Downloading a torrent

In this post we’ll look at finding and downloading a file and explaining more about the various settings in the client. We will NOT be talking about Metalinks or Magnet links in this post, they deserve their own.

So now you know what torrents are and you’ve downloaded and configured a client for it. You are now ready to download a torrent so we’ll show you how.

So where do I find one?

The best place to search for torrents is our very own Toro Torrent Search. Here you can search for more than 5 million torrents from all over the world. When searching you also get more information about the torrent like various download locations, files inside the torrent and extra trackers to speed up your torrent.

You can also search for torrents on Google, or any other search engine like Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com or whatever one’s your favourite. Simply enter your keyword followed by the word “torrent”,lets say we want OpenOffice for example, so our search term would look like this: openoffice torrent.

There are also many torrent indexing sites which index a massive amount of torrents for your convenience, Legit Torrents is one and some of the more questionable sites like ThePirateBay, ISOHunt, KickAss Torrents etc.

How do I get it?

A torrent file is downloaded just like any other file you download normally. Simply click on it and select “save”, you can also directly open the torrent in µTorrent by clicking on “open”. We’ve chosen the popular open source software “Open Office” to download. To download the 128Mb file, choose your platform (operating system like Windows), the software version (bigger number is newer, like 3.0) and the preferred language. The download will automatically start once you have chosen these options.

No way! It’s too small…

That’s because it’s just the pointer file that directs µTorrent to the file you want to download. Remember that a copy of this pointer file is stored in µTorrent’s application data folder. Click “start” and then “run”, enter %AppData%\uTorrent in the field and hit Enter/Return on your keyboard. This will take you to the folder where you can delete these pointer files. You can also do it straight from µTorrent.

Get to the pointer. What next?

Double click on the torrent pointer file you have just downloaded to open it in µTorrent. You will be presented with a pop-up window allowing you to change some options. At the very top comes the location option allowing you to choose where to download the file to (we’ve chosen a folder inside My Documents called Downloads). Next up is the option to skip the hashcheck and to answer this one, we need to explain what a hash check is and why we use it.

Hash Check

A hash is a unique string of characters. As we have previously mentioned, files are divided into virtual blocks. When a full block is downloaded, it’s quickly verified against a hash to make sure that it was downloaded correctly and not corrupted. If a block was not downloaded correctly, it will catch whatever the problem is and redownload the block.

We recommend that you do NOT skip hash checking because you risk not knowing if a download is corrupt. Hash checking has no effect on your bandwidth and takes only a small amount of processing time.

“Start Torrent” will start the torrent immediately when you click the OK button while “Add to top of queue” allows you to well, add the torrent to the top of your downloads queue, if you have more downloads than you are allowed to download at one time.

Next up we get the box with all the downloadable files inside the torrent. If there is more than one file and everything has not been compressed or stored in an archive, you can simply check the boxes next to the files you don’t want to download.

Finally, we get the Advanced button where another small window pops up with even more options.

The advanced button pops up another window with more advanced options for your torrents, we’ll look at those here.

Trackers
First up are the tracker options. As we have mentioned before, a tracker is a server on the internet which coordinates the communication between peers and is critical because clients are required to communicate with the tracker to initiate downloads.

The tracker updates constantly to check up on your torrent and what you’re doing with it (how much have you downloaded/uploaded, how far to go before you’re finished, did you pause, stop or resume?). If a tracker is down, you won’t be able to connect to it. When a tracker goes down in the middle of your download, you will still be able to communicate with peers but no new peers can join the tracker. When a tracker downs, it’s usually just a temporary error and it will simply keep trying to connect you to it until it succeeds so it’s a good idea to just leave µTorrent open.

Adding, editing and deleting
In the tracker box on the pop-up window you can add, edit and delete trackers. You can also search for more . Adding a tracker has been a source of much confusion for people to the point that they just don’t trackers right here bother with it. All you need to remember is to ensure that each tracker is on its own line and that an empty line separates them.

Bandwidth
Just below the tracker box is where we find the three bandwidth settings, the first of which is the maximum upload and download rates. This sets the speed, in kilobytes, with which you upload or download the torrent to a specific amount. Zero, the default, represents unlimited. We recommend that you do not limit your upload speed, as many people do, to a shameful 1kb/s or even less than 80% or 85% of your full upload speed as this will almost certainly SLOW DOWN YOUR DOWNLOAD SPEED.

