In a previous article entitled, "Torrents: The Smart Way to NOT Get Caught. Or, Why You Shouldn't Use a VPN Anymore.", I explained what would be a great way to not only have unlimited storage but download torrents without having to use your IP address. Unfortunately, the service in question has since disappeared. I apologize to those who did use it beforehand, which I assume was not many if at all, but I do have several alternatives to choose from.
Update
I wanted to post a quick update to the former post that is a jumping point for this article. A couple weeks ago I noticed a maintenance sign popping up instead of UploadHero's normal self-promoting layout. It stated there was "maintenance" being done, and sorry for any inconvenience.
Thinking nothing of it, I checked again a few days later. I continued checking for about two weeks before a 502 error page began to show in place of the "maintenance" page. Using Google, nothing really came up in terms of the website or its services. That was to be expected since most of my results are filtered for English and the US region.
I decided to use Google France and give UploadHero a search. The first site was not so much about UploadHero but about a service that was hosting a forum through them. While explaining its own predicament it did give valuable information on UploadHero's status.
Evidently, someone from UploadHero's staff mentioned they would be closing down a few weeks back. They then described the messages that I have been getting, and that it is now down for good. There was no mention of why they had to go, but it seems fairly obvious...
No email notification was ever sent regarding why UploadHero closed or why they pretended maintenance was being done.
Apologies
For those that did join UploadHero, I hope it was not for the lifetime membership like myself. I got my money's worth, so I'm not overly upset, but anyone else who purchased a lifetime membership after my article may not have.
Alternatives
I didn't want to leave any readers out of options if they were planning on using a service like UploadHero. The focal point of my previous article was to show you a better way to do torrents. UploadHero offered unlimited storage and had other capabilities, which I had thought would be the best service since you could get a lot more for less...
As such, I wanted to produce a quick list of some of the other torrent cloud services that are available and explain a bit about each.
Explanation
Torrent cloud services allow people to avoid the "hassle" of setting up a torrent client and downloading the files they find themselves. This seems like a great alternative, save the fact that most are not free. Most offer subscription-based payments.
One downside that should be mentioned is that they likely have no anonymity clauses in the sense that if the government wants to know who's downloading what, they are going to give it to them. Some preach anonymity, but don't make mention of any log files being kept or what they do if the government comes knocking. In the big picture against piracy this is probably a good thing, but sometimes it won't be.
Boxopus
This is a torrent cloud service that seemed to have a big impact on the torrent community probably because you could attach your Dropbox account and have files downloaded to it. Unfortunately, Dropbox decided to disallow this feature and has revoked Boxopus' API.
Boxopus offers 30GB of storage space. You can pay $1.49 for 7 days, $14.49 for 3 months, and $49.99 for a year. They boast unlimited download speed and file amounts in addition to SSL encryption.
They do offer a traffic recharge feature which apparently increases your storage back to 30GB even if you have files downloaded. The file life before automatic deletion is 5 days.
Bitport.io
Is a little different in that it also allows you to stream media without having to download. Sounds a bit risky on their part, but a cool feature nonetheless.
Bitport.io offers a free "trial" (no mention of if there is an actual time limit) that comes with 2GB of cloud storage, no SSL or antivirus scans, only one download at-a-time at 100MB/hr., with their streaming feature for mobile devices and PC's. All the other paid offers have SSL and antivirus scans, unlimited download speeds, as well as the streaming feature. The tiers are $5/mo. for 30GB of storage with up to 5 downloads, $10/mo. for 100GB of storage with up to 10 downloads, and $15/mo. for 250GB of storage with up to 20 downloads.
They too have SSL encryption with the added bonus of anitvirus software that will check your torrents to ensure they are clean. This is likely a good idea for the company as it will probably claim illegal software has trojans since many of the hacks packaged are seen as such (despite not being so).
Hive
Another popular torrent cloud service is Hive. They seem to offer a bit more bang-for-your-buck! It is pitched as a way to share files with friends, not that it sounds believable.
