Topic: i have a seeding question regarding how to reseed files from external drive

[funkoff13]

i always delete the .torrent files and relocate the files to external drives.  i have a couple questions:

1.  can i seed directly from the external drive? 
2.  how do i reseed something without starting a new torrent?
3.  how do i leech directly to an external drive so i don't have to move the files?

as always i truly appreciate any help!

[funkoff13]

whoops, sorry for posting in the wrong forum.

[greenone]

1. Yes, absolutely. Performance may suffer a bit compared to having it on your internal drive, but it'll seed.
2. Just re-download the .torrent file from wherever you seeded it originally...but see #3 first.
3. There should be a setting in your torrent program asking where you want to save your downloaded files. Just set this to whichever directory you want on your external drive and you should be good. The only caveat is that you have to have everything in one flat folder. So if your save-to path is External HD\Torrents, everything you download will go to that "Torrents" folder - you can't have one save to External HD\Torrents\Jazz and have another save to External HD\Torrents\Metal. Not automatically, anyway. And you won't be able to re-seed them from there; you'll need to reseed them from External HD\Torrents.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

There are reasons you might not want to do that...  The drive will likely spin continuously, and not all enclosures are well-cooled for continuous operation.   A greater concern is that the drives are much more fragile when in active use (particularly when the heads are active).  Given the exposure of desktop drives to knocks and bumps, even from minor stuff like setting a drink down on the table, it is something to consider.  You can see that when you compare the specs of notebook and desktop drives.

Another risk is a pattern of use that has the drive constantly start and stop.   Desktop drives don't really like to spin up a Lot.  Usually with torrents, the access is more frequent.  But someone slowly downloading a single torrent at low bandwidth could create problems, especially since some of the new 2TB drives spin down after only 10 seconds of inactivity.

[funkoff13]

thanks for the replies!  good information from both of you.

that is what i have been buying 2TB western digital drives as externals.  i only have laptops no desktops right now.  i will be building a desktop in march or april.