100% Completed Zero-Byte file? Help!

[vghazard]

Hey guys,

I'm using in uTorrent 1.7.7, and my issue is that only a few files out of my 50-file torrent show up as 100% done, but are actually 0kb on the hard drive.

I've stopped and forced a re-check, but nothing. Deleted the 0kb file and did another re-check, same problem. So I thought I noticed in uTorrent 1.8 beta's changelog that it Fixes an issue with 'Fix: Show 100% for zero byte files', and promptly download 1.8 beta thinking this might help.

Now, when I re-check the torrent and it gets to my 2-3 files that are 0kb on the hard drive, it looks like it actually is finding pieces for it, and it seems to reconstruct 100% of the file after a successful re-check (ie no % loss in overall torrent). Alas, it is still 0kb on the HD. I have tried a few combinations with preference settings (compact allocation fix, append .!ut on and off, pre-allocate files on / off) each time restarting uTorrent and rechecking. My temporary fix was to install Azureus and just download the corrupt files and basically paste them into utorrents download directory and then it works fine from there, but not a great long term solution.

[jewelisheaven]

If the file is 0 bytes, it will BE 0 bytes on the hard drive. How large are the files in the Files tab on the torrent?

[vghazard]

Each file is supposed to download to about 200Mb, and thus the column read out is:

FileName | Size | Done | % | # pieces | Priority

example.avi | 189Mb | 189Mb | 100% | 95 | normal

Actual file size on disk: 0 Kb (for this supposedly finished file at <download directory>/example.avi)

And thus no player recognizes it, since in notepad, there is absolutely nothing inside that file.

uTorrent THINKS its finished (maybe its still cached somewhere?) but i don't have compact allocation enabled. Frustrating.

[jewelisheaven]

If it downloaded it, it's there. If you didn't SKIP files or enable compact allocation you-re not seeing the size 0b in the 1.8 Files tab. :/ Are you using Open containing folder?

[vghazard]

Yep, I think it may be a uTorrent bug, but I did skip files at the beginning, in favor of completing the first few first.

Compact allocation is off, and its currently set to priority high, and although I wasnt watching it download, I can bet it actually didnt download this file, so why would it register as 100% for that individual file?

Oh by the way, the torrent is overall at 35% of 10Gb completed, 12 files of 50 are 100% finished, and out of those 12 files, 4 of them are the 0Kb files on the hard drive (under open containing folder directory)

I dont know how to reproduce the error, but is there a way to clear uTorrents cache such that a recheck will actually check the files in that "open containing folder"? It seems like there must be another temp location like application data or something where it works on pieces

[jewelisheaven]

You did that when you rechecked. If you want to force it not at a restart, STOP, right click, Force recheck.

There is no temp file unless you skip data in which case the partfile is made. And that's in the folder you see in General tab -> Save As

[vghazard]

The STOP, rightclick, Force re-check is what I've been using this entire time.

I have used the skip previously, but all my experiences in the past tells me that when you decide to resume a skipped partfile (ie set it back to normal), it picks up where it leaves off and everything's fine once it reaches 100%. In this case, it resumed from 0% and is now 100%, but that partfile has no data dumped to the hard drive (in the General tab -> Save As directory)

Literally a bug of uTorrent if it says its 100% on that particular file when its 0KB on the hard drive... any suggestions on how to get it to re-download that subfile? Ive tried deleting it from the hard drive and doing a recheck, but it just comes back as 100% in utorrent and 0kb on the HD

By the way, thanks for the quick reply's :cool:

[GTHK]

(Why does this sound familiar). Did you try running a search for it in Windows? Maybe it'll turn up somewhere. Either that or save somewhere else. That's all I can think of :/.

[jewelisheaven]

If the partfile is the size of the missing data that sounds like the bug with compact allocation. If you delete the file on the disk, when you recheck uT will show 0%. You must do this while STOPPED or you'll get access denied.

[vghazard]

GTHK: I dont think this is a Windows bug, no open file handles are currently accessing the 0KB files. uTorrent works as it's supposed to on all the other torrents' files, but I wish there was a fucntion uTorrent shipped with for actually verifying PHYSICALLY STORED DATA from the files that it maps to

jewelisheaven: I've already applied the compact allocation fix thanks to another post before posting in this thread, and haven't yet got an access denied message (Compact is off and i no longer have a .dat file). After recheck, it discovers all pieces of that one file, and then after it finishes, uTorrent recognises that file to be 100% done, and yet the HD data is still at 0KB, so i dont know where uTorrent could be checking and verifying the data from since the source file has no data within it.

