Continue torrent download on second OS

Possible Duplicate:
Continue bittorrent downloads on a different computer?

Torrents support download continuation. Is it currently possible to start a download on one OS and then continue on another one?

My current setup is dual-boot Windows/Mac and I often have to switch those. I have shared disks, so I can access the downloaded parts without a problem. For example I would like to start the download on Mac and then have it fluently continue on Windows if I have to switch.

Mikulas Dite

Posted 2012-07-19T18:24:23.347

Reputation: 495

Answers

Although this is a different question you can check this question here in superuser, or this utorrent forum thread.

Basically you will need to share the download folder. If you start the torrent in both Operative Systems and point the download location to the same place download will proceed in both Oses seamlessly.

This instructions are for utorrent, but maybe will also work in other BitTorrent clients.

fmanco

Posted 2012-07-19T18:24:23.347

Reputation: 2 287

Awesome, I didn't hope it would be that easy. Thanks :) – Mikulas Dite – 2012-07-19T19:23:28.440

It depends on the BitTorrent client you use. The client keeps track of the downloaded pieces, so you will need to copy its resume-data back and forth so that it knows how much you have and what is left to download. Obviously this requires that the client be available for both Windows and Mac.

If the client is not available for both OSes, then you will need to re-hash the file(s) each time you switch OS, which of course means that you will lose any partially downloaded pieces. This could be nothing (one or two 128KB pieces half-downloaded) or could be a big loss (a couple of dozen 4MB pieces 50-75% downloaded).

The specific way in which partial-downloads are managed varies from client to client. It may keep a temp-file in the download folder (which may be done by default, or you may need to specifically set it to do so). It may keep the list of partial pieces in your %userprofile% folder, or in the program folder if it is portable.

For specific instructions, you will need to specify your BitTorrent client(s).

Synetech

Posted 2012-07-19T18:24:23.347

Reputation: 63 242

Thanks, luckily I use uTorrent for now, which has both win and mac version, so it works without a need for any additional meddling. – Mikulas Dite – 2012-07-19T19:24:54.647

Make sure to enable the partial-file setting. Last time I checked, it was not on by default, so it does not create ~utorrent.part files. – Synetech – 2012-07-19T19:25:45.097