What are Failed Hash Checks indicative of?

[nathan_anderson]

In downloading a 380MB item, I had five instances of FAILED HASH CHECKS. After the first 3 there is a banned IP and then two more instances of failed hash checks, for a total of 4 MB of "Wasted" data . The download completed successfully. This is the first time I've noticed something like this happening and wanted to know if it meant that the files were bad in any way, even though the download completed successfully?

Thanks for any help anyone can offer to set my mind at ease.

[Ultima]

Hashfails indicate that a peer sent a corrupt piece to you. It doesn't matter in that µTorrent automatically throws the corrupt data out and redownloads it. If the peer keeps sending bad data, after a certain threshold, µTorrent will ban the peer (since it's usually likely that the peer is poisoning the swarm).

[nathan_anderson]

The corrupt piece of data - is it damaged in some way that may be detrimental to me? Or does it matter because of what you said about it being thrown out?

The number of seeders for this particular item is very small, as it is a "niche" item. So long as my download completed, is there really anything I should be worried about? I guess I'm being overly paranoid that there is something wrong with the files that will either harm me or harm someone else that later on gets the files from me.

And thanks for the quick response!

[Ultima]

It doesn't matter in that µTorrent automatically throws the corrupt data out and redownloads it.

Any piece that fails the hash check is not considered to be downloaded by µTorrent, so if µTorrent considers the torrent 100% finished, then you can be sure the file isn't corrupt.

[nathan_anderson]

Ultima thanks for setting my mind at ease I appreciate the help!