Suddenly 100% disk usage.

Windows specific questions, problems.
Post Reply
VIKINGS

Suddenly 100% disk usage.

Post by VIKINGS »

Hello World,

Everything has been going well for years until yesterday when suddenly qbittorrent started causing 100% disk usage on one of my hdds. I was using version 3.3.13 when this happend, but since I also tried 3.3.16 and currently am on 4.5.2 and the problem persists. Running windows 10 enterprise version 22H2 osbuild 19045.2006.
After google searches I tried playing with some options like os cache and disk cache size, but nothing has helped.
Even now I'm not even downloading(which I initially thought was the cause) just uploading with 10mb/sec and disk is at 100%. Now whenever I open qbitorrent the disk usage varies wildy for a while but eventually settles at 100%.

I didn't do anything different when the problem occured, no new programs or drivers or anything, just added a couple of torrents for the day reached 280 something torrents total and it started happening. But I heard of other people seeding thousands of torrents so why whould 280 be an issue...

Please help, thank you.


LE: After some more testing it seems not all torrents cause this behavior, torrents from private trackers don't even when uploading with 10+mb/sec or downloading with 30+mb/sec(usage still varies wildly while downloading at this speed but it doesn't seem to cap at 100% and stay there), however torrents from public trackers like rarbg and piratebay cap my usage at 100% after a while even if the speeds are way lower. Suggestions please?
VIKINGS

Re: Suddenly 100% disk usage.

Post by VIKINGS »

For anyone else suffering from this problem I mostly fixed it on another forum. Using qbitorrent 4.3.9 and the settings from the screenshots below the disk usage still fluctuates widly but it stays beneath 50% for the most part, going over 50% only when I download with high speeds. But it doesn't cap at 100 and stay there anymore.
Thanks anyway.

Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
User avatar
Peter
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 2693
Joined: Wed Jul 07, 2010 6:14 pm

Re: Suddenly 100% disk usage.

Post by Peter »

I don't believe those settings have any relevance to the fix. HDDs suck at random reads/writes. 10MB/s is a lot too, if you do random transfers.

What can you do to fix this? Nothing.

If you seed a lot of torrents, or even just a few, and the peers are all asking for different pieces (even at below 10M/s), your HDD might get easily maxed out. Cache and RAM settings mostly influence writing, so they won't help much either. And reading is automatically cached by Windows, but it's pretty useless because each peer wants something else.

The ONLY true way to "fix this" is to limit how many torrents you are seeding; or drastically lower upload speeds. A HDD is only "fast" at doing one task. But of course, that's just shooting yourself in the shoot. Having 100% on the disk means you are seeding as fast as possible, which is, I suppose, your ultimate goal.

Ps.: A proper RAID array with a raid controller that has RAM + BBU would fix the HDD speeds, but this ain't cheap. 4 drives + a proper controller will cost you. Most people I talk to, who are big seeders, just bought SSDs. Big ones are affordable nowadays and even if you race on torrent sites, it's hard to exhaust the write cycles (and reads do no harm).

On Linux, you could use 4-drives + mdraid without a controller and get decent speeds. Or even FreeBSD+ZFS. But since you are using Windows, just using drives is no way to go. Windows Storage Spaces, the Windows Disk Management "software raid" and motherboard fake raids are all awful at speeds. Like truly the worst. We tried them all, they suck.
VIKINGS

Re: Suddenly 100% disk usage.

Post by VIKINGS »

True Peter, the problem only went away for a few days, yesterday I noticed it again, took a couple of restarts and some downloads to finish to get it under control.
Sadly I can't afford to get three 8tb ssds to replace the hdds, maybe when PLC ssds come out things will change, we shall see. But for now I am stuck with hdds. :(
Post Reply