EDIT: Maybe this would be a better question... If i have a completely done torrent (100% and seeding) and then i take the following actions:

1) Stop the torrent

2) Delete a single file from the torrent through windows (not utorrent)

3) Go back to uTorrent and select Force Re-check

Shouldn't uTorrent see that, "Hey this file is no longer here, maybe I should mark that file in my list as now 0% and start re-downloading this individual file"?

[jewelisheaven]

That's correct. >< OK... are you SURE you're in the right folder as verified from the Save As field in General tab?

[vghazard]

Yep, positive. Any ideas, short of dumping torrent + data and starting over?

[jewelisheaven]

I have NO idea where else uT could think the file is there if it's not. Have you tried STOP, Files tab, right click, relocate, and look to see where it thinks it is.. then browsing to the correct folder and clicking on the file, or if it hasn't downloaded again, just press Enter?

[vghazard]

Willing to try anything once =]

Let me do that and I'll get right back with you.

UPDATE: Ok, I did that with two files - I deleted one of my 0KB files [hens forth File1] , and left another as-is in the directory [File2].

For each of these files, I relocated them to where it found them (the common directory where all the other files are currently downloading correctly to) and then hit start torrent. It then forced a re-check automatically. Here's the results AFTER the auto recheck:

[File1]: uTorrent status = 100% complete of 267Mb | File system = Does not exist

[File2]: uTorrent status = 100% complete of 189Mb | File system = 0Kb file

Note: it actually built these files up within uTorrent from individual pieces up to 100% during recheck (went from All Red -> filled in random Blue until -> All Blue) as if it had the data stored somewhere. But I still cannot play these files since uTorrent only launches these files from where it thinks their stored.

Note2: interesting to note, that all the other files that are marked as un-complete (and are currently downloading) are able to finish fully and i can open these files... its just a small set of previously set "skipped" files who, on-setting them to download normal priority, somehow got registered as 100% and it will not download any more for these files as uTorrent is telling that it doesnt need to ask for pieces within that range anymore..../..! @#1

*sigh* ok im good now - this is aggrivating. thanks for your patience man.

[jewelisheaven]

What about the partfile? You know, if you make a self-contained uT, add in the torrent for the stuff you've got, skip all BUT the two/four files which you HAVE but show as 0 bytes, you can run from localhost:PORT1 to LOCALHOST:PORT2 and get those two files without having to download again :/ It's at least something.

This certainly sounds like compact allocation so.. for the future, be sure to note that you can't skip files with compact allocation enabled, AND that if you create files with compact allocation they won't be sparse, and you can only make a file sparse ON-creation (makes Windows only allocate the space on disk as the files fill up)

[Switeck]

Have you tried scanning your hard drive for errors?

Are you running the latest uTorrent (v1.7.7 or v1.8 beta)?

[vghazard]

jewelisheaven: Thats a good suggestion, however it's about the same as what I did with installing azureus to *just* download the files in question =] I'm fairly certain now that what caused this was compact allocation with me skipping files at startup and then resuming them later (even though this has worked in the past). I just won't enable compact alloc from this point onword, and hopefully this wolnt happen again.

Switeck: I encountered this problem while running 1.7.7 and then upgraded to 1.8 beta thinking this might help, it did not. Ill run a disk check after this torrent finishes, although I doubt this would be the case, since there are files still downloading under this torrent which finish correctly and completely and I can still read. If it was a bad sector issue, then re-check would delete those bad pieces and try and redownload them, as opposed to seemingly verifying the hashes as a "complete and ready file"

Thank for the suggestions guys, keep 'em comming =]

Note: you know, never once did I actually employ the age old remedy of "if its broken, just restart the entire computer". I might try that later on but my guess is that it won't help any.

[jewelisheaven]

What about the partfile?

I didn't explicitly say before... If it is the SIZE of the "missing" files, you must resume it over local host (127.0.0.1, your LAN IP, or heck your internet IP, though that will likely be less-wise than localhost as your connection limitations will come into play) if you don't want to download it again.

It's good to keep in mind the situation for later, should it reappear. Since you updated to 1.8, I can ask how do you find it?

[vghazard]

I'm not sure what your saying: the files are not missing - they are just 0kb. Since uTorrent thinks for some reason (lets say a non-downloaded file suddenly became 100%), uT would have no reason to continue looking for pieces of a file as that's already done in its eyes. The SIZE of the file doesn't seem to matter in this case, its a question of how do I trigger uT to redownload from scratch and reset its completion counter for that one file [can someone say Future Feature?]

