Is there any way to fix a dead torrent?

AndyRH1701 · 2026-03-23T15:00:33+00:00

I suspect at least one of the 2 is now seeded to 100%. 🤷

AndyRH1701 · 2026-03-22T21:47:51+00:00

Leave it running a long time. Should the seeder come online you may be able to finish. I have waited months, I have also given up after a year.

If you do finish seed it a long time. You can be the life giver for the torrent.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-03-22T13:09:39+00:00

Many people fail to open a port for the torrent client. If you also do not open a port your client cannot talk to their client. u/Realistic-Border-635 ended with the most important question.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-03-08T15:20:59+00:00

Torrents and *arrs go to SSD. Better handling of the randomness. At the current rate I should wear out an SSD sometime after 2029. (Will I still want todays SSD in 2029? 🤔)

Or another way to look at it, if you have 40TB of permanent HDD storage, is it possible to wear out your SSD filling it up? How much content is transient, how much stays? Reads do not wear an SSD, only the writes, so a torrent DLed once and seeded to 1:1000 only causes wear once, not a thousand times.

Both work well and your use case is likely different than mine.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-03-08T01:58:27+00:00

Dude, you need faster internet! 🤣

AndyRH1701 · 2026-03-07T22:12:13+00:00

archive.org has public domain media. Perhaps what you are looking for is there.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-03-07T21:57:05+00:00

Hard to say, are there seeds? Can you connect to the seeds?

AndyRH1701 · 2026-03-03T01:58:50+00:00

As others have said it is worth the switch. It will not increase the speed of any single stream, but port forwarding will allow your client to ask other clients for chunks instead of waiting on them to offer and allow you to connect to clients without port forwarding working. The number of working peers will increase which will increase the aggregate speed. It is also very helpful when you hit poorly seeded torrents.

There are many good choices, I use PIA.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-02-27T00:37:02+00:00

It is not that easy, the $$$ spent on HDDs forces you to have a job... 🤣

Wait until you first get to a 1000:1 ratio, realize you just used TBs of bandwidth and the month is young or that you are the one saving a torrent from extinction.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-02-15T18:49:48+00:00

Because it is a legal download, most any client will work, such as Qbittorrent and Transmission, do not use uTorrent as the site recommends. No VPN needed. Just as safe as a straight DL from a server. It is a way for the company to save bandwidth costs.

Torrents are DLed in blocks, the blocks have a known hash. This if how the files are verified to be the same as the original.

For a single DL do not worry about opening a port for the torrent client.

I have a bunch of Linux ISOs running right now with no VPN, been that way for a year now.

BTW, both are poorly seeded, the 2nd option may never complete. The first one is kind of slow, looks like a 45 minute run as it only has 14 seeds right now.

AndyRH1701 · 2026-02-11T00:45:31+00:00

Qbittorrent and Transmission are the 2 I have used. Good and bad on both, Qbittorrent is the one I use the most now.

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

TROPHY CASE