Trouble getting uTorrent to use partfile from archived torrent

[brycarp]

Hello,

I sometimes save downloaded torrents off to writable DVDs, including some where I've done a selective download and left out some files. In the selective download case, I include the uTorrent partfile in my saved structure, so that the data would be available at a later time if I wanted to seed completely the files that I did download. Without having the information that the partfile contains, most of the files that are adjacent to "not downloaded" files in the torrent are missing their beginning and/or end because of the way that BitTorrent blocks straddle files. The problem I have happens when I try to "bring one back", for instance if I see that a torrent is in need of seeders, or also in the case where I just want to verify data integrity of my archived torrent by having uTorrent read it in as if I were going to start seeding again.

Most of the time, as long as I take the time to look at which files don't exist in the torrent's directory structure, and properly go into uTorrent's "Files" tab and set the missing files to "skip", then when I "start" the torrent and uTorrent is scanning/verifying the files it will include the partfile data and all of the files that I _did_ download before will be shown in the "Files" tab as 100%. Sometimes, though, this doesn't happen. The partfile gets overwritten and a bunch of files show up as less than 100% that had previously been fully downloaded.

I tried to search through the forums here to see whether this situation has been discussed, but didn't see anything.

Is the ability to include the partfile data when uTorrent is reading/scanning/verifying a previously archived torrent considered to be a supported area of functionality? I know it's extra work to make sure that partfile formats written by one version of uTorrent can be read by later versions, etc., but without that capability, then any torrent that was not fully downloaded originally can't be depended upon to be able to be brought back and seeded at a later time with all of its originally downloaded data available for seeding. While it's true that the files themselves are OK, they can't be seeded as such without having the extra data that the partfile provides.

One more issue is that it would be really nice if uTorrent didn't try to write to the partfile when it is merely scanning/verifying a torrent that originally used selective download. The fact that it does come up with a write error when I try to read in and seed a torrent from a (read only of course) DVD means that I have to copy the entire torrent to hard disk before I can read it into uTorrent and seed.

(I am running uTorrent 1.5 build 437.)

Thanks for any tips!

[Firon]

if you remove the torrent, µTorrent won't re-use the partfile, afaik.