How to hide downloads until complete

[tutmae]

Hi, I hope this is the right place to ask. Apologies if it's not.

Currently when I am downloading a file with Bittorrent, the file will show up in the destination folder as it downloads. Previously it only showed up in the destination folder once it had completed and was seeding. Does anyone know how I can get it to do this again? Many thanks.

[schnurlos]

CTRL+P -> General -> When Downloading -> Pre-allocate all files

Uncheck this, also the "Append .!ut to incomplete files"

[tutmae]

They are already unchecked. Is there anything else I can try?

[jewelisheaven]

If you separate out downloading and complete torrents you could do it that way. Simply set the incomplete folder to Hidden/System. I'm not sure you saw what you think you saw. As soon as data is downloaded it writes the files. It may not write the full size of the file (pre-allocate does), but the file must be saved... or else it doesn't exist, you dig?

[tutmae]

Would you be able to walk me through how to do that? Sorry to be a pain!!

[jewelisheaven]

So, setup two folders, i'll call them \INCOMPLETE and \COMPLETE for clarity sake. You go to Ctrl-P > Directories and see where it says download files to.. you put the \FULL\PATH\TO\INCOMPLETE there. If you're unsure what to type, press the browse (...) button and path to where you stuck your incomplete folder.

Then you enable the "Move when completed" and do the same thing, type the \FULL\PATH\TO\COMPLETE or press ... and then that's the setup.

If you're one who uses labels to organize now would also be the time to setup basic labels, and tick that option.

So to test, you could use http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/ or anything from http://www.mininova.org/user/TorrentFreak of which I'd recommend the former if you're wanting to get OpenOffice and test your setup and the latter if you want to read / watch some interesting news about p2p. If you open explorer while downloading, and look at your incomplete folder, you will only see files appear there AFTER you start the torrent, and will see them disappear (because they are being moved) after the torrent completes. You could even open two windows, 1 for incomplete, 1 for complete, and watch the magic in realtime.

On the topic of the OP, however I do recall instances where nothing is written to disk while downloading, say if you have multiple files all much smaller than a main file and your cache can hold them and your cache isn't being forced to empty, in which case, the files only were dumped from RAM after a sufficient portion of the larger file is downloaded to fill the cache, but that is generally the exception rather than the rule. I hope that might help you explain what you experienced. If not feel free to relay information you can remember.

[tutmae]

That's done it! Thanks so much for your help!

[jewelisheaven]

glad to help. Sorry I had to explain it again because I wasn't clear the first time. Please check out the user manual available by pressing F1 while in uT. It's by our very own Ultima and it explains how you use other features too! And if it's not clear you can always ask for clarifications.