Recheck too much!!

[likan]

Hi all,

I am a uTorrent user who used it for years, and now I have ~1TB files sharing. I am quite annoyed by the recheck mechanism in uTorrent:

1) I usually download something in some hard drive, and move to another after finished. After moving, uTorrent will have to recheck it before seeding;

2) The ~1TB files lies in some external disk, and sometimes I forget to connect to my external disk before starting uTorrent. It is a disaster that all the torrents become red. When I connect it back and try to 'Start', it rechecks!! OMG, I have ~1TB files and it will take a day to recheck, my poor old hard disk.

So my suggestion is, provide some option so that we can enable weak data integrity check so whenever it fails to read/write some file, it keeps the progress and what blocks have been downloaded, instead of setting them to zero and force recheck.

For situation 1), how about making a buildin 'Move' function in uTorrent so uTorrent is sure that files are not corrupted so rechecking can be avoided.

Thanks.

[jewelisheaven]

You still recheck when you move from disk. Previously requested. You may feel 1 GiB of data is alot, but if your computer is taking too long look at your hardware properties. SATA II moves data at over 100 MiB / sec. Even USB 2.0 averages 50+ MiB / sec.

[likan]

Sorry I intended to say 1TB, and I don't think disk read speed can steady to be 50MB/s. In my machine, the peak read speed is around 30MB/s but on average is <20MB/s. 1TB is still to much to recheck.

[jewelisheaven]

Now that's understandable Rechecking a whole TB volume can be a pain... Why don't you stop your torrents when you close uT? It'll avoid the automatic red X problem you have. At least until there is something put in about this case... if you search you'll see it's been requested off and on.

[likan]

I see. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try it next time I forget to connect the external drive again. Now utorrent is rechecking and the hard disk is crying.

Wait a minute, do you mean I need to I stop torrents every time I quit uT, or it is a solution if I get the red X problem?

[jewelisheaven]

Torrents which are running/seeding/downloading on close start up running/seeding/downloading.

You want to disconnect your external when you close uT, stop the torrents.

[winphreak]

I had an issue like this as well. I have a 2TB external, and sometimes I open uTorrent prior to turning it on. Wouldn't a possible feature be, since Windows knows the drive is removable, that uTorrent could know it's external as well, and whenever the drive comes back online, it rechecks or at least loads from where it was?

[Switeck]

Backup your uTorrent settings.

If something forces a recheck, restore from those settings.

[fursday]

Switeck has inadvertently given me a brilliant idea for a really dirty but effective solution to this problem, for those with the external hard-drive problem.

As a lap-top user who also uses hibernate quite a lot, it is often very easy to switch on and forget my drive is no longer attached, then, coming out of hibernation, find uTorrent is running and starts kicking up a stink. Alternatively, I could just accidentally run utorrent without first plugging in - either way, hours of mandatory rechecks when I try to restart everything!

So my idea goes something like this:

(and make some back-ups of the .dat files before you try any of this!)

There's a special parameter. If you run "utorrent.exe /RECOVER", it stores all the settings (settings.dat) and job data (resume.dat) in the same directory as utorrent.exe rather than in the default location of %appdata%\utorrent:* /RECOVER is a handy feature if, like me, you want to run multiple instances of utorrent with different settings and torrents at the same time**, which require different sets of .dat files.

Create a folder on the external disk itself, put a COPY of utorrent.exe in it, along with all the files in %appdata%\utorrent (assuming you want all your old settings) and then make a short-cut to the exe it with said /RECOVER parameter in the short-cut path.

With me so far?

Now, if the external disk is unplugged and utorrent isn't running, it obviously won't run because the .exe is on the external disk, so problem 1 solved. As for problem 2, If utorrent is running and the disk is disconnected midway through (either by accident or in the course of going in and out of hibernation) then utorrent will kick up the same red-x hissy fit as before, but won't have the opportunity to have save this hissy fit in the resume.dat, file, because that too now resides on the external disk which is inaccessible. So, when the disk is plugged back in again, it's as if nothing ever happened, guv.

It seems to work really well, even if you get the red-x's, plug the drive back in, close utorrent, and reopen it (which I thought would be the one flaw in my scheme).

