Cache settings (intensive cache usage)

[krissou]

Hi,

Could you explain me how to configure uTorrent to make it use a lot of cache and access hdd as less as possible?

I have tried a lot of settings, for exemple allowing up to 1Gb cache in "Advanced/Disk cache" but uTorrent do not use more than 35Mo on my machine and HDD access are quite frequent.

Thanks for your tips.

[GTHK]

From the manual

Disk Cache

Override automatic cache size and specify the size manually allows you to set a new maximum memory usage for the disk cache. Normally, µTorrent automatically adjusts the cache size based on your current download speed. This value is interpreted in MiB, so please enter it as such. Any value below 1 will be ignored, and 1 will be used instead.

Reduce memory usage when cache is not needed flushes unused parts of the disk cache when µTorrent is not transferring data.

Advanced Cache Settings

Enable caching of disk writes allows µTorrent to use the disk cache to store data in memory before writing it to disk. This option has the effect of decreasing the frequency of writes to disk.

Write out untouched blocks every 2 minutes makes µTorrent write to disk the 16 KiB blocks of data in memory that haven't been touched for 2 minutes or longer and don't fill up a piece. This option has the effect of decreasing µTorrent's memory usage while increasing the frequency of writes to disk.

Write out finished pieces immediately makes µTorrent write a piece to disk once it is completed in memory. This option has the effect of decreasing µTorrent's memory usage while increasing the frequency of writes to disk.

Enable caching of disk reads allows µTorrent to use the disk cache to store frequently read data into memory from disk. This option has the effect of decreasing the frequency of reads from disk.

Turn off caching if the upload speed is slow disables the read caching if uploading is below 40 KiB/s. This option has the effect of decreasing µTorrent's memory usage while increasing the frequency of reads from disk.

Remove old blocks from the cache removes chunks of read cache data from memory if they haven't been accessed for 10 minutes in order to make room for other data. This option has the effect of decreasing µTorrent's memory usage while increasing the frequency of reads from disk.

Increase automatic cache size when cache thrashing increases the disk cache size when reading from disk increases (most often due to increased upload speeds). If you override the automatic cache size, this option is not needed.

Disable Windows Caching of disk writes disables Windows' native caching of writes to disk. This option helps when the Windows disk cache sometimes causes an extremely large amount of physical system memory to seemingly "disappear" while µTorrent is downloading quickly (because it is trying to cache µTorrent's increased disk writing rate). When memory becomes fully used, page swapping occurs, which can cause slowdowns. On the other hand, enabling this option may cause increased disk seeks, which may decrease transfer rates when the µTorrent disk cache is full.

Disable Windows Caching of disk reads disables Windows' native caching of reads from disk. This option helps when the Windows disk cache sometimes causes an extremely large amount of physical system memory to seemingly "disappear" while µTorrent is uploading quickly (because it is trying to cache µTorrent's increased disk reading rate). When memory becomes fully used, page swapping occurs, which can cause slowdowns. On the other hand, enabling this option may cause increased disk seeks, which may decrease transfer rates when the µTorrent disk cache is full.

Uncheck the options that the manual says DECREASE memory usage, which is almost every sub-option. Maybe search the forum for more information, might be some other useful information. You can open the manual with F1 (it'll automatically download it the first time you press it) :3

[krissou]

Excellent!

I now understand better all those settings. I'll let you know the performance I can get with that.

Thanks

[uTornado]

When I have and external HD RAID (10,5 TB) with the torrents, connected via usb1 (very slow), 128 MB RAM, and an internal HD of 30 GB. Could I use swapping on the internal HD to speed things up, considering the slow external HD.

[Firon]

No. Why don't you just get a machine that can do USB2?

[georgex1]

I know this is old thread, but at a certain point it may help on configurations like this to use the internal HDD as a primary target and to put uTorrent move the content automatically on the slow drive once download is complete ... The only bad thing is on really big torrentz that ocupy tens of gigs, but you can put those directly to the huge drive, the seasons tend to go slow anyway ;-)