Recommended Disk Cache settings?

[mayhem117]

I'm using uTorrent 2.0.2. I use a regular IDE hard drive for system files and download files onto a USB hard drive, I want to keep this drive running as long as possible and just discovered what cache settings do. I'm having a bit of trouble setting this up correctly though. When I download it says it finishes but the files aren't complete. (ex. downloaded 2 videos at the same time in the same torrent it alerted me that they were finished and I opened one in VLC and it said AVI file broken and it was jumpy, the other one played good though. Tried to set the first file to download but it gave me an ETA of 8 hours until completed although there are no other files downloading)

Current disk cache settings are as follows:

Override automatic cache size/specify in MB = 512MB (I don't know if it should be set this high but I assume its caching files via ram (2GB installed) and not the hard drive)

Reduce memory usage when cache not needed = checked

Enable caching of disk writes = Checked

Write out untouched blocks every 2 minutes = unchecked

Write out finished pieces immediately = checked

Enable caching of disk reads = checked

Turn off read caching if upload speed is slow = checked (I read somewhere that this is best left checked for people who have slow upload speeds <100kB/s mine is 22kB/s max)

Remove old blocks from cache = checked

Increase auto cache size when cache thrashing = unchecked

Disable Windows caching of disk reads = checked

Disable Windows caching of disk writes = checked (Not sure what I should set these last 2 to being that I have disk reads/writes cached on the above settings)

I hope somebody responds to help me out with this. My aim is to get this set up properly so that I can put less stress on my USB hard drive so that it will last longer. When I would download previously I noticed the lights blinking on and off constantly and was worried it was running my hard drive ragged

[rafi]

My cache setttings are in my sig...