October 24, 2008 by sharky
We’ve already covered a similar topic on ‘Preseeding‘, whereby you can seed previously downloaded files to another tracker, without taking a hit on your download ratio. But if you want to seed the exact same files to multiple trackers simultaneously in µTorrent, it gets a little more tricky. No, you can’t just add multiple private trackers (URLs) to the announce list of a torrent - this would surely qualify you for a big fat ban on most trackers. Nor do you need to copy the seeded folder and/or files to another location, and then seed it to a different tracker from a secondary location - it can all be done from one folder.
Many of you probably already know how to do this; however, a few people have asked us directly on how to do it.
Different Torrents, Same Folder
Before you begin, we recommend that you physically download the actual (same) *.torrent file from each of your private trackers, instead of changing the announce URL of just one torrent. While preseeding (or cross-seeding) is generally an acceptable practice on most private trackers, you’ll arouse more suspicion if you edit the torrent’s tracker announce URL without actually downloading the *.torrent file.
This works best with proper scene releases since they remain relatively the same (in size & name) from one tracker to the next. Obviously you’ll want to pay special attention to the exact release name - i.e. "Transsiberian LIMITED DVDRip-XVID SAPHiRE" will not work with "Transsiberian LIMITED DVDRip XVID AC3-DEViSE" since the release is not at all similar, as shown below:
How it works in µTorrent: Very simple. Assuming you’ve already downloaded and completed (and are seeding) one torrent that you wish to seed across a second tracker, simply go to your other tracker website and download the same corresponding *.torrent file. NOTE: When saved to your hard drive, the actual names of the similar torrent files are completely arbitrary, and will not have an affect on the download paths. Additionally, you do not need to save them to your hard drive, you can just launch them straight into µTorrent.
Now, open up the second torrent in µTorrent - there are two possible scenarios:
1. — If it is a scene release, you may just be able to start the second torrent without having to ‘browse’ to the downloaded folder (for example, the download path will be the same between multiple trackers). More often than not, different private trackers will create the same folder name/path when a torrent begins, but this is not always the case. If in doubt, always browse - see #2.
2. — Manually browsing to the downloaded folder is safer, for if the folder name (path) in the second torrent is even the slightest bit different, you’ll end up starting the download from zero percent (which negates the purpose of this entirely). To do this, open the second torrent, and click on the [ ... ] button. Look for the directory name of the existing folder in your uTorrent download path, highlight it and click OK once found.
Click OK again, and the torrent should begin the process of hash checking. You should now have two instances of the torrent, both with different tracker URLs (one in each) - to verify, click the "Trackers" tab in uTorrent; each instance should have only one (but different) tracker URL.
Success! You’re now seeding the same data to two different private trackers, while you only actually downloaded the data once! NOTE: You may need to download a small additional amount of data to ‘complete’ the second torrent - this is normal.
To verify that it worked, go back and reload your private tracker’s webpage - you’ll now notice an additional seeding torrent in your ‘active torrents’ list.
Lastly, you can do this with a multitude of trackers, not just two. Simply repeat the same procedure for as many trackers as you wish.
Archived by FSFmirror