And as far as your question: How did I find uTorrent 1.8? or how was the overall experience? I'm going to answer the the second one

I noticed an immediate difference, which is nice - we've always needed a tracker tab! heck yeah. The square icon will take some getting used to. If you're looking for a reccomendation to switch from 1.7.7 to 1.8beta, I see no downside to that. =]

But I've always felt like if uT developers staff would take the good lessons learned from Azureus v3, and left the bad, people would flock to uTorrent anyday (for example: Files -> rightclick -> {Rename, Move, Delete} and possibly displaying a swarm graph).

[jewelisheaven]

If there is no data in the file the only other place it can be is the partfile. During a recheck ALL files are checked if they match the filenames (you will see this if you enable "mode" column in Files tab) in the torrent (or relocate). Remove the file. Or delete the partfile if you don't want to try and pull the data from it. Recheck and you will see 0% for the files in question now.

Remember many of Azureus' featureset is from plugins. . .and a swarm graph is not necessary, the Peers tab tells you all you want to know about it. As far as those file options... you can do rename in 1.8 now. Move on the fly... shouldn't be done by a torrent client. They're not general purpose file managers after all. And Delete... I think there's already a request in the forum for it. The Delete key doesn't do anything anywhere else but trackers listview and main torrent listview.

[vghazard]

Lol true, and I agree with all you said. I think my entire problem would be gone if they already had a delete feature

I have no partfile (i'm assuming this is that .dat with compact alloc? or is it those !ut umcompleted files) However, if !ut are the partfiles, then my .!ut files are the ones with the problems. The few that are giving me greif are the ones with a .!ut file size of 0Kb and these say that they have at least some completed pieces in uT. (so where's the data going?)

Interesting to note that, when I enabled the mode column, all of my 0kb !ut files had no mode (not read nor write), and out of these files some were partially downloaded and some were marked complete (10%-100% done)

EDIT: Question, just to set a baseline for our discussion here, what should my options usually be set to in preferences -> general? I have: pre-allocate off, append .!ut off, and bt.compact_alloc false

[jewelisheaven]

Thing is, "Delete" wouldn't do intuitively what you'd expect it to in the Files tab (same function as delete in the other two places, i.e. make the selected item "disappear") as you can't change the files in the torrent without changing the infohash. It's possible the default Shift-Remove behaviour can be adopted to Files tab, i.e. if you want to delete the torrent file's data, hold shift and delete... more things to put into the thread in the requests forum

Blast! I was wrong http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=37141 is an "open" option. That's all that seemed relevant in a search for "files tab" in Feature Requests forum Sorry. So then perhaps make a new thread about this

[vghazard]

I was thinking about asking a mod to place this thread in another category, lol. Hey man, thanks for all your help - as far as this download is concerned it's hosed. The good thing is that I was able to recognise the bad partfiles that were currently downloading (to nowhere? space?) and have stopped them before they get to critical mass.

For this download I'm just going to assign Azureus the task of downloading the 0KB files and have each BT client go after the ones it can. Im pretty sure its cause from some unknown combination of: compact allocation + skip, pre-allocating (or not in this case) with some append !ut issue all wrapped up.

Thanks for all the help Jewel! My guess is the fix is to have this combination from the start and you can avoid this problem from happenening:

1) bt.compact_alloc = FALSE

2) pre-allocate files = ON

3) I dont think this matters but append .!ut to incomplete = ON

And allow all files to at least get 1 piece segment in them before you tell it to skip downloading certain files. (I was only doing that to speed up downloads for episodes that happened first on a slow torrent ~ 10 - 30 kb/s)

Learned my lesson the hard way...

[jewelisheaven]

Quite welcome Indeed, I don't know about those settings, I've never used preallocate and I always used sparse files... It gives me a sense of joy knowing "size of files 780 GB" "size of files on disk 460 GB" because I can It helps me keep pace with what I need to keep up-to-date on.

[vghazard]

Oh very true. Hey, before we close this thread, something interesting happened.

Know that there are no files in my torrent that are empty, at least 1 piece has finished and should have been written to the HD. With that said, I took the following actions:

1) Went to data directory and manually deleted all the 0KB partfiles

2) The download auto stopped, so I hit Start

3) Got a Popup saying there were files missing (nice finally). It told me to recheck so I did

4) Took a lot longer this time, and it found a few less pieces in each than before, but ulimately finished the recheck and Stopped.

5) I hit Start to see if this did anything and went back to my data dir and found that the 0KB partfiles were back, even though it was finding and writing new piece segments to these "preallocated" files (which are still only 0kb!)

Damn you 0kb partial partfiles, damn you.

Oh and um, I can no longer set a file to "Dont download"?! the option is grayed out...