HD goes to 100% usage when downloads start

[Nhonho]

Here on my PC, every time I start downloading files through qBittorrent, the HD go to 100% writing on disk (I see that the HD is at 100% through the Windows Task Manager). It seems that the HD delimits the space in which the files will be recorded on the disk in advance.

Thus, there is a "competition" for the HD: qBittorrent keeps trying to download the files and the HD is 100% busy recording (probably delimiting the file space in advance); and, this way, the download speed drops a lot at the beginning of the download and it only returns to normal speed when the HD stops writing to the disk.

Wouldn't it be better if qBittorrent performed the operation of delimiting the recording space of the files before starting the download? As a suggestion, qBittorrent could, for example, show the message "writing space on disk" before actually starting to download the files.

[Tabmu]

What is the make and full model number of your hard drive? I ask as it could be a SMR drive, which don't cope too well with torrents.

Shingled magnetic recording - Wikipedia

[Peter]

...

I mean, every torrent client has 2 options:
1) pre-allocate disk space (this is NOT the default)
2) pre-allocate disk space

I'd just recommend limiting your download speed in the client so the HDD doesn't get so much data to write out, and PrimoCache is also a nice program that can help. Mind you, a UPS is highly recommended for PrimoCache so you don't lose the data you have in cache. I also use HDDs to this day because SSDs are still too pricey. So I just run PrimoCache with a UPS and voila, lot of storage, fast speeds, no risk.

Oh yeah, and HDDs also suck at parallel writes. Ie.: If two or more things are writing to them. So using the Torrent Queue option in qBittorrent is also highly recommended. I usually put just 1 torrent in the download queue.

[bob2306]

If the space were allocated at the point of queuing it would cause some people to run out of space unnecessarily. It could also cause files to be pre-allocated before being set as "do not download". Doing the pre-allocation as late as possible seems like a good idea to me. Is it really such a problem?

[Nhonho]

...

pre-allocate disk space

Yes, I enabled pre-allocate disk space in the qBittorrent settings here. To prevent the "competition" for the HD that I described in the 1st post, wouldn't it be better if qBittorrent showed the message "Pre-allocating space in disk. Please wait." before starting to download files (when pre-allocate disk space is enabled)?

[bob2306]

Yes, I enabled pre-allocate disk space in the qBittorrent settings here. To prevent the "competition" for the HD that I described in the 1st post,

It doesn't do that - it may have the opposite effect. The point of it is to reduce file system fragmentation on most filesystems.

[Nhonho]

The point of it is to reduce file system fragmentation on most filesystems.

It's exactly for this reason that I enabled pre-allocate here.