Hive offers a completely free plan with unlimited storage, unlimited SD media streaming on all devices, but with limited download speeds, no ability to download media, and the inclusion of advertisements. The premium plan is $8/mo. for HD streaming, "fast" download speeds, offline media syncing, and no ads. The annual plan is $88/mo. which saves you a month off the regular price and gives you 3 one-year coupons to give to friends or family.
They have apps for both iOS and Android devices, and even have a Chrome browser extension available. There is no mention of any type of encryption used...
Put.io
I like the company's website as they try to modernize itself for a younger audience. They are also fairly direct about how Put.io can be used with their preview slide of some shows being downloaded. That alone gives them some credit in my book for honesty.
Put.io offers a 99¢ 1-day trial that includes their first tier of options available. Unlike most torrent cloud services, they offer four different options with no mention of download speeds. Option A is 100GB of storage with 10 slots of simultaneous downloads at $9.99/mo. ($99/yr.). Option B is 500GB of storage with 20 slots of downloads at $19.99/mo. ($199/yr.). Option C is 1TB of storage with 50 slots of downloads at $29.990/mo. ($299/yr.). And option D is 2TB of storage with 100 slots of downloads at $49.99/mo. ($499/yr.).
What's interesting is they mention their seed ratios, which goes from 2.0 for option A to 20.0 for all other options. The file life is also mentioned, which is 2 days for options A to 10 days for all other options. One other aspect I liked is that unlike any of the other sites, they immediately ask if you want automated renewal on or off.
Filestream.me
This site is used by many because of its free capabilities. It is limited in download speed, and promotes itself as though it is focused on uploading your own files as opposed to being used solely for torrents.
Filestream.me offers their free service with only 1 download at-a-time of up to 1GB in size, with advertisements. The bronze service is up to 5 downloads of up to 10GB in size for $5/mo. The silver service is up to 7 downloads of up to 25GB in size for $7/mo. The gold service is up to 10 downloads of up to 100GB in size for $10/mo. Each paid service has discounts for 3 months (10%), 6 months (15%), and 12 months (20%).
They have a lot of interesting features like the ability to download from certain cloud file hosting services (ranging from none for free accounts to several for the gold service). They offer SSL encryption and acknowledge hiding your IP address.
Other Alternatives?
There are still a lot out there worth looking through to see what they offer. Here is a list from AlternativeTo and here is one from Quora.
Thoughts?
There are some really good deals here, and some worth looking into and trying. There's no best as far as I can see since it depends on what you need which can vary from person-to-person.
Will this protect you if you're infringing on copyrighted material? Doubtful. It seems like a lot of these are setup in first-world countries, where they can likely grab logs and IP addresses to target you specifically. You may have a better chance with a foreign company, it should be a bit harder for the long arms of the law to catch you, but not impossible.
I wanted to include FilesLoop.com in the list as they have a lot of popular cloud files services to download from as a great additional feature, but after trying their 1-download trial, my experience made me think twice. I found a file from RapidGator.net and had FilesLoop.com download it for me. It took a minute but a download then popped up for me through my download manager. It lasted all of 1% before losing connection and being unable to restart, wasting my trial.
DL Safely!
These are some of the most common torrent cloud services at the moment. I'm sure more will come soon and that should weed out the best from the wannabees. I think it's a very innovative idea and has great advantages, as long as you're using it properly.
In my last article I wrote about what should be the safest possible way to use torrents. Yet, with torrents, there is always a risk involved (even when used legally). The only way to minimize that risk is to not use them at all. Now you're safe, but what about all that stuff you want to download? Well, I must first state that all the information in this article is purely for educational purposes and I will not be held responsible in how this information is used.
Isn't This Illegal?
Yes, it is. However, there are legitimate reasons to do this. I will provide a few examples for different pieces of media:
You end up downloading some music on iTunes. Something happens to your Apple account that has you create a new one. All your music was on your old account which can no longer be accessed. Is it right for Apple to make you to buy each song or album again?
I might own a Blu-ray disc of a movie I love. It has become so damaged it no longer plays. I still own the movie and still want to watch it. Why should I pay again for another copy of the same movie?
