Torrents and removable storage (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 month ago by podbrushkin@mander.xyz to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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My torrent client downloads files to internal SSD. When I'm low on storage (often), I remove some torrents from qbittorrent and move files to external HDD. It means I can't seed them anymore.

I want to be able to seed HDD torrents periodically. What workflow can I employ? I can think of:

Use 2 different torrent clients. One with "external" torrents only. It will never be launched when external HDD is not plugged in, therefore old torrents will not be marked as "missing files" and will not require verification every now and then;
Use single torrent client which can accept CLI commands to start/stop specific torrents. Before detaching external HDD I will run a script to stop all external torrents. I will resume them back again only when HDD is accessible.

Any other ideas?

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[-] podbrushkin@mander.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

"regular check" - do you mean verification? Verification takes a lot of time, verifying 10s of gigs will take a lot of time. What do you forget, stopping torrents?

[-] quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 month ago

I mean the one it does every time it starts, when it looks if everything is where it thinks it is. At least when I start it the progress bars are white and the status says checking or something similar, it takes maybe 4-5 seconds.

I don't seed 24/7, I shut down the PC most of the time, and I don't have all the HDDs on auto mount, I have remember to mount them before starting qbittorrent or it wont find half of the files.

[-] podbrushkin@mander.xyz 3 points 1 month ago

Thank you for this clarification, I will try to exit qbit and launch it again when HDD is accessible. Maybe it will reset those error statuses. I think it didn't work some years ago (error status remained, had to start verification).

[-] quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Now I'm having doubts about it. I know for sure that with Transmission it worked that way, on second start all the torrents with missing files were paused. With qpittorrent, one hour ago, I was pretty sure I didn't need to unpause the torrents but now I'm affraid of missremembering something. As soon as I get home in a couple hours I'll test it to make sure.

Edit: confirmed, all torrents resume correctly without having to verify them.

[-] podbrushkin@mander.xyz 1 points 1 month ago

Confirmed as well. Also, stopping them before unmounting drive doesn't prevent missing files error.

this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026

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