* %appdata%, i.e C:\documents and settings\blah blah blah\application data\

** I run two instances so I can separately allocate bandwidth to seeding healthy torrents from a private site that has ratio level rules separately from seeding unhealthy public torrents that would otherwise take priority

[winphreak]

I actually got fed up with this, and made a small script for it. The shortcut points to a bat file that checks to see if my external is connected and attached to the usual drive letter (Z:). If it is on, it'll start uTorrent. If not, it'll say the drive is not connected, and wait for a keypress to exit.

Here's the text of the script:

if exist Z:\ goto :loadif not exist Z:\ goto :na:loadstart /d"C:\Program Files\uTorrent" uTorrent.exeexit:naecho External Hard Drive Not Present!pause

Hope that helps. Just makes sure the drive exists before loading, and simple enough to keep me from cursing up a storm.

[fursday]

Not a bad idea, but with me it mainly happens because utorrent is already up and running! Either I'll remove the laptop from my desk without remembering to close utorrent, or I'll hibernate (I don't do shut downs) and switch off the external drive without remembering to switch it back on again later.

[winphreak]

I see what you mean fursday. Don't know of any solution for that other than uTorrent's programming itself. An option for "Auto recheck on failed directory" or something along those lines would be useful, even if it's already there. At least it would recheck automatically, instead of halting everything until user intervention.

[fursday]

Well, I've just been playing with my 'dirty' solution above and it seems to work pretty well!

The only potential draw-back is that given utorrent still runs even when utorrent.exe is on the drive that has been unplugged (I guess it would since it's all loaded into ram by that point) trying to leech something from my wifi in the other room or making changes could potentially cause big problems. But who knows, I'll report back if this solution causes major f-ups!

But there definitely needs to be a proper solution to dealing with this implemented, I fully concur!

[chodorowicz]

I have the same problem all the time - either starting uTorrent without attaching the external drive (around 200GB of shares) or removing the drive without turning off uTorrent - and the goes rechecking for 30minutes :/

[DreadWingKnight]

Then learn to not do the things that are basically directly causing your problem.

[chodorowicz]

Then learn to not do the things that are basically directly causing your problem.

yep, that would work, but firstly learning NOT to forget is not an easy thing and secondly isn't technology supposed to ease our lives and not to force us to learn new things - if 8 lines script posted above solves half of the problem then maybe it's not a such a bad idea not to force several (hunders/thousands) people to remember yet about another thing

[Firon]

We made it handle missing external drives better in 2.2. THe torrents will go into an error state "missing volume", and when it comes back, you should be able to resume without needing to re-check.

[chodorowicz]

We made it handle missing external drives better in 2.2. THe torrents will go into an error state "missing volume", and when it comes back, you should be able to resume without needing to re-check.

sounds great! thanks for the effort and information!

[Switeck]

"About time!"

[tezz]

We made it handle missing external drives better in 2.2. THe torrents will go into an error state "missing volume", and when it comes back, you should be able to resume without needing to re-check.

I'm using v2.2 & it does the same?

I forget to plug in my hdd & when I start the torrents they get rechecked.

[tezz]

I actually got fed up with this, and made a small script for it. The shortcut points to a bat file that checks to see if my external is connected and attached to the usual drive letter (Z:). If it is on, it'll start uTorrent. If not, it'll say the drive is not connected, and wait for a keypress to exit.

Here's the text of the script:

if exist Z:\ goto :load

if not exist Z:\ goto :na

:load

start /d"C:\Program Files\uTorrent" uTorrent.exe

exit

:na

echo External Hard Drive Not Present!

pause

Hope that helps. Just makes sure the drive exists before loading, and simple enough to keep me from cursing up a storm.

Thanks for the script:) I've put it in utorrents program folder & changed the path of utorrents shortcut to point to this script.

[gaby de wilde]

Then learn to not do the things that are basically directly causing your problem.

The cause of your problem is the way utorrent wants to recheck my 4 TB of files when something goes wrong. Just because something goes wrong with 1 torrent just doesn't justify rechecking all my hardisks.

The cause of the problem is suppa obvious no?

It wouldn't be a bad idea to make a log where utorrent can see howmany times it exactly checked the same files in the same location! Then when it wants to check the same file for say the 20th time it could skip the hash check.

That would be so NICE!

It's not that I'm complaining, I just think one configuration file is not enough in the long run to make things really robust.

Thanks :0)