I'm using uTorrent 1.8.2 on Windows Vista.  I will typically share a significant number of torrents by UNC name, pointing to my unRAID server.  They almost all sit idle most of the time.

 

From an idle sharing state, when an external connection for a specific torrent is made, there are two possibilities:

1. The disk the torrent-referenced location sits on is spun-up. In this case, everything is OK and file sharing starts.

2. The disk the torrent-referenced location sits on is spun-down.  In this case, I get a "Network path not found" error and the torrent drops to an error/stopped state.

 

If, after an error state, I browse in Explorer to the folder where the files are (or just do a right click -> Open containing folder in uTorrent on the torrent that is in an error state) when the disk is spun down, the disk will spin up.  If I do this, I can start the torrent.  If don't do this, I can still start the torrent and the disk will not spin up, though I suspect in that case if I connect were to be made, I'd get back to case #2.

 

So far, my workaround has been to disable spin down for all the disks, except cache & parity.  This works but is undesirable.

 

I've seen this in both 4.4.2 and now 4.5beta2; have not tried any versions prior.

 

Does anyone else do file sharing via UNC, with what clients, and if so, have you encountered this issue?

 

Sounds like uTorrent is timing out too quickly.  Is there a uTorrent parameter that can be adjusted to increase the timeout?

Hi Rob... thanks for the reply.

 

So what you're suggesting is:

1. uTorrent tries to access the files on a spundown drive

2. unRAID is unable to provide data to uTorrent within some (hopefully configurable) time period

3. uTorrent sees an error and sets the torrent to an error state

 

My only question here is, wouldn't unRAID spin up the drive in the process, even if too late to save uTorrent?  If I try this, say, overnight (given I can't make someone external hit a given torrent on demand), I see error-stopped torrents but no "/usr/sbin/hdparm" messages in the syslog attempting to spin up the disks.

 

I guess there could be a few possibilities:

1. uTorrent does have a timeout that times out fast enough that something deeper in Windows' I/O layer prevents a request from getting over to unRAID

2. The right type of I/O request is not occurring (not sure what that would be)

3. Something else

 

I had asked on the uTorrent forums about a config parameter a few months ago but never got any replies.  Since you got me thinking about it, I'll try some different clients and report back.

 

My only question here is, wouldn't unRAID spin up the drive in the process, even if too late to save uTorrent?

 

Normally, yes it would.

 

I do not know what command or API uTorrent is using, but something it is using is getting a bad return code with the spun down drive.  And whatever that command or API is, it is NOT spinning up the drive.

 

I am not aware of anyone reporting a situation where the drive is not spun up when there is an attempted access. 

 

Also, somewhat comforting, incidents of software failing due to timeouts (caused by spinning up a sleeping drive) are very rare.  I believe that the sofware has to give the drive at least 8 seconds to process a request.

I see error-stopped torrents but no "/usr/sbin/hdparm" messages in the syslog attempting to spin up the disks.

 

There are no hdparm messages to spin a drive up, only down.  ANY access of the drive will automatically spin the drive up, transparently to the reading or writing application, except for the 7 to 10 second delay while the drive spins up.  unRAID returns the data as fast as it can, but cannot 'speed up the spin up'.

 

The hdparm commands you see in a syslog have the -y parameter, which means "spin the drive down NOW".

Much as i hate uTorrent it does some very fancy things to speed up access to files and blocks of data. Think of it as living on the edge of the spec.

 

However there is no way that it shouldn't spin up drives as accessing data is simply accessing data.

 

Turn on uTorrent logging (all of it) and gradually prune that down to see wtf is going on.

 

Revel in the world of closed source scamware

I would venture a guess that this is actually a Vista/uTorrent problem, as I have seen this exact same issue when mounting shares via a UNC path (our mounted drive letter) to another Vista machine.  I think due to the way uTorrent keeps file "handles" (or whatever the proper tech term is) open, Vista eventually gets upset at this level of SMB connections; even clicking stop, then start on the affected torrent doesn't work.  Usually reducing the number of torrents and/or a reboot will clear this issue.

 

How many open torrents do you have?  You may also want to play with the connection settings in uTorrrent (number of allowed, max, etc), also look in the advanced section and try to play with disk caching settings and/or turn them off.

Yeah, I have quite a few... 120+ active torrents (though not all pointing to the unRAID server).  I haven't had the time to experiment fully, but thanks for all the ideas.  I too am leaning towards something on the Vista/uTorrent side (not unRAID) and this is all good information.