How do I move my torrents to a new location but have my bt client still find them?
February 22, 2010 4:05 PM Subscribe
Moving my collection of Torrents... I'm usuing uTorrent and the drive my torrents (the .torrent files and the files themselves) are on is nearly full. So, I moved them to a new drive, changed the location in uTorrent's preferences... and the program can't seem to find any of them. I read the manual/faq and the things it says to do aren't possible (the settings they mention don't exist). Suggestions? OS X.
On Windows, you would use the "relocate" function (annoying because it doesn't actually unlock the initial save directory) or do what I do: remove all torrents, close utorrrent, move all content where it needs to be, add all torrents back and point them where they need to be, and then either force re-check or start/force start, depending on whether I wanted everything to start seeding/downloading ASAP.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 4:14 PM on February 22, 2010
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 4:14 PM on February 22, 2010
How many .torrent files do you have? What I've done in the past is to re-add them one by one to uTorrent and point them to the new location. It should detect the previously downloaded files and start working without any problem.
posted by Memo at 4:15 PM on February 22, 2010
posted by Memo at 4:15 PM on February 22, 2010
Response by poster: I'm talking about a few hundred, mostly from sites that I have to maintaining ratios on so dl again is out of the question.
Memo, could you describe your process because I think that's what I did.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 4:27 PM on February 22, 2010
Memo, could you describe your process because I think that's what I did.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 4:27 PM on February 22, 2010
uTorrent on OS X doesn't (yet) have feature parity with the Windows version - so the "relocate" function doesn't exist.
Hmmm... On OS X I just tried moving a file, changing uTorrent's download directory to point to the new location, and doing a "force re-check" - and it didn't work. Strangely, though, it didn't wipe/damage the file in the new location, nor create a new file in the old default location (I wondered if the change may not 'take' until uTorrent is restarted). So maybe force re-check doesn't work yet either, or I did something wrong…
posted by Pinback at 5:55 PM on February 22, 2010
Hmmm... On OS X I just tried moving a file, changing uTorrent's download directory to point to the new location, and doing a "force re-check" - and it didn't work. Strangely, though, it didn't wipe/damage the file in the new location, nor create a new file in the old default location (I wondered if the change may not 'take' until uTorrent is restarted). So maybe force re-check doesn't work yet either, or I did something wrong…
posted by Pinback at 5:55 PM on February 22, 2010
Response by poster: That's what I did, Pinback. Exactly the same results.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 6:08 PM on February 22, 2010
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 6:08 PM on February 22, 2010
Don't worry about your ratios--the client will check for completeness and then mark 'em finished, without downloading any new data. Or, at least, that's how it worked for me.
posted by box at 6:46 PM on February 22, 2010
posted by box at 6:46 PM on February 22, 2010
If I understand it correctly, it's not enough to just change the default directory, but, rather, one must actually re-open all the .torrent files
(First, open one .torrent and select the new save directory. Then, when you open all the others at once, the dialogue box will default to that previously-selected directory, and you can just click 'OK' a bunch of times).
posted by box at 6:54 PM on February 22, 2010
(First, open one .torrent and select the new save directory. Then, when you open all the others at once, the dialogue box will default to that previously-selected directory, and you can just click 'OK' a bunch of times).
posted by box at 6:54 PM on February 22, 2010
Response by poster: Well it seems to have changed all the file extensions to .torrent.imported.
When I change it back to .torrent, it remains for about 5 seconds and then changes back to .imported.
WTH?
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 7:16 PM on February 22, 2010
When I change it back to .torrent, it remains for about 5 seconds and then changes back to .imported.
WTH?
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 7:16 PM on February 22, 2010
The way I did it was:
a) change location: Preferences>Downloads>Default download location
b) remove all your torrents from uTorrent by selecting all (cmd-a), right-clicking and clicking Remove from List
c) upload all torrent files. uTorrent will then automatically recheck every one (it will take time - mine took about an hour with about 75 torrents) but it will know that they are in the new location, based on your Preferences setting. Obviously you can do this a bit at a time if you have some torrents you wish to give priority to.
posted by TheRaven at 12:50 AM on February 23, 2010
a) change location: Preferences>Downloads>Default download location
b) remove all your torrents from uTorrent by selecting all (cmd-a), right-clicking and clicking Remove from List
c) upload all torrent files. uTorrent will then automatically recheck every one (it will take time - mine took about an hour with about 75 torrents) but it will know that they are in the new location, based on your Preferences setting. Obviously you can do this a bit at a time if you have some torrents you wish to give priority to.
posted by TheRaven at 12:50 AM on February 23, 2010
Response by poster: TheRaven, could you clarify what you mean by "upload all torrent files" in c, please?
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 5:52 AM on February 23, 2010
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 5:52 AM on February 23, 2010
I'm talking about a few hundred, mostly from sites that I have to maintaining ratios on so dl again is out of the question.
As others have said I would just remove all of your torrents from uTorrent and then re-add add them with the new download location, assuming that works. If not, you can always re-download the torrents from the various trackers. Downloading the torrent again doesn't affect your ratio, so as long as uTorrent finds the data and starts seeding (instead of trying to leech the data again) you will be fine.
posted by burnmp3s at 7:57 AM on February 23, 2010
As others have said I would just remove all of your torrents from uTorrent and then re-add add them with the new download location, assuming that works. If not, you can always re-download the torrents from the various trackers. Downloading the torrent again doesn't affect your ratio, so as long as uTorrent finds the data and starts seeding (instead of trying to leech the data again) you will be fine.
posted by burnmp3s at 7:57 AM on February 23, 2010
You should have all your torrent files (i.e. the ones you downloaded from the original site, which should have the form blahdeblah.torrent) in one folder. (If not, put them in one folder.) In uTorrent, go to File>Open and then select all of these torrents. uTorrent will upload them and check them one by one.
posted by TheRaven at 10:32 AM on February 23, 2010
posted by TheRaven at 10:32 AM on February 23, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
You could start to download them again with the destinations pointing to the new drive. Let it create all the files. Then overwrite the freshly created ones with the finished files.
This works, but could be tedious for thousands of files.
posted by cjorgensen at 4:14 PM on February 22, 2010