Inappropriate/erroneous insufficient disk space warning

[VHCWL]

909 GB available on a terabyte hard drive. Hardly anything on that drive; 90% free space. But in adding a torrent, uTorrent warned: insufficient disk space available.  Torrent size was around 70 GB.  Very large; but plenty of room for it.  Do I wish to store to that drive anyway?  Yes!

 

I see an obvious (albeit relatively trivial) bug.  I can even guess why it happens.  Clue: not storing to default drive:\folder.  My default is E:\TORRENTS. Specified save area for this large torrent was N:\TORRENTS.

 

A false warning could easily happen if the program considers free space on the default drive (only), rather than checking the drive pointed to, when one specifies the save location.  (If the default drive is close to full.)  One can easily specify other than default drive, using the "name" box, when one adds a torrent.  As a neat freak, I routinely rename torrents, and often with prepended drive:\folder.  Generally I specify a different drive. (Not the default.)  I like to scatter stuff.  Neatly.  The program should always evaluate free space for whatever drive is specified when one names the torrent.  But I don't see how uTorrent can be doing that.

 

That's my best guess as to why a false warning occurs.  It seems that even though uTorrent accepts whatever save location one specifies...and does use it...it fails to check the drive specified, for its free space.  In other words, even though it accepts that it will store the data to N:\TORRENTS, its idea of "free space available" is E:.  If that's what the program indeed does...it's wrong.  And if that is not what it does...then how could it look at N: and issue a free space warning?

 

More clue.  I've seen the false/inappropriate disk space warning only in the case of *large* torrents (>15 GB).  My default E: drive currently has only 10 GB free.  It's close to full.  So that could well be the cause.  Failure to check the drive specified (as storage location) for its free space.  It does seem that it's seeing 10 GB free instead of 909 GB free.

 

Whenever I've seen that warning, free space on the drive specified as the save location has been > 200 GB and much greater than the space needed to fully store the torrent.  (Not even close to a full drive.)  I pay attention to how full my drives are.  Thus...it's puzzled me.  Why a warning?  But with uTorrent's last big 'duh', a light suddenly came on in my head.  If the program considers free space only on the default drive...presto.  Warning!  Even though it's not saving the torrent to E:!  :-)

 

Easily fixed, if I'm right.  Solution is: if there's a drive/folder specified in the name box...and that drive is not the default...check that drive for its free space.  Then...no warning.  (Unless it is close to full.)

 

Occurs with latest version 3.4.1.  Same issue encountered in previous versions.

 

But in general, excellent program.  Best to post a beef with some applause attached.  :-)

 

Rod

 

[DreadWingKnight]

Is it an external hard drive?

Network attached?

[rafi]

Probably an issue when using a network drive (N?) as your destination. I think the calculation might be broken there...

[VHCWL]

Yes, N: is a network drive.  I'm using a number of D-Link boxes.  E: is internal.

[rafi]

So, as you probably can see from Windows->properties on it, there is some difficulty to get its free-space info. Don't expect much in that regards...

[VHCWL]

Why do you think there's any difficulty obtaining info on network drives?  In my experience, not true.  From an OS perspective, properly configured, there's really no difference.  When I look at Properties on any of my network drives, I immediately see disk capacity, used space and free space, the same as I can see that info for C: or D: or E:.  Whether it's Local Disk or Network Drive, free space and total size are listed.  That's part of the beauty of network drives.  They can appear to be internal, even though they aren't.  Generally slower data access than internal, but I don't consider that a big issue.  uTorrent doesn't demand high speed.  In programs I write, be it in C or Winbatch, I have no problem obtaining basic disk info (like free space) on network drives, any more than I do on direct-connected internal hard drives.  Unless you're running some kinda antiquated Flintstones OS, it's a logic problem in uTorrent, not a limitation of the OS.  :-)

[VHCWL]

Rafi, it's possible you've had some past experience with a network box, and found that you couldn't see something that you could see on a local drive.  But if so, that was likely an issue with the network box itself.  D-Link network boxes (I run both DNS-323 and DNS-321) are great in that they integrate seamlessly with either XP or Win7 (I run both), as though they are internal.  And speed is good.  Up to about 20 MB/sec.  Only about half internal drive speed, but so what.  That's why I currently run seven of them, and have three more still in boxes.  :-)

[rafi]

The difference is that "N" (as I understood it) is connected to a D-LINK router "box"  as a shared drive. Not only this is slow as hell (aka disk overload is expected) but also it might not propagate size info properly. But maybe I got it wrong...

 

As I said, there were complaints about similar issues, search the forums, so a bug is a valid option...