Separate containment for unselected partial files / download "staging"

[2bad]

It would be useful when doing selective downloading of files within a torrent, if those unselected partial files which result from selective downloading could be contained separately in a subdirectory until the user chooses to complete the download of those particular files.

As it is now, the incomplete unselected files usually show up appearing to be complete in the same subdirectory with the completed selected files. In Windows Explorer, they show up with their correct file name and complete file size even though only partial data is contained within them. This is confusing and inconvenient when I want to manage as a group only the completed files that I selected for download. The partial files then exist as spurious clutter, difficult to differentiate from the files that I do indeed want to use.

It would be good to have a system where files are downloaded to a "staging" subdirectory (call it "temp" or whatever) until complete, then automatically moved to a subdirectory designated for completed files. One reason to do it this way is that the user may subsequently want to select some of the originally partial files to be completed and this would save the partial data for that purpose. If the user ultimately decides never to complete any of the partial files he can delete them at that time if he so chooses. The deletion of unselected partial files upon completion of all selected files could even be automated with a setting in preferences if the user is confident that he wants not to retain any of the partial file data.

Is this one an old idea too?

[Ultima]

diskio.use_partfile.

diskio.use_partfile: This option is used to store data that is downloaded from files that you told µTorrent to skip. This is necessary to prevent the file from being allocated. It separately stores the parts of the skipped files that come with a piece, since µTorrent must download and save the entire piece in order to confirm that it is uncorrupted, and each piece can contain data from multiple files. The partfile is removed when you remove the torrent job from the torrent job list.

[2bad]

So, do these spurious partial files that show up in Windows Explorer (and appear as full completed files) disappear when the torrent is removed from the torrent job list?

[moogly]

Remove-> torrent job removed / partfile removed / .torrent file not removed

Remove .torrent (right click on torrent job)-> torrent job removed / partfile not removed / .torrent file removed

Of course, in these 2 cases data are not removed.

Just remember if you use "remove" function with a multifile torrent, the partfile is removed and when you will reload the torrent, uT does a re-check and edge pieces taking part in complete files and ignored files are discarded, so you can retrieve complete files with missing edge pieces.

[Ultima]

@2bad: A partfile is a single file that stores all of the unwanted data. It'll show up as a *.dat file in the download directory (can't remember the exact name). As the manual states, it is removed on torrent removal.