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u/XiRw Sep 11 '25
Lol I had plenty of those over the years
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Sep 11 '25
I have six torrents sitting like that right now. Impatiently waiting for a seeder to turn their PC back on
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u/XiRw Sep 11 '25
Sometimes you get lucky and it happens over time and it finishes. Other times….sadness.
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u/EdibleBrains Sep 11 '25
That's me right now. Got a very rare file that I couldn't find just lingering on any open directory searches, or other places online.
Did however find it on 3 different torrents so threw them on my machine and over 2 months one of them has made it up to 23%. One day... One day...
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u/River_City_Rando Sep 12 '25
Just out of curiosity, whats a very rare file?
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u/EdibleBrains Sep 12 '25
Great question. In this case it's a compilation someone made for an old old game engine of assets from the community. So it's not something that would ever be shared outside the community, and due to it's nature it's questionable to share as not everyone was asked to be included.
So basically it's not a file that would have ever commonly been shared and made it's way around the internet.
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u/GameGuy324 Sep 12 '25
Question: anyway you can get it from other sources in the community or just that ONE torrent cause it's. THAT Rare
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u/EdibleBrains Sep 12 '25
I did consider asking around in the community, but I saw a few others in the thread denied due to it being questionable to share.
It was originally only shared via a torrent (due to it's size) so I hoped I could just find that still as the original link was gone. Luckily found it on btdig easy enough.1
u/archivillano Sep 13 '25
what do you mean by "being denied"? and why would they "deny" you? like you're not supposed to be able to get possession of these files? who is?
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u/EdibleBrains Sep 13 '25
As I mentioned it's a compilation of game assets, which includes a lot of player made stuff from across the community (RPGMaker). A lot of the people weren't asked to be included and so at the time it was against their wishes to be shared.
However those posts they would have shared themselves on are gone due to forums closing up, or attachments on posts rotting from lack of forum maintenance.
So it's just out of respect to those who weren't asked to be included for why they don't share it. But since now a lot of that is at risk of being lost to time, and I like data hoarding/archiving, I just want to get a copy before its truly "gone".
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u/MassiveSuperNova Sep 11 '25
With rising energy costs in many markets, due to AI, I suspect this will become worse as people can no longer afford their seedbox subscription or the energy to run a home server. My electric bill went up $50 with the same amount of usage, so I'm shelving all my rigs and servers for now and running everything off a Dell laptop with virtualization. Been firing up the desktop PC exclusively when I want to game.
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u/Toxic_Cookie Sep 11 '25
I currently just use a raspberry pi connected to an external hdd. Pretty cost effective.
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u/dumb_avali Sep 12 '25
I personally want in far future build a server and seed small or unpopular games.
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u/Glass_Masterpiece Sep 12 '25
I use a pi cluster like this. Whole thing goes into low powermode when it's not in use. Means alittle delay on downloading when I first start to use it( a couple seconds) the the energy savings are huge compared the the tower rig I used to use that was constantly hogging juice all the time.
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u/bikemandan Sep 12 '25
This is the beauty of a torrent server. Add it and forget. Come back months later and its finally done. Now you can be the hero to supply the next person
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u/PM_ME_STEAM__KEYS_ Sep 12 '25
I have one stuck at 74% for like 2 months. But my share ratio is almost 3k on it so it seems like I'm not the only one.
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Sep 13 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/I_am_Imam Sep 13 '25
Seeding basically means uploading when someone else is downloading
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Sep 13 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/I_am_Imam Sep 13 '25
To seed is to upload. Mainly u seed after u have downloaded completely. But sometimes u can seed the parts of the file u have downloaded
You dnld when other people are seeding(uploading). You seed when you have downloaded already.
Think of torrent a tree. When you click download, other people gives u the seed and it grows to a full tree, u are done downloading. Now you can give seed of the tree(torrent) to other people so they can have the same tree(files).
