Technically, shouldnt u always seed more than one hundred percent?

[Dreadkillz]

I was just thinking that seeding all the way to one ratio might not always work. Suppose I just uploaded twenty five percent, and then all the people downloading from me decided to quit. Now suppose new people decided to join in on the torrent, and I upload the rest of the seventy five percent. Because of this, I technically didn't upload the whole file to the new people, so I should continue to one hundred and twenty five percent?

[jjintheuk]

Yes it is best to share as much as you can, well above 1.0. The more you share the better, especially if the file is in high demand. If you have a low bandwidth or want to share something else then its fine to end as long as you try to share to a ratio of 1 or more.

Technically you are right, but most of the time you (the seeder) will share it with someone (a leecher), and then other people (leechers) will almost instantly download it from that person (leecher) and other files will be shared from yourself (seeder) so it is still being shared. However if seeders are limited and leechers dont complete their download then parts of files can go missing, then torrents can die, thats what happens in the end to all torrents. I don't know if this is right, its how I understand it works.

Can I just ask though, whats the easiest way to find out if a torrent is looking weak / lacking seeders - I'd like to know myself. (e.g. if I was thinking about stopping seeding a file)

[Switeck]

µTorrent does tracker scrapes to see how many seeds and peers the tracker "sees". Admittedly, it's usually greater than the real amount at least slightly, but if you don't see at least 2 for seeds then if availability is less than 2 while you are connected to 10+ peers and you leave THEN that torrent will probably not be complete-able for ANY of those peers you were connected to.

So yes, sometimes you need to seed for more than 1:1 to keep the torrent going.

On super-popular torrents, you could stop the torrent as soon as it finishes downloading because availability is so high...come back 2 weeks-2 months later and try seeding then when the remaining seeds are far fewer.