SOLVED, I THINK: Double allocation of files?!

[gageless]

The weirdest thing just happened.

I had to reload some files that were already downloaded (so I could seed). I did so saving to the exact same locations. I momentarily forgot to uncheck the files I didnt want. Then I remembered and went through each file, skipping the ones I didnt want. Suddenly, I was out of space (according to Windows, as well as uTorrent!) Strangely, I was nowhere near out of space when I started, and should never have been out of space. I can only think that uTorrent somehow re-allocated space somehow, like phantom space allocation.

Let me try to illustrate with an eg.

1. dl 8gb discography but only select 3gb of data.

2. delete torrent

3. come back later to seed the 3Gb I already have. Reload and start torrent file

4. select exactly the same dl locaiton

5. while it is starting, skip the 5gb of files I never downloaded, leaving just the 3gb I already have

6. force recheck

7. torrent restarts at 99.9% (not 100%) then finishes and flushes to disc

8. all of a sudden, out of space (had way more than enough).

Seems like torrent just took more space than it should

Does this make sense?

On that topic, is there any way that anyone knows to do a type of "recheck" on a HDD to clear out any mis-allocated space?

Has anyone reported anything like this?

Thanks

[DreadWingKnight]

5. while it is starting, skip the 5gb of unwanted files, leaving just the 3gb already in the folder

If you already have the files, skipping them is a BAD idea. Let uTorrent re-check them and re-download any damaged parts.

[gageless]

Nah, I didnt skip the files I already had. I skipped the files I never downloaded in the first place.

I did exactly what you said, allowed uTorrent to recheck and find the files I already had.

It just seemed to chew up stupid amounts of space (30Gb went in minutes)

Never had anything like this happen with uTorrent before.

[gageless]

OK I think I worked it out.

What would happen was utorrent would start downloading ALL files, and as soon as it made the folders first, it had pre-allocated disc space. When I deselected the relevant files, utorrent never corrected the pre-allocation. Even though the folders were empty, they were still showing as full size (as if completed folders). Only once I deleted those empty folders did Windows delete the entire pre-allocation.

So, solved... I think.

BTW, this is an incredibly annoying feature of uTorrent that you can download just 1% of a 5gb file and it will show on your drive as 5Gb already.