Overwriting files set as don't download/skip

[paintball9]

I've got a few torrents that are saved from multiple trackers (same files with minor differences in one or two). There's one version of these however that I would like to keep, So I select don't download for those files on the second torrent. Ideally this should use the tmp file for that piece and behave as if those files didn't exist. However it is still writing the whole piece to the file and therefore messing up the first torrent's checksum.

[Ultima]

The misconception that needs dispelling here is that skipping files doesn't mean "pretend you don't see these files". See this thread for a similar report.

What happens when µTorrent tries to seed data from the skipped file? Should it be reading from the partfile, or should it be reading from the existing file? I don't see any reason it should ignore the skipped-but-existing file, due to the reason outlined in the other thread (people can skip files to keep µTorrent from downloading, but to allow it to keep uploading what it already has -- partial seeding).

There isn't an obvious answer to this, and the existing behavior is the longer-established and probably-more-often-desired behavior. So in your case, just work around the issue by retargeting the files on the second torrent or something.

[paintball9]

That topic is a bit different that what I'm thinking of (maybe I didn't explain myself well enough).

Just for the reference, these files in question that are being overwritten, are usually quite small, rarely over the size of one piece. Meaning that even on skip they will be completely downloaded.

I do want the second torrent to download all of it's pieces, however they are incorrect in that file, so instead of ruining that file I'd rather it just keep them in the part file. (which would be the normal behavior had I downloaded to an empty folder with skip selected on that file). The only difference in my situation is that I've done a re-check prior to starting the torrent, (to line up all the other files). And in doing this changed the behavior using part-files.

As far as the re-targeting that's what I've been doing but it's far from optimal due to the double required space, But the reason I bring it up is that I don't feel it should behave differently if the file is there or not. If it says skip it should keep that piece in the part file (IMO).

The other option I've been considering is renaming that file temporarily prior to the re-check as to make the client try the part file first, Haven't tried it yet but I'm sure it will work.

Edit- Noticed you wrote about seeding from the file rather than the part-file. That's where this could run into problems. This whole file in question fails the hash-check on a recheck due to the fact that the one in the second .torrent is 'damaged' or altered. So by normal response it would be downloaded again anyways. It won't attempt to seed from the incorrect file anyways.

[Ultima]

Doubling the required space? I fail to see how it would be any different if µTorrent decided to download the "skipped" data to the partfile while keeping the existing file around as is.

In the end, you're trying to do something that any sane application isn't designed to handle: using the same filenames for different data -- which is exactly what retargeting would take care of. The partfile is only used to prevent allocation of a file (space allocation and/or filesystem entry). If the file is already allocated, then there's no reason to use the partfile, whether or not the file is skipped. Basically, I'm still not convinced this is a bug.

[Switeck]

When you recheck the hash, uTorrent won't ignore any existing files...whether set to "Don't Download" or not. BitTorrent doesn't work very well if lots of peers are using partial downloading only.

[rom]

I've just lost files I'd spent lots of time to get. I believe this happened for the reason addressed in this thread.

I had 5 out of a set of 6 files that I had downloaded in a non-bittorrent way. A few minutes ago I found a torrent that contained the entire set of the files BUT of different sizes and video resolutions. I selected to download only the missing file, but µTorrent (v 3.1.2) overwrote the existing working files with fake .!ut files.

Nobody benefits from this behavior, not me or other peers. If this behavior is to remain as is, then µTorrent should at least inform the user that it will do what it did for me (destroy my data) and allow the user to opt out.