Fluctuo

BitTorrent is a kind of P2P shared software similar to eDonkey2000 GUI Client, which is used to deliver high-quality files over the Internet. With an installed base of over 160 million clients worldwide, BitTorrent technology is going to overturn conventional distribution ways. Moreover, with its fire-new concept—the more popular a large video, audio or software file, the faster and cheaper it can be transferred, BT applications are quite popular now. But meanwhile, people focus on such an arguable topic: dose BitTorrent damage the hard disk?

As we all know, when one person is downloading a file, he/she is also providing this service for others, which makes the high speed delivery possible for BT. One view is that, when there are 10 people downloading the same file, the disk has to stand downloading for one time and uploading for 10 times; but if 100 or 1000 people are in the process of downloading the same file at the same time, the load on HD will be greatly increased, whereupon the chance of damage will also be largely increased. The other view is that?hard disk read-write is a regular operation and the fixed disk MTBF (Mean-Time between Failures) is at least over 30,000 hours. Definitely, the longest time for hard disk from starting running to failure is far shorter than MTBF; consequently, BitTorrent doesn’t do much harm to the hard disk.

In my opinion, compared with the general situations, using BT to read and write more frequently on the HD may accelerate the disk’s aging in some way, but if we give our attention to its utility time and do some refinements as follows, such an effect would be overlooked.

Set a larger Cache value in the Registry Editor

The Cache default value 512KB is obviously not large enough for BT download and upload. For the fixed disk with its memory over 256MB, if we set a larger Cache value for it, the read-write frequency on the disk can be reduced. Generally, a setting between 8MB and 16MB has a best effect. For testing I set the Cache value at 32MB, with 4 BT processes running at the same time, the hard disk light still flickers as usual. Specific steps are as follows to set up a Cache value (e.g. in Windows XP):

On the Start menu, select run and key “regedit” in order to open the Registry Editor, and then open “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEM CurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory Management”?look up “IoPageLockLimit” (if there is no “IoPageLockLimit” in the list, built a new one as a DWord type. Noted to input the hexadecimal value: 32MB—8000, 16MB—4000). Then set up a new Cache value and restart the computer.

Before setting, I strongly recommend to restore the Registry Editor

Lower BT’s Priority in the Windows Task Manager

BT takes up much of resource when running which may bring about some negative effect to the entire system. If in Windows 2000/XP, you can set down BT’s priority from the Windows Task Manager, therefore, though it still occupies some resource, it does not have much impact on other applications, you can press “Ctrl+Alt+Del” together to open the Windows Task Manager sheet, select Processes, right-click the BT software process, select Set Priority and choose Low or Below Normal to set down BT’s priority.

The author, Ian Chan, is an expert of device driver problems repair and PC optimization. Do visit http://www.driverupdatetool.com/articles for more free and useful information.

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