The new Mario game is about to arrive and you're feeling nostalgic. Digging through your garage you find your old NES console and a copy of Super Mario Bros. After everything is hooked up you find that the console, or the game, or both, are not working. Is it fair that something - which is discontinued - no longer works, through no fault of your own, and the only way you could get a "new" one is to have someone fix it (which may cost more than what it's worth)?
One problem with purchasing the Windows 8 OS digital download was that if you lost the email that had your key, that was it, it was lost forever. What if you did downloaded it and a couple of months later wanted to make a fresh new install of Windows 8. You realize you lost your email with the product key and Microsoft is of no help. Should you be forced to buy Windows 8 again?
My answers to these questions are no, that's ridiculous. While the copyrighted material should not be on the net in the first place, that doesn't change the fact that it exists. But copyright infringement is about infringing on rights. What rights are you infringing on if you already own the material?
No Torrents?
Yes, you should avoid torrents at all costs. That is, if you're ISP and/or country actually cares. There are plenty that really don't, trust me.
The reason you should not use torrents is because ISP's and cable companies can view and monitor what you are downloading since you are using a peer-to-peer network. Many people use VPN's for this very reason, and they can work well, if you ensure that your anonymity is safe. They also can cost you quite a bit, which was the main reason to use my method in my last article here.
Usenet is another option, but you do have to hand over credit card information to get access, so you could still be found out if that service hands over their information to a government agency or company.
Music Methods
The easiest to way get music is to use YouTube. There are numerous online sites that allow you to turn YouTube videos into MP3. There are some sites that will do the same conversion but output FLAC.
Albums are a bit different, and can be tedious if using the YouTube method. You can use "index of" tricks to search directories, and you may get lucky enough to find what you're looking for (if it's popular). There are plenty of sites that are just for downloading albums, not singles. And of course, there are plenty of host sites that allow downloads of albums. FilesTube.com used to be a good way to search, but they have since changed completely to legal content. There are other sites that will allow you to search these host sites though...
Video Methods
The YouTube methods for music also apply here. There are a lot of sites that will download YouTube videos for you, but there are better ways.
All over the internet hundreds of sites stream movie and TV show content for free. They will likely have a lot more variety than what YouTube offers, but they can also do one other thing that can greatly benefit you.
If you have a download manager you can download your videos at blistering speeds. This does depend on the hosting server limits and your Internet speeds, but it can be extremely helpful for those with slow speeds.
Games & Software Methods
These are a bit more difficult as your only options are hosting sites. Normally, if free, games or software will be divided into multiple chunks, and can take quite a long time to finish. What's worse, if there are something like 20 parts, and you get to part 15 realizing it has been taken down, you just wasted a bunch of time. To avoid this, open each part first and make sure they are available to download.
Furthermore, a download manager can help here too. Some hosting sites allow download managers for free users, and some hosting sites allow multiple downloads at once. This can greatly decrease the time used on downloading this type of content.
Older consoles and respective will usually have emulators scattered across the net that are free and quick to download.
Is It Safe?
These are by far your safest options. Unlike peer-to-peer networks, your ISP or cable provider can't just see what your downloading and if it's illegal or not. The most that seems to happen is if you use a hosting site for downloads, those hosting companies will either take the download down when they see or are told to by whatever company that owns the rights or represents the rights holder. Hosting companies are normally to big to constantly monitor and peruse through what is actually on their servers.
If you happen to be the uploader and are hosting illegal content, you can have your access restricted or completely revoked.
For Each Beginning, There Is An End
While I gave out ideas as to what can be done, I tried not to specify or detail too much. It's not exactly hard to figure out, but why poke the beast? Regardless, as I wrote earlier, there are legitimate times when downloading content should be legal. This doesn't mean you can't get in trouble nonetheless, but at least you would have a valid excuse if something were to happen.
It's been a long time, and while I have written a couple articles, I didn't publish them because I felt like they just... weren't... grand enough! There are so many ideas and subjects out there, but I like to pluck the few that are truly incredible, original, or created by me.
