How long should I seed?

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 7:16 pm

I've been using isohunt and utorrent for some time now with lots of success and appreciate what I've collected. I've gathered from comments that seeding is what continues to make torrents available to others, but I'm not savvy on exactly how the entire process works.

My software is fine tuned thanks to forum commentors advice, so my speeds are very fast. My only weak link is memory storage size. Once I've downloaded a few torrents successfully, I need to burn disks and get them off my pc to enable me to download future files. I want to leave the files available as long as possible for seeding, but I would also like to eventually download more making previous file removal necessary.

Bottom line:
How long should I seed what I've downloaded and how do I know when it's been too little, adequate or very generous? Up until now, I've waited until there is no apparent activity with uploading, but I don't know how good of an indicator that would be. Can seeding be monitored on utorrent to show me when I've given back my fair share????

Thanks.

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 7:30 pm

Seed what you take (ie. 1:1 ratio) or for 48 hours, that is generally considered to be acceptable. You can of course do more if you want.

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 8:51 pm

I can see that the torrent is seeding and uploading at such and such a rate, but how do I know when I hit 1:1?

If I download a video that's 800mb, how can I tell that I uploaded that much back again?

48 hours I get. Just not clear on how to judge how much went back.

Sometimes, I would like to download more files within a short period of time and, as I said, if there's no upload activity happening, I remove the previous downloads and start the next ones. However, if I'm in no hurry, I let the seeding go for days or weeks if possible.

I just want to do the right thing.

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 11:15 pm

just keep checking the amout of data uploaded, when you have uploaded as much as you have downloaded, you will be at a share ratio of 1:1 and is generally acceptable to stop seeding if you need to remove the file. A lot of people, myself included, like to try and leave a file seeding until it gets to at least 1:1.5 which means you have given back more than you have taken (an extra 50%) or if you seed til 1:2 you have given back double and so on. You can check the ratio in utorrent very easily...older versions of utorrent have ratio info displayed on the row where you see the torrent downloading in the big main window....newer versions have the ratio info contained within the tabs at the bottom. Hope this helps....and have a +1 rep from me for caring about sharing Wink

Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 3:51 am

I was getting house earlier, comment said, legit file and will seed for a moment.....
A moment was about it, everyones stuck at 1.3%.
Just give people a chance.

Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 5:20 am

Thanks very much. Since, I'm getting great speeds, I should be giving a lot back. Your explanations make me feel that what I'm doing is fine. The only reason I couldn't seed enough is if my pc locks up, which happens now and again.

Cheers!

Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 6:04 am

How long should I seed?

erm.......till pregnant

Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 6:50 am

Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 7:02 am

The general wish I think is 1.5 times, I will just d/l and seed as long as I can, some things I will seed up to 9 if they dont have good seeding, others I will quit earlier if they are well subscribed. Like you I am dependant on HD space.

Posted: Sat May 26, 2012 4:18 pm

If the stuff is good, and I'm not out of HD space, I just seed forever .
From time to time I sweep my torrents to remove some.
But usually I seed a lot, because you know... seed is love. Wink