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Saturday, June 19, 2010

How To Revive A Dead Torrent

Tracker’s not announcing? Stuck at 98%? Must you finish downloading this movie to preserve its existence for your grandchildren to watch?

Have any of these happened to you?

Well, if you're looking for a way to continue your dead torrent download, then you're in luck. By reading through this article you can learn exactly how. First though, a short review. (If you know the basics already just skip this part.)

Torrent File (or just Torrent) - the file you use to start downloading stuff
Client - the software you use to download stuff using torrents
Tracker - a webhost dedicated to tracking who is downloading what, like The Pirate Bay (http://thepiratebay.org/)
Seeders - people who've finished downloading and are sharing with (or seeding) their peers.
Peers - people who are currently downloading from the same torrent.
Swarm - a group of people relying on one tracker.
Announce URL - the link in which a tracker announces who is downloading what, to torrent clients currently connected to the tracker.

Let's try to think of this in a systematic way, shall we?

PROBLEM:
The torrent is dead, stuck at incomplete status. The trackers are not replying. You're alone, your wife and kids have left you. Your pet is dead. You are a lo... Whoops! Went a little overboard there...

REASON:
A torrent may be incomplete because there are no seeders and/or there are not enough peers to complete the file, or the download itself may not start because the tracker is busy or is not tracking the torrent anymore. (Of course you don't expect them to track a torrent forever, right?)

SOLUTIONS:
There are many solutions. The manual way involves our friend Google, but if you want an easier way, btReAnnouncer offers just that. If both of these don't work, then we have another, "desperation" method. These solutions really just work in one way, which is finding more trackers. Why? Well, let's say that you download a torrent, the trackers are responding, there are no seeds but there are peers so the download is running, but it stops at 47%. If you find another tracker, then you have access to another swarm, and maybe, just maybe, that swarm may have the remaining 53%, if you're lucky enough it may even have more seeds for faster downloading. Here's how we find more trackers...

We’re going to be using this example:

The torrent contains these files in this hierarchy:

Iron Man1and2BOXSET_DivX(eng) ... (a folder)
>Iron Man1and2BOXSET_DivX(eng).Disc1.avi ... (a file inside the folder)
>Iron Man1and2BOXSET_DivX(eng).Disc2.avi ... (another file inside the folder)

THE MANUAL WAY:
A good way to find trackers is to Google the FILENAME of the download enclosed in double quotes If you have more than one file in your torrent, then add the word “or" between your filenames, and in the end add the word "torrent". here's an example:

"Iron Man1and2BOXSET_DivX(eng).Disc1.avi" OR "Iron Man1and2BOXSET_DivX(eng).Disc2.avi" torrent

Once you've found trackers, download the torrent from them and open it Chances are the trackers will be different or you'll find trackers you haven't used before. Add the trackers to your torrent download and wait for seeds.

The double quotes tell Google to search for "this exact phrase."
The word "or" tells Google to find one or more of these phrases.
The word “torrent” is so that you find just that.

So why search for the filenames of the download and not the torrent filename? Because torrent files may be renamed but its contents cannot be modified.

THE EASY WAY:
Go to btreannouncer.net, have your torrent ready, and upload it to the site, then wait a while and you'll see a drop down list of primary trackers, and a list of announce URLs with checkboxes. The default selected in the dropdown list is the primary tracker of the torrent you uploaded. Select another tracker as the primary one to gain access to another swarm (Ignore the check boxes for now). If you've changed the primary tracker, click "ReAnnounce," then the announce trackers (the list with the checkboxes) will change. Select or de-select any or all of the announce URLs. Selecting more will mean that your client will have more connections to a tracker. Note that some URLs may be down so having an alternative URL will keep you connected to a tracker. Selecting less means there are less URLs for your client to listen to thus using less bandwidth. After all is done, click "ReAnnounce" again and Download your “reannounced” torrent. Open it in your client to download from more trackers. Make sure that the download path is the same to continue your incomplete download.

THE DESPERATE WAY:
Add random trackers to your download and hope that those trackers are still announcing your download. If not, then remove those trackers to save bandwidth. You'll know if a tracker isn't announcing your download anymore if it is saying "File not found" or something like that. Here's a tracker list to help get you started. Of course you can find more through Google.

http://tipst3r.com/tracker-list/

9 blabs:

Anonymous said...

This article is copied one from torrentfreak

Unknown said...

I reckon it's an article worth replicating, because the original site could get blocked or brought down at some point.
Thanks to all involved, useful info.

Unknown said...

great information :)

Unknown said...

I would like to find out how I am supposed to find old torrents that i just can't find anymore, especialy in the book compilation category.

rustyspider said...

test

rustyspider said...

test

Unknown said...

How do I download the ".torrent" file in ThePirateBay?
Not direct download from torrent, I mean the .torrent file for uploading it in btreannouncer.net?

milovan said...

That site you address us is nothing but garbage! The website does not even load the trackers when you insert a torrent. He just loads something then opens a new pop up of an address that leads to “404 not found.” I do not know who owns it, but it needs to be banned because it does not do its job.

Hans Junior Beauvoir said...

I was wondering if you have a website to bring back torrents that has 0 seeds and 0 leechers/peers. I want to make old torrents work again because some of them I download are very important.

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