Today I am going to discuss torrent downloading. Many people use them for illegal purposes, so this information is strictly for educational purposes. I will dive into some ideas on the illegal side, but I am making it clear that I in no way endorse breaking the law. That being said, let's continue...
Is a Torrent a Torrent By Any Other Name?
Short answer, no. I just needed a catchy title. There are many ways to go about getting media and/or programs off the net. One such way is through torrents.
Torrents are not illegal, but they are normally used for "evil". To avoid going into too much detail, a torrent is created for whatever (i.e. software, games, movies, etc.). You then use a torrent client to read torrents and download whatever it is it contains.
We've Got Issues
The problem with torrents is that while there are items out there that are free or public domain, most things out there are of intellectual property owned by existing companies who lose money when you download their copyrighted material illegally. This is commonly known as piracy.
Another problem beyond money is ratings. You don't pay per show on TV, you pay a subscription to a cable provider. But ratings help the networks gauge what shows should be renewed or cancelled, and also help bring in money for advertisements. If you download a show, those networks really have no way of knowing that you were watching the show, which in turn hurt the shows ratings and possibly its sponsors.
Ideal Situations
While it is illegal to download these properties, let me give you an example of why it should be allowed in certain situations. Let's pretend I am an avid watcher of a show and I realize my schedule no longer allows me to watch that show on its regular time. And maybe reruns aren't occurring (yet). So, I should be allowed to watch the show offline since I plan to delete once I'm done.
This would be an ideal situation for us watchers, but again, this is a problem for networks and ratings. Some networks do post reruns on their websites, which helps them with monitoring ratings. However, they are just for streaming. If you have an extremely slow Internet connection, it may be as good as not having any type of access at all.
Some Tips
What I have noticed from cable companies is that you get warned about three times if downloading things illegally (and sometimes even legally). It has happened to me - and yes, I deleted the files I had watched - and it will happen to you sooner or later.
There are three ways to avoid the cable companies from finding you out. The first is to find a way without torrents as torrents rely on peer-to-peer networks, which cable companies can access and monitor. Something like Usenet can be helpful, if you set it up for anonymity properly; but there are still other options...
A less stealthy approach is to avoid anything new or popular on torrents. It seems to me that if you are downloading a new show, game or software, the cable company will know. Remember, the cable company has limited resources, so they can't watch every single item on torrents. That would be impossible, and an expensive venture on their part. Instead they monitor whatever is extremely popular, like a movie from last year everyone loved, or that new game from last month everyone is clamoring over. While this may not always be the case, it certainly will decrease the risk associated with using torrents.
The last way is to use my method, which I will be explaining shortly. It is the cheapest technique I have come across yet, and should keep your anonymity.
Back In The Day
The most known methods nowadays is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service. These services allow you to hide behind their networks with varying anonymity, and often will allow you to bypass restrictions that ISP's give to access certain sites. Proxies are similar in that sense, but they are not meant strictly to hide your identity.
My biggest problem with VPN's are that some services keep permanent logs of data. Those logs are what can get you into trouble. Even though you may have been anonymous when downloading, if that VPN service handed over their logs to a government agency, they could find your IP address and link you to illegal downloading.
It is always best to check if a VPN service keeps logs, and if so, for how long. There are plenty who don't keep any logs, and others who keep them for a matter of time before dumping them. The ones that just keep them are the ones that can cause you problems.
My New Method
When I stumbled upon this it was purely by accident as I was actually searching for a hosting site that would allow uploading of my (personal) files and create torrents from them that could be downloaded by others; thereby avoiding the use of my resources - mainly bandwidth issues. Instead, I found a site that will allow you to ditch VPN and give you the same benefits.
You might ask, "Why would I ditch a VPN if this does the same thing?" That's a good question, with a better answer. While I did not find what I was looking for, I did find a site that allows me to download torrents through them. So you do avoid any of your resources being spent. That extra bandwidth can now be spent watching YouTube videos, or whatever you want to do with it.