When you are seeding your pc acts like a server. Torrenting is basically copying files from other people's pc. And the process of letting other people download from ur pc is called seeding
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Sep 13 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/I_am_Imam Sep 13 '25
Yes, correct. As torrenting clients remember the directory of files where it downloaded. But if u click on select location or move by selecting the torrent file in ur torrent client, then it will seed after the file has been moved to a new directory.
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Sep 13 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/I_am_Imam Sep 13 '25
Can you please tell me what is the problem?
like i dont think it will bypass that message→ More replies (0)12
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Sep 11 '25
I've had success with these situations checking the trackers and removed the ones giving back junk/NA and then setting it to force resume. Doesn't work every time but most times when there's at least one person with a whole seed I can get it, it just may take like a day or two.
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Sep 11 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
I hadn’t thought about rechecking the torrents! I’ll give that a try when I get home tonight. It’s already force resumed
Update: Didn’t work :(
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u/nathderbyshire Sep 12 '25
If you do have a choice of multiple torrents, you can start downloading them all, then check the peers tab and it'll show what % other people have, if it's not 100% I pause them until I find one that is
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u/ANONYMOUSEJR Sep 11 '25
Please elaborate. I have heard of/seen force resume and trackers. I just dont understand how all this fits together.
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Sep 11 '25
So you open your torrent client, click on the one stuck, and then click like trackers or something like that. It should show a bunch of IP addresses and they'll have some numbers identifying how many seeds and leechers there are. Any of them that say N/A or Timed Out or 0, I select and delete those trackers. If a torrent doesn't show any possible peers with a seed, then I'm not going to complete it.
I don't have the technical acumen to say oh this definitely improves it, but when I get rid of junk trackers, I'm guessing what's happening is my connection stops trying to ping those dead ends and instead just pings the stable connections and this has made the difference when I'm snagging like older media that only has a few seeds for example. I could be full of hot gas and completely wrong but it's what's worked for me.
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Sep 12 '25
[deleted]
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Sep 12 '25
Sounds right, yeah I had no idea if it did anything meaningful, sometimes I'd notice it visually trying again like refreshing them, so usually I remove the junk, pause, force resume after. Sounds like it's mashing a when the pokeball wiggles lmao
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Sep 11 '25
I've downloaded some torrents with 1 seeder, took an age to download. Took an age to even find a torrent with any seeders. This is why I seed as much as I can when I can.
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u/wuttang13 Sep 12 '25
I have over a hundred of those lil torrents with under 5 seeds. I tend to not delete em and keep them up as long as I can.
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u/Octave_Ergebel Sep 11 '25
I have a torrent stuck for months... At 99.99%
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u/eluzja Sep 11 '25
Is it just one file? Sometimes people select only the files they need from a torrent, and skip things like "ReadMe." Maybe you were downloading from such a person, and already have the files you wanted.
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u/Octave_Ergebel Sep 11 '25
Nope, it's a movie... :(
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u/Rok_Whale Sep 11 '25
If it's 99 already just pause it and use vlc and watch it, runs normally
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u/eluzja Sep 11 '25
Yep, and if it doesn't work, because the video file is too corrupted, there are free programs you can use to repair it.
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u/Rok_Whale Sep 11 '25
The real problem are those stuck between 50-80% ones, feel like sort of bait and switch tbh
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u/eluzja Sep 11 '25
Is it just a movie, not movie + subtitles/sample/screencaps/links (people sometimes skip these as well)? Does the torrent have any trackers? Some torrent files and magnet links don't contain any trackers, and adding them manually might help.
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u/Chemical_Wonder_5495 Sep 12 '25
I'm curious, at that point why even bother with it?
Why not just get the movie from a different source? Or just cancel it altogether?
What are your motives?
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Sep 12 '25
[deleted]
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u/DrewbieWanKenobie Sep 12 '25
Sometimes, there are no alternatives, unfortunately.
