[Solved] Windows 7 x64 utorrent 2.0.4/2.2 disk overloaded

[rob444]

Hello!

I currently have two hard drives in my system, a 1 TB (7200, 32MB) and a 2 TB (7200, 64MB) hard drive.

I recently got my 2 TB hard drive and here is the product link: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=773

Before I got this hard drive I downloaded all my torrents to this hard drive: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=488

I've never had any problems downloading torrents, I've always achieved great speeds but now when I am downloading to my new drive it goes up to 10 mb/s (I'm on a 100/100 connection) but after 20-60 seconds it goes down to 5 mb/s and eventually down to 1-2 mb/s and says disk is overloaded (?!). I don't get it...

I use the same (default) settings as before, not touched cache stuff or anything like that, though I've messed around with it after I noticed the disk got overloaded but returned it's settings to default later on.

I've benchmarked the hard drive and it's partition with sisoft sandra and I achieved a 90~ mb/s average speed, normal?

I used utorrent 2.0.4 but I upgraded to 2.2 in case it was a bug but I am still having problems in 2.2.

I tried copying a folder containing two large files at around 5 GB total to the hard drive when it was "overloaded" in utorrent and I achieved a copy speed of 40-85 mb/s, so there is bandwidth after all.

Here's a small screenshot of what it looks like on the graph: http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/8025/utorrent0.jpg

Here's my disk cache settings (It should be default but it's possible I might have mixed a few things up I guess): http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4015/cache0.jpg

Maybe I should try resetting _all_ settings in utorrent, except removing my torrent list, any idea on how to accomplish that?

I don't know what's wrong... I need some serious help/advice :/.

Thanks in advance!

SOLVED!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks to the helpful guys at irc.p2p-network.net @ #utorrent (alcaholjunkie and Saribro!).

I just needed to override the cache size and changed some other unwanted settings, so it looks like this now: http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/7176/utorrentcache.jpg

For future reference and in case imageshack has removed the image, the settings are following in text:

Basic Cache Settings

[checked]Override automatic cache size and specify the size manually (MB): 1024 //It wont take up 1024 mb of memory all the time, only when needed (if you decide to download way too many torrents at the same time for example).

[checked] Reduce memory usage when the cache is not needed

Advanced Cache Settings

[checked] Enable caching of disk writes

[unchecked] 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 the upload speed is slow

[checked] Remove old blocks from the cache

[checked] Increase automatic cache size when cache trashing //You don't really need this unless you have a great upload speed.

[checked] Disable Windows caching of disk writes

[checked] Disable Windows caching of disk reads

[Switeck]

I would uncheck "Reduce memory usage when the cache is not needed" (2nd box from top)...uTorrent is TOO aggressive about that, often reducing its disk cache size down to pathetic levels (<4 MB) even when uploading at 100-200 KB/sec.

[rob444]

If I would uncheck that, wouldn't utorrent preserve 1 gb of data in the ram in this case (I could lower it but still)?

And enabling "Increase automatic cache size when cache trashing" seems to increase my read cache (for uploading)?

[Switeck]

[checked] Remove old blocks from the cache <- will generally prevent uTorrent from using the whole amount.

Watch/check the cache size sometime and you'll see what I mean. Turning on either Remove old blocks from the cache or Reduce memory usage almost always causes an instant and huge drop in uTorrent's memory usage...but not always for the better!