Last of the bandwidth options is the number of upload slots which is the amount of people that can upload from you at once.

We’ll be covering download speed in another post, you can also check out our speed calculator, which helps you increase your download speed.

Seed While
Overriding the default settings will let you configure the time you are going to seed the file. This may be a specific amount of minutes like 180 or a percentage of the file shared like 150%. It’s generally used in combination with the shut down feature for the times you leave a download to run when you go to work or sleep.

Other Settings
A quick explanation of the four options here will allow you to decide if you want to enable or disable them.

Initial Seeding (Super Seeding)
This option is not available in all bittorrent clients and is known as Super Seeding in all but µTorrent. Initial seeding minimizes the amount of data that must be uploaded by the original seed by sending only one file to a peer until that peer has shared the file with others. When the peer has shared the file, he will be informed of another piece, but one that has not been sent to other peers, and be allowed to download that piece. Those peers will have a complete file and be able to become seeds much sooner. Generally, initial seeding is used by individuals who pay for their upload bandwidth by the byte because it is much cheaper.

Peer Exchange
Peer exchange is a feature that can be used to gather peers. An existing peer is used to find and connect to additional peers using them if a tracker is slow or even down. Leaving this on is generally a good idea because it gets more peers to the current swarm.

DHT (Distributed Hash Tables)
DHT is essentially trackerless download. This means you do not need to connect to a tracker in order to download, but to a distributed DHT Network to find other peers. There is no central server, every client is a mini-server. The user in a DHT network is called a node, every node knows some of the other nodes in the network so if a client can connect to one of the nodes in the DHT network, it can connect to more nodes, so it is connected to the entire DHT network.

Local peer discovery
Local peer discovery is used to discover bittorrent clients that are active on your local network and determines if they are seeding/leeching a torrent that you want. If it’s available on the network, it will try to use it as a peer, and download it at a greater speed. You can uncheck this option if you don’t have a local network, like at home, but it’s recommended to leave it checked if you are on a network, like at work.

Need for Seed

When you’re finished downloading a file you have to make it available for others to download by seeding the file. This means simply leaving your client open and connected to the internet for a period of time.

Why should I?

Because someone, actually a lot of someone’s has made the file available to you by seeding. Without their contribution you would not have been able to download the file. By seeding you are giving back to the torrent community as well as increasing your overall download speeds.

Increasing my speed?

Oh yes, if you keep a respectable seed ratio (around 1.5) and speeds (80% to 85%) you will see an increase in your overall download speed.
(Edit: This has become debatable as there is really no proof to support the theory)

Ok, so how do I seed?

It’s really easy, simply leave µTorrent open and connected to the internet to seed your downloaded file. Watch the upload Ratio in the torrent details box (next to the amount Uploaded). Once it reaches 1.5 you can stop uploading your torrent. Of course you don’t have to upload the file one and a half times but it is advised and not only by us.

Seeding may take a while because your upload speed is generally less than your download speed and if you upload to 1.5 ratio you will have to wait a while. Luckily µTorrent is a very small (µ = Micro) bittorrent client and will be able to run in the background while you are doing almost anything else on the computer. It also has a nifty little feature, called Auto Shutdown built in so you can leave a torrent on while you leave the computer unattended.

Auto Shutdown

Auto Shutdown is activated from the Options menu and is turned off by default. There are several shutdown options to choose from, quit, hibernate, stand by and shut down.

Quit

This will quit the µTorrent when either your download or your download and upload (Everything) completes.

Hibernate

This will put your computer into hibernation (Switch it off while retaining your open windows etc.) when either your download or your download and upload (Everything) completes.

Stand By

This will put your computer into stand-by mode (Sleep) when either your download or your download and upload (Everything) completes.

Shut Down

This will shut down your computer when either your download or your download and upload (Everything) completes.

Is that it?

Yes, that’s it. I tried to be thorough in this article but there may have been something I missed and if so, I’ll update it later on. Also remember that this is not the only way to download torrent files but Magnet and Meta links are beyond the scope of this post.

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