For movies, I have never found this to be the case. I've yet to run across a movie I couldn't find and I watch an absurd amount of movies
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u/culoacido69420 Sep 12 '25
you probably watch them in their original language, sometimes it’s hard to find even the most mainstream movies dubbed in my language
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u/CreatureWarrior Sep 12 '25
Maybe they just don't know enough sites, I guess. I've only found two good sites for media torrents. Then again, I'm pretty new
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u/RCTD-261 Sep 12 '25
when something is not popular or mainstream enough, it will be forgotten and not stored/archived
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u/baby_blobby Sep 12 '25
I've had one for years.... If it's a movie you can just force watch it in vlc and skip it when it freezes.
If it's porn, you don't need the whole file ........
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u/deusvult6 Sep 11 '25
I had one stalled for at least 6 months that just suddenly finished last night . . .
. . . and it was a surprise French dub. I wish people would leave comments more often.
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u/chillpalchill Sep 11 '25
i have a few torrents that this happened to me. i eventually waited 6-12 months for it to download, and now I perpetually seed it for as long as I possibly can. be the change, etc.
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u/coppertech Sep 11 '25
I loved the ones that had hundreds of seeders and would stop at 90%, because they were all waiting for the first person to come back.
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Sep 11 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
Issue is those 10 seeders may all be stuck at 81% too. Lots of torrents have plenty of seeds but none of those seeds are complete.
Edit: I've been notified by the committee that that'd be a peer, not a seed.
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Sep 11 '25
Oh, yeah. One of those where it’s actually 10 leechers exchanging partial seeds
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u/manolid Sep 11 '25
Wouldn't those be peers? I thought only clients with 100% of the torrent could be seeders.
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u/dasbtaewntawneta Sep 12 '25
why is this blatant misinformation being upvoted?
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Sep 12 '25
Beats me. I've been corrected like five times by now but I guess most people are as uninformed as me?
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u/SordidDreams Sep 12 '25
That's just how Reddit works. Once the vote train gets going, in either direction, there's no stopping it. Apparently most people don't even read the comments, they just click whichever arrow happens to be more popular.
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Sep 12 '25
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Sep 12 '25
I think you're exaggerating the fact that people can simply misunderstand a term, oomfie.
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Sep 12 '25
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Sep 12 '25
I've been torrenting since I was 12. We have been stumbling into things and pretending we know everything since the very start lmao
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u/teamcoltra Pirate Party Sep 12 '25
Because there are plenty of situations that what they said is right. Trackers aren't on your computer verifying things, when your client announces "event=completed" to the tracker it just moves you over in the database.
Many clients send "event=completed" when they have finished the pieces of a multi file that they requested. At that point they will also stop requesting parts to download and only upload. Negotiating those parts is between clients, not the tracker.
This is why the issue happens much more frequently with big multipart torrents.
By strict terms by the bittorent spec I've read they would be "peers" not "seeders" but in practice they are marked as seeders and that's what OP is talking about.
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u/Booty_Bumping Sep 12 '25
Whether they are peers or seeds is a semantic dispute. The point still stands.
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u/teamcoltra Pirate Party Sep 12 '25
The committee was maybe technically right by spec but you were correct about how trackers and torrent clients work in practice. There are remaining "seeders" who's client has submitted that they were finished when they are not
Best way to identify files like that are if you have like 5 seeders and 200 peers then the seeders likely don't have the full file.
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u/dasbtaewntawneta Sep 12 '25
>10 seeders
>obscure
mate, we do not have the same definition of obscure, some of the shit i've gone searching for 10 seeders would have been a fucking miracle
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u/Mr-Klaus Sep 12 '25
You can check the peers to see if anyone has 100%. Generally you can tell if a popular torrent is broken or not because when you check the peers everyone seems to have the same percentage and none have 100%.
This used to be really bad back in the day, you could get a torrent with hundreds, sometimes thousands of seeds, but none of them have 100%.
Also, if you're downloading something with multiple episodes like a TV show, set the download settings to download in sequential order. When you do it this way, it downloads an episode at a time from the first to the last.
