. I was about to give up when windows update came and helped me Look at the image and see the updates that was made today. It helped me and the disk overload disappeared. Look at the picture and see the updates that where made.Hmm i might have been a little fast with the post here. The Disk overload still comes in the early stage of the downloads and freezes the download sometimes. But it DOES continue after that and disk overload disappears. Still this is better then not beeing able to download att all. I managed to download 1 torrent and are currently downloading 2 other. There was some disk overload in the beginning of thoose 2 but if u look at the picture they are downloading like mad atm and no disk overload for about 50% of the downloads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreadWingKnight Posted January 25, 2009 Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 That would be because of preallocation, which is a completely different issue from this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cambrant Posted January 25, 2009 Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 Dreadwing if you are talking about my post im sorry if I am misleading the dude. I just had the same problem and posted my solution if you know the solution to my "different" problem you might have the time to help me? Although its working fairly good now. Managed to download 3 movies now and just had a 10 sec disk overload interupt but otherwise its fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cameron.says.hey Posted January 25, 2009 Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 I have my settings exactly as listed by Switeck and have tried both on and off for the cache pairs. I have increased my size from 64 to 500 to 1000 mb cache. I have a SATA drive as well and am running Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7000. I have the exact same problem. I am not pre-allocating. chkdsk error free and disk is fragmented only 1%. Windows memory test returned clean as well apon restart. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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