uTorrent 3.0 x64 RC5 + Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64 = Disk Overloaded

[KoTT]

Dear all,

After two days searching for the solution and trying different settings finally it seems I'm out of luck and need to ask for help. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Apologies in advance for a rather lengthy post, but working in IT myself I hate incident reports like "OMG it's very slow help me now ASAP!" and hope that the information provided would help someone to come up with a brilliant idea that will solve my problem

Problem description:

In 20-40 seconds after starting a torrent, I get the "Disk overloaded 100%" message and download speeds drop to 10-20 kbps.

Environment:

Hardware: i7 2600k / Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 / 8GB (4x2GB) G.Skill PC-12800 RAM / 1x M4 128 SSD all caches enabled / 1x WD2002FAEX + 1x M4 64 SSD as Rapid Response cache / 4x WD20EARS in RAID5 all caches enabled

*The RAID5 array is the where torrent files are downloaded to and seeded from, other disks are for system / programs and my 3D and Photoshop work files respectively (which are many and big so I could not just put them all on the SSD for budget constraint reasons)

Software: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64 bit + uTorrent 3.0 64 bit RC5 + Kaspersky AV 2012 (uTorrent has been of course added to exclusions for both Windows Firewall and KAV. Also full disabling of KAV real-time protection did not seem to have any effect)

Network: 100 Mbps internet connection, PC connected via Cat6 1m patch to Apple AirPort Extreme which connects to the Cat5e cable from Provider (what is further there in their infrastructure I don't know but I guess the standard hub > optical modem setup) - I am getting download up to 8-9 Mb / sec (until disk overloads)

Recent changes: Got the uTorrent RC5 (if I'm not mistaken) last night but the issue was there before too, everything else is pretty much brand new (only assembled and installed the rig last week)

Benchmarks: To prevent questions about RAID speed, CrystalDisk tells that the array has pretty decent sequential performance (something like ~280 on read, ~200 on write), the only where it was week are small 4k random chunk speeds (both less than 1 mb/s). I don't recall the exact numbers since I'm posting from work, but can post screenshot from home in the evening if anyone needs that for analysis.

Settings attempted:

(all with no luck)

Option 1 (default)

Cache size: Auto

Reduce memory usage when… (Y)

Enable caching of disk writes (Y)

Write out untouched blocks every 2 minutes (Y)

Write out finished pieces immediately (Y)

Enabling caching of disk reads (Y)

Turn off read caching if upload speed is slow (Y)

Remove old blocks from cache (Y)

Increase automatic cache size... (Y)

Disable Windows caching for write (Y)

Disable Windows caching for read (Y)

Option 2 (rely on Windows)

Cache size: 1024

Reduce memory usage when… (Y)

Enable caching of disk writes (N)

Write out untouched blocks every 2 minutes (N)

Write out finished pieces immediately (N)

Enabling caching of disk reads (N)

Turn off read caching if upload speed is slow (N)

Remove old blocks from cache (N)

Increase automatic cache size... (N)

Disable Windows caching for write (N)

Disable Windows caching for read (N)

Option 3 (rely on Windows for reads)

Cache size: 1024

Reduce memory usage when… (Y)

Enable caching of disk writes (Y)

Write out untouched blocks every 2 minutes (N)

Write out finished pieces immediately (Y)

Enabling caching of disk reads (N)

Turn off read caching if upload speed is slow (N)

Remove old blocks from cache (N)

Increase automatic cache size... (N)

Disable Windows caching for write (Y)

Disable Windows caching for read (N)

Option 4 (rely on Windows for writes)

Cache size: 1024

Reduce memory usage when… (Y)

Enable caching of disk writes (N)

Write out untouched blocks every 2 minutes (N)

Write out finished pieces immediately (N)

Enabling caching of disk reads (Y)

Turn off read caching if upload speed is slow (N)

Remove old blocks from cache (Y)

Increase automatic cache size... (Y)

Disable Windows caching for write (N)

Disable Windows caching for read (Y)

Option 5 (enable both caches)

Cache size: 1024

Reduce memory usage when… (Y)

Enable caching of disk writes (Y)

Write out untouched blocks every 2 minutes (N)

Write out finished pieces immediately (Y)

Enabling caching of disk reads (Y)

Turn off read caching if upload speed is slow (N)

Remove old blocks from cache (Y)

Increase automatic cache size... (Y)

Disable Windows caching for write (N)

Disable Windows caching for read (N)

Option 6 (screw the cache alltogether)

Cache size: 1024

Reduce memory usage when… (Y)

Enable caching of disk writes (N)

Write out untouched blocks every 2 minutes (N)

Write out finished pieces immediately (N)

Enabling caching of disk reads (N)

Turn off read caching if upload speed is slow (N)

Remove old blocks from cache (N)

Increase automatic cache size... (N)

Disable Windows caching for write (Y)

Disable Windows caching for read (Y)

Options 7 - n:

Tried the above settings one by one but in combination with setting under "Advanced" settings:

diskio.write_queue_size increased from 32 to 64 and then to 128 (on 128 uT froze, required system reboot)

diskio.coalesce_write_size increased from 2 MB to 64 MB and then 128 MB (on 128 uT froze, required system reboot)

In addition I have tried also disabling and enabling "preallocate all space" option.