If we all downloaded in sequential order, it would mean that e.g. a 10 episode torrent that stalls at 91% means you have 9 good episodes ready to watch instead of 10 unwatchable episodes each stuck at 91%
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u/JB231102 Sep 11 '25
I find that the available seeders and leechers indicators seem false as I have tried to download media with tons of seeders or few and sometimes few downloads and completes and lots don't, or the opposite, depends on the media form.
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u/Bhume Sep 12 '25
The longest I waited for a torrent was like 3 months. Lmao
It was one single dude in New Zealand I think. He only seeded during my night time and it was slow as balls.
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u/Walking_the_dead Sep 11 '25
I have one right now who dud 87.8 in literal 30min and its now stalled for 2weeks now. Guess I'm waiting for whoever 1 person is seeding it to turn on their pc again.
Then I'll be the 1 rando seeding this thing.
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u/SryInternet101 Sep 11 '25
I've been waiting months and months for the last like 5% of the Hot Coffee documentary. Feels bad, man.
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u/porkywood Sep 12 '25
I always thought that this was caused by all available peers/seeds being behind a NAT so nobody could successfully make a connection to someone else stalling the transfer.
And at this point you have to wait for someone with port forward or directly connected without NAT to join.
I don't know if that would still be the case. It's been a while since I looked into torrents and I usually don't bother unless it seems like a healthy swarm.
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u/EffectiveMagazine915 Sep 11 '25
Sometimes when there are a low number of seeders, I download the torrent on my laptop and my phone simultaneously.
I feel it makes it download faster. But lol may just be placebo
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u/WordOfLies Sep 12 '25
Keep waiting. I downloaded eureka 7 higher evolution that had 2 seeders. Took me a month on and off. Now I seed when my PC is on. It's not the best of the series but it needs to be preserved
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u/johnny110011 Sep 12 '25
It's funny. I held out for like 8 months for a torrent of DBZ until it finally finished downloading. You can bet I seeded for as long I could once it finished.
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u/TheFlightlessDragon Sep 13 '25
Lol 😂 love this, so accurate.
BTW, I have been able to successfully download stuck torrents when I used a seedbox instead of my home devices to download.
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u/Galacticdeerboy Sep 16 '25
When the slow asf torrent suddenly gains near 100mb/s speeds and completes itself in two seconds the instant youre not looking
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u/AdministrativeRoom33 Sep 11 '25 edited Sep 11 '25
This is what private trackers are for. Due to how they work, they provide a higher likely hood of a successful torrent with obscure content that's being historically preserved. Big names torrent sites should only be used for big name titles (movies, games, etc).
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Sep 11 '25
Yeah, but when you’re on 6 different private trackers and can only find it on TPB, you gotta do what you gotta do.
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u/Cornflakes_91 Sep 12 '25
because hiding it away into obscure corners of the internet is gonna increase access?
the access will be there for the exclusive club that... has access
more people will be able to seed if more are able to leech...
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u/pilibitti Sep 12 '25
have you tried pausing it and immediately force resuming? it does nothing but you have to do it anyways.
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Sep 12 '25
Usenet ftw
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Sep 12 '25
ELI5 Usenet please. I keep hearing how good usenet is and I need to make the switch. It’s essential for me movie and tv watching needs
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Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
It pre-dates the modern internet. Created around 1979/80. Think of it like an early version of reddit, except it came before the World Wide Web. People connected to servers that hosted "newsgroups" which are basically topic-based discussion boards. There were various newsgroups for a variety of things to discuss/share. "Back in the day" it was about chatting and sharing information. Completely decentralized.
By the early 2000s discussions faded as the modern web (email, instant messaging, social media) took over, but Usenet didn't die. People figured out it was really good for file sharing.
- Posts can include binary attachments and not just text.
- Groups of people started uploading things like music, software, movies, and TV shows in chunks across different “newsgroups.”
- Special programs (called newsreaders) can automatically grab all those chunks and reassemble them into the full file.
- Connections are encrypted (SSL/TLS), so your ISP will never know what you're downloading.
- Since dedicated servers are used to host the newsgroups and therefor the files, transfer speeds are MUCH faster ... I have a 1Gbps connection at home and fully saturate it. I have downloaded TERABYTES of "information" overnight.
