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oryan707
join:2004-04-17
canada

oryan707

Member

[BT] Running Bittorent off an external HardDrive?

I've realized that Bittorent is really hard on your hard drive. As a way of trying to save my PC: I'm wondering if it's possible to run programs from an external hard drive. I'm not sure if external HD's are just for storing files or if they can be used as any other drive.

My strategy is is to re-install BT on the external so all the file swapping goes on there and my main drive would be left alone.

But how would that work, confining activity to one area? Can I keep other users on the net work from using or trading from other areas of my PC?

I also ask this because I've noticed that even after I close BT the chugging on my HD keeps going(and the little red light on the PC still blinks like crazy), and the slow streams on Youtube that I have while BT is really busy keeps going after I've closed the program! It's seems like users are still accessing my HD without my consent. So something's going on I'm not controlling until I reboot the PC.

Any feedback would be great
unoriginal
Premium Member
join:2000-07-12
San Diego, CA

unoriginal

Premium Member

Peers will still try to connect to you even after you close the program. It takes a while before everyone else realizes you are no longer in the swarm. The slow Youtube can probably be traced to you saturating your upstream while using BT. Set your max outbound in BT to about 70% of your connection, that should help.

An easy (but not free) way of dealing with all of this would be to get a cheap seedbox and not use your home connection at all.

dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium Member
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ

dvd536

Premium Member

said by unoriginal:

An easy (but not free) way of dealing with all of this would be to get a cheap seedbox and not use your home connection at all.

He'd still have to use his connection to get files from seedbox to own computer.

Alcohol
Premium Member
join:2003-05-26
Climax, MI

Alcohol to oryan707

Premium Member

to oryan707
What made you realize bittorent is really hard on the hard drive?
Alcohol

Alcohol to dvd536

Premium Member

to dvd536
said by dvd536:

said by unoriginal:

An easy (but not free) way of dealing with all of this would be to get a cheap seedbox and not use your home connection at all.

He'd still have to use his connection to get files from seedbox to own computer.

Yeah. he might as well pay for Usenet and save himself the hassle.

Xioden
Premium Member
join:2008-06-10
Monticello, NY

Xioden to oryan707

Premium Member

to oryan707
If your hard drive is constantly being read/written to 100% of the time...

- Something isn't set up correctly (cache size is too small or set to 0 for example).
- Your hard drive is horribly fragmented and it's having to go all over the platter to read/write something (defragment the drive, and if possible set the torrent client to allocate the files before downloading).
- You're downloading/uploading faster than the hard disk is capable of writing/reading.

You will continue to get connection attempts usually for around 30 minutes after closing the client, with the occasional straggler trying to connect after that still. Under normal circumstances, so long as the client isn't running all they will be doing is trying to connect.

Also worth mentioning, make sure you are actually completely shutting down the torrent client and it is no longer showing up in the task manager process list. It is possible the client is minimizing to the system tray, or just going into a "Close after downloads complete" mode.

sivran
Vive Vivaldi
Premium Member
join:2003-09-15
Irving, TX

sivran to oryan707

Premium Member

to oryan707
quote:
I've realized that Bittorent is really hard on your hard drive.
News to me. I think you have other problems.
unoriginal
Premium Member
join:2000-07-12
San Diego, CA

unoriginal to Alcohol

Premium Member

to Alcohol
said by Alcohol:

said by dvd536:

said by unoriginal:

An easy (but not free) way of dealing with all of this would be to get a cheap seedbox and not use your home connection at all.

He'd still have to use his connection to get files from seedbox to own computer.

Yeah. he might as well pay for Usenet and save himself the hassle.

Unless there is content that you can only obtain via torrents that will never show up on usenet like all the British shows I get for the expat in our household from thebox.bz.

NormanS
I gave her time to steal my mind away
MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
TP-Link TD-8616
Asus RT-AC66U B1
Netgear FR114P

NormanS to oryan707

MVM

to oryan707
said by oryan707:

But how would that work, confining activity to one area? Can I keep other users on the net work from using or trading from other areas of my PC?

If you are running a proper BT client, the only local files the "other net users" have access to on your computer are the ones in the current active torrent.

I don't run the BT client (I use uTorrent) from an external HDD, but I have no problem pointing a torrent to a folder on an external HDD.

I also ask this because I've noticed that even after I close BT the chugging on my HD keeps going(and the little red light on the PC still blinks like crazy), and the slow streams on Youtube that I have while BT is really busy keeps going after I've closed the program! It's seems like users are still accessing my HD without my consent. So something's going on I'm not controlling until I reboot the PC.

Once a torrent is complete, and you stop it, the connections should start dying off. As long as your IP is in the torrent as a file source, you will get hits, but there should be no actual file access continuing after you stop the client. Why your HDD continues to churn after you stop the torrent: Turn of your Windows file indexing. You just added a new file to your system, and Windows is likely updating the file search index with the new data.

Unless you have some weird, non-standard client.

jadebangle
Premium Member
join:2007-05-22
00000

jadebangle to oryan707

Premium Member

to oryan707
external hd is a gimmick because it heat up slow and transfer at pitiful 20 mb/sec now if u using internal it is much faster also less taxing on the cpu. cpu usage can be from 20 to 30 percent that bad... USB is only good for flash drive anythign else is a waste of resource.
said by oryan707:

I've realized that Bittorent is really hard on your hard drive. As a way of trying to save my PC: I'm wondering if it's possible to run programs from an external hard drive. I'm not sure if external HD's are just for storing files or if they can be used as any other drive.

My strategy is is to re-install BT on the external so all the file swapping goes on there and my main drive would be left alone.

But how would that work, confining activity to one area? Can I keep other users on the net work from using or trading from other areas of my PC?

I also ask this because I've noticed that even after I close BT the chugging on my HD keeps going(and the little red light on the PC still blinks like crazy), and the slow streams on Youtube that I have while BT is really busy keeps going after I've closed the program! It's seems like users are still accessing my HD without my consent. So something's going on I'm not controlling until I reboot the PC.

Any feedback would be great


sivran
Vive Vivaldi
Premium Member
join:2003-09-15
Irving, TX

sivran

Premium Member

Disagree. Hard drives connected via USB (either by an adapter, enclosure, or a whole unit sold as an external drive) are quite convenient, particularly for archiving purposes. Where ya gonna get a one terabyte flash drive? Also old thread is old.

kados
Hail Odin
Premium Member
join:2003-03-14
Watertown, SD

kados to oryan707

Premium Member

to oryan707
I use external drives all the time. I am a karaoke host, and all of our files are stored on external, for updating ease....I think i have 6 externals, 2 I use for storing my own files, 1 I use for Linux Mint....they all run just fine, in fact the first external I ever bought, an 80gig, I just mailed to my brother-in-law in Afghanistan full of mp3's for him and his squad (we also sent 10-1gig mp3 players we got on ebay for $1 a shot)

ignore the guy who said externals are a waste, he has no clue what he is talking about.