All of these no luck so far - still get the same issue sooner or later (later meaning within the matter of minutes at most).

Theories so far:

1. Differrent caching mechanisms interfering among themselves (Intel Z68 chipset has its caching, Windows tries to cache something, uTorrent too)?

2. uTorrent writing in small chunks to the RAID array which does not treat it too well? If this is true, how can I force uTorrent to perform more sequential writes rather than writing small random chunks?

3. uTorrent not engineered (yet?) to work in this configuration with RAID and under W7 x64?

So, any help and guidance is very much appreciated. Most of what can be found on Google for this topic has been read and attempted as you can see...

Edit: Added few details about network and antivirus which I initially forgot to include.

[CZorn]

Nice, detailed post - Have you looked at your PC settings? Setting the uTorrent cache is fine but make sure you set a large cache for the drive,do not let Win set it.

Do you have enough free disc space for the cache?

Are your drives set for the proper interface? Have you tried swapping cables/drive location?

Have you checked your RAM to see if a stick is going bad?

Have you defragged the drives?

I had this issue some time back and it drove me bonkers. Turned out my disk cache was too small and I had a wonky stick of RAM that failed when it got hot. Also, try throttling your MAX D/L speed slightly and see what happens. I do not think anyone of these will be "it", rather it will be a combo of several small things.

There are many apps to check throughput, burn in, etc.but I prefer SiSoft Sandra.

[PvtBloody]

Dear all,

After two days searching for the solution and trying different settings finally it seems I'm out of luck and need to ask for help. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Apologies in advance for a rather lengthy post, but working in IT myself I hate incident reports like "OMG it's very slow help me now ASAP!" and hope that the information provided would help someone to come up with a brilliant idea that will solve my problem

Hi KoTT, I registered just to answer your question .

I had the same problem today when I installed utorrent 3.0. To fix this I reverted back to version 2.2.1 (Build 25302) as stated in this post.

Although eklatrys said that when he switched back to 3.0 everything was ok, I'm sticking to 2.2.1 for now.

P.S: My HDD is a western digital caviar black 750, so it's clearly a utorrent 3.0 bug.

[KoTT]

Dear all' date='

After two days searching for the solution and trying different settings finally it seems I'm out of luck and need to ask for help. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Apologies in advance for a rather lengthy post, but working in IT myself I hate incident reports like "OMG it's very slow help me now ASAP!" and hope that the information provided would help someone to come up with a brilliant idea that will solve my problem

[/quote']

Hi KoTT, I registered just to answer your question .

I had the same problem today when I installed utorrent 3.0. To fix this I reverted back to version 2.2.1 (Build 25302) as stated in this post.

Although eklatrys said that when he switched back to 3.0 everything was ok, I'm sticking to 2.2.1 for now.

P.S: My HDD is a western digital caviar black 750, so it's clearly a utorrent 3.0 bug.

Thank you!

I have fixed my problem by switching to BitTorrent for now - also no problems even with default settings. Seems to be uTorrent 3.0 bug indeed...

[DreadWingKnight]

Did you try deleting your settings files from %appdata%\utorrent and re-building the settings manually from there?

[KoTT]

Did you try deleting your settings files from %appdata%\utorrent and re-building the settings manually from there?

Yes, I tried that, as well as deinstalling / reinstalling completely... Did not help

[PvtBloody]

I'm back with some bad news. Reverting to an older version didn't fix the problem.

I've noticed that only utorrent has this issue; I've tested with other clients.

The only way to avoid this, is to disable the write caching from advanced settings.

The problem is that the cache starts to fill and when it hits the limit, it's not flushed and the disk overload error appears. If I tweak the settings and stop and restart the torrent, the cache will start working correctly without the disk overload error (downloading with 8-10 MB/s).

However, I have no idea what causes this. As I said, I tested other clients and they handle the cache correctly.

What is even more weird, is that I never experienced this issue in the years since I'm using utorrent. This started happening after I've changed my HDD (WD Caviar Black 750 GB) and reinstalled Windows 7 x64 Professional (before I used Ultimate edition).