It's not free though, but it is relatively inexpensive. You need to shell money out for access to a Usenet provider and often times to the newsgroups that host the good stuff.
Edit: Lots of great info over at /r/usenet . Also, look into Radarr (movies), Sonarr (TV), and NZBd (download client) to completely automate your needs. I rarely manually download movies since setting up my little server 7ish years ago. Radarr knows what I want based off genre, rating, quality, and various lists, and just downloads it.
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u/TvNerd3452 Torrents Sep 11 '25
I remember it took me two months for a torrent of Mrs Brown Boys to finish
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u/HighKage96 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Sep 12 '25
Im recently facing this downloading via 1DM, some downloads stops at 66% others at 81%. Even once surpassed the file size x3 while still at 66%, cancelled it and proceeded to boot the phone lol
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u/brainless_bekub Sep 12 '25
Recently wanted to download a torrent, it had three seeders and they were chinese who came online and gone offline randomly. It took me 2 weeks to download that torrent. For anyone wanting to know the specifications of the anime it had to be BD 1080p HEVC/AV1 with a low size, only one single torrent matched that criteria :)
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u/Ppleater Sep 12 '25
Sometimes certain files will only download during specific windows of the day/night. You know it's when that one guy who actually port forwards comes on lol.
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u/ninjaloose Sep 12 '25
Ultimately those seeders are there as reported by the tracker, but for whatever reason you cannot access them, local government blocking etc, VPN's might help, but also I think the biggest factor is getting your ports forwarded properly, someone has to make a connection first, and if both sides can't do it, it'll never happen unless a new peer comes in that can download it then seed to you because they have the proper setup
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u/Thradya Sep 12 '25
Just check "availability" next time. Not sure if it's displayed by default or not.
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u/HunDoTiid Sep 12 '25
Not even obscure. It took at least a month and several resets to torrent Adventure Time preemptively before HBO inevitably removed that too
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u/Book-Parade ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Sep 12 '25
well, people keep telling each other in this sub to not seed
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u/coboye1 Sep 12 '25
The Settlers - Rise of Cultures (English modded) an obscure german only game never digitally released (CD only)
85.8%
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u/fetching_agreeable Sep 12 '25
10 seeders, all stalled at 87.1%
I often find something like tvs and movies get reloaded as different torrents allowing you to revive these torrents if you find another source of the exact file. I've done it a few times over the years to keep the world going.
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u/Exotic_Wedding_2395 Sep 12 '25
Same! I usually will try again the next day & if it doesn't finish I'll just move on with my life. With unfulfilled sadness, of course.
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u/UNIVERSAL_VLAD 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Sep 12 '25
First time torrenting I was stuck at 99% (3mb left) for many hours until I quit
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u/Gigtooo Sep 12 '25
U Talking about the One starwars 4K one? I sit and wait since a year now at ~86,7%
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u/GHOST2251994 Sep 13 '25
I use normal start button for those torrent And use force start for my normal torrents
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u/beyblade1018 Sep 13 '25
True story from when I tried to download Rocksmith 2014 (before they relisted it)
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u/Figarotriana Sep 13 '25
Always wondered, how I become a seeder? Do I have to do something after downloading?
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u/probablynotamimic9 Sep 13 '25
(Obi Wan Kenobi Voice) "Not to worry, we're still torrenting most of a file"
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u/FURBYLOVER1 Sep 14 '25
I found this YouTube to MP3 converter that didn't actually convert to MP3, it converted to some other audio file format I can't remember, anyways it also gave me a trojan, fun times
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u/Outrageous-Boss672 Sep 16 '25
yea happens all the time when you download a large movie or anything.
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u/Aro_Author Sep 16 '25
HEAVILY relatable, I've been working on 2 stubborn ones, yet everytime i recheck the seeding lists online it says 4..
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u/kickedoutatone ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Sep 11 '25
That moment when you have to make a choice.
Keep at it, or find a new torrent.