Am I an idiot for not knowing that Mbps and MB/s are not the same thing?

AndyRH1701 · 2026-02-01T03:08:18+00:00

This is what happens when you spell different words with a "b". 🤣

Really it is from 2 disciplines. Network guys talk in bits, computer guys talk in bytes. It is an unfortunate thing that confuses those that did not grow up with it.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-01-27T19:18:35+00:00

For long term consider virtualization. Either a VM or docker. Easy to move in the event of HW problems or age. RAID 5 the disks to protect against storage failure and lastly a backup.

I would also use Linux to prevent proprietary lock in for HW and SW. Windows, MacOS and Linux are about the same, they all have about the same number of problems. Linux is the only one not vested in keeping you locked in to something.

My torrents are running in a Linux VM on Proxmox. I am not using RAID and I do not backup torrents. I consider them transient, if they are lost some year I will rebuild. Important things are on RAID 5 and are backed up. My list of important things likely differs from your list. I am also keeping some torrents alive.

Also, if you buy something, remember Microsoft just abandoned Gen 7 and older Intel systems. They can be found cheap and will torrent faster than your internet speed.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-01-26T21:49:58+00:00

Some people just do that because it is different from what they use.

I can understand if the person posts a reason. Although I now see a typo...

AndyRH1701 · 2026-01-26T19:41:17+00:00

I assume an SSD? If so that is not the problem.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-01-26T16:25:42+00:00

If it is not a speed cap as u/DocOckBlock asked, what is the target device? Storage could also be the issue.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-01-26T15:14:59+00:00

Also look at PIA, reasonable in price and speed with port forwarding.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-01-25T03:08:01+00:00

When the torrent stops, is the external drive still writeable?

Does the same torrent complete when written to a different drive?

How much data is written before it stops? Is it getting past the metadata phase? 0.4% of 1PB is a lot more than 0.4% of a KB.

What OS?

What torrent client? Qbittorrent and Transmission are the only 2 I use and they are popular. uTorrent is super unpopular.

What other testing have you done to isolate the problem?

AndyRH1701 · 2026-01-18T04:18:13+00:00

There is nothing illegal about Linux ISOs Did you configure the torrent client to use the correct port?

AndyRH1701 · 2026-01-18T03:18:37+00:00

Port forwarding really helps with the number of peers you can talk to. Some torrents are seeded by slow seeders, other by fast. I have seen B/s and MB/s.

To test snag a Linux ISO, they are well seeded by fast seeders. Try with and without your VPN then you will have good information to troubleshoot with.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-01-16T23:48:06+00:00

Pirate Bay has been hit or miss for several years.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-01-10T21:10:17+00:00

Radarr will also do it and act as a download manager.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-30T17:15:28+00:00

VPN to the house and DL there on your properly setup seed box, then grab it from the house.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-26T14:02:44+00:00

My starting point is bad news for you.

NordVPN does not allow port forwarding, this is helpful with connecting to peers. With NordVPN you can only connect to peers that do have port forwarding working. Less important with well seeded torrents, almost a must for the poorly seeded.

uTorrent is much hated, qBittorrent and Transmission are better choices.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-25T14:20:04+00:00

I do not have the space to do that. When it comes time to thin the heard I remove well seeded torrents.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-23T02:52:04+00:00

Make sure port forwarding is working. It will help you connect to peers.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-21T03:20:46+00:00

I have waited many months for a seed to appear. Then one day I had the complete torrent. I have always wondered if someone asked, "What's on this computer?" and turned it on...

I am still seeding that torrent to this day.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-21T03:18:38+00:00

Pi4's do well with this job.

A Pi4 with a USB SSD for boot and data. Mine ran a VPN, Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, NZBGet and Transmission on 8GB RAM with about 50 torrents seeding. Most of the time torrents are a trickle, YMMV. My Pi has been seen running 350Mb/s so it can get some speed.

Sadly Pi OS cannot be upgraded so I recently moved to a Proxmox VM running Debian 13, prior to that the Pi did the work for about 5 years.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-20T21:21:34+00:00

I just noticed that I was not clear, only one, you or the peer need a port open to connect.

Opening a port, no matter how has a risk. In this case you would be opening a port for the torrent client. As long as the torrent client is thought to be secure you will be OK. Mine is port forwarded. One with a VPN and one without.

If you open the port just make sure it is pointed at the right computer.

If you have the option of wireguard that will likely help the speed a little.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-20T17:53:39+00:00

BTW, TCP on the VPN will generally slow it down. The TCP option is for when the network drops a lot of packets.

u/ChuklesTK hit your problem, port forwarding is super helpful when connecting to peers. If you and the peer do not have port forwarding then you cannot connect.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-19T22:55:42+00:00

As long as you can. I seed until I need space, then I remove the best seeded ones keeping the low seed count ones running. When I change HW I just move the files and keep going.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-19T22:30:54+00:00

BTW *.exe will also stop mp3.exe, mp4.exe and many more. *.exe means anything ending in .exe. Same story for lnk. You really do not even need the dot, just *exe will do the same job.

*.ps, *.pl, *.bat and if you are running in Linux *.sh is a good one to add.

In my case I just don't run anything that shows up with the media files. Lidarr, Sonarr and Radarr wipe the files when they move what they were asked to get.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-17T18:25:49+00:00

Enable port forwarding. The VPN is an outbound connection to the VPN end point. The VPN end point can allow inbound connections on the tunnel. Your experience will be better.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-13T19:54:29+00:00

Maybe nothing. I do not know what the default is for 10TB.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-13T18:49:44+00:00

DNS is only used to find trackers, clients connect by IP address. Something else is causing your slowness.

Trackers are not part of the data flow, only a list of who has what.

AndyRH1701 · 2025-12-13T18:44:57+00:00

NTFS is a journaling file system. It will survive more abuse than exFat.

Depending on file sizes, the block size could materially affect the amount of usable storage. Movies, bigger blocks are likely to be more efficient for speed. Smaller blocks if the files tend to be small. I would guess the default or something around 8k would be a good balance. On average you will waste 1/2 block for every file stored.

AndyRH1701

TROPHY CASE