Sure, at some point you might need to download the files yourself. I say might because if it is video (maybe music too?), you can do streaming directly from the site. But even if you need to download the files, you can use a download manager that will allow you to pause downloads when necessary and get them at much faster speeds - if you don't have extremely fast Internet speeds already. Otherwise, your browser should be able to pause and restart the downloads as well, albeit at slower speeds.
But by far, the best additional benefit is the price. The site does have monthly subscriptions, so that is fine and dandy for those who prefer to do things periodically. However, they offer a lifetime membership! That membership costs about $70 USD.
Now compare that to a VPN service. The cheapest I know of, that follows the guidelines I have outlined above, is about $10 per month. If you plan to use a VPN service for more than 7 months, this will greatly benefit you. Even if not, $70 for a lifetime membership is still pretty great since you could come back anytime and use it.
As a final point, they have the benefit of unlimited storage space. This is great for me. And while files can only be up to 10GB in size, that can always be circumvented by doing something like splitting up a larger file into several smaller ones like .RAR files. No VPN service I know of offers cloud storage, and no cloud storage I know of offer unlimited space...
Site Please?
I feel a bit odd at this point as it's like I'm advertising for a company who doesn't pay me. Yet I'm not trying to trick anyone, just trying to inform people of a better way to use torrents.
The site is: UploadHero.co
This is a French site, but it has an option [flag] to change the language to English. The reason I chose this site is because France seem to be one of the safer choices if choosing a foreign online service. They also have some interesting laws in concerns with downloading copyrighted material.
In the US, people merely have to send a letter or notice stating to stop using or downloading copyrighted material in order for a company to obey. In France (and other parts of the EU), a simple letter will not suffice. A notice needs to come from the company or person who holds the rights, or their legal representation, and I believe it also needs the power of a court order or something similar. This is a big hassle for foreign companies to go through, and it can be actually be smarter for them to avoid these legal troubles and take a small hit rather than going through all that (as unjust as that is).
From what I have read, France now has some system to automatically fine people every time they are caught downloading copyrighted material illegally. I am not sure how that works for companies, but it shouldn't matter for the end user unless that company actively seeks out illegal content in their servers. UploadHero does not seem to be one of those companies...
Anonymity, Am I Safe?
This method should be the safest route. Given the laws stated above that must be adhered to, it makes it difficult for a company to even get companies who are infringing to stop doing so. And even if it goes far enough to make a company stop, there should be little to no consequences to the end-user. Maybe a warning or a hiatus of service for a certain period of days.
However, it is unlikely that they will get your billing information, and thus your identity, as the company is the one allowing the "disservice", not its users. Besides, I am fairly sure there are some strong international laws that would forbid this being done easily. However, it might be different for cases involving French content.
Taking that all into account, the money wasted on a company going after these type of upload services - especially one such as this which has little impact in countries other than its own, and even then I'm not sure how popular it is in France - would be counterproductive to trying to maintain and increase profits. That being said, this information should only be needed if you are committing illegal acts. Users who are not performing crimes should have nothing to worry about.
BETA Testing
The current torrent uploading feature on UploadHero is in Beta. I tried it only a couple times and each time it gave me an upload error. They do ask to report errors, but I'm guessing from how they worded it that using English won't help much...
In addition, I didn't know about this feature until after I signed up and explored a little bit. As far as I know, they don't have any information on the site about torrents. If you search on the net you might find some other review sites that briefly detail this function.
One More Thing
I did neglect to mention that if you want to signup for UploadHero and are not in France, you may not be able to make a payment the first time around. I had this happen to me and I had to contact my bank to ensure that they would allow the transaction to go through. Once they did, I had no problem making the payment.
A final word of warning, the payment portal is in French, but it should be easy enough to understand what needs to be done. If not, use Google Translate to understand what is being asked.
The End Is Coming
As I noted earlier, this is not meant to be for those who illegally obtain copyrighted materials and intellectual properties. But in the interest of making an interesting article, I did include information that would seem to oppose this. In my defense, there are times when perfectly legal downloads will be wrongfully considered illegal, and that is why I have described everything as I have.
Knowledge is only power if you have it.
I have a plethora of USB flash drives at my disposable. I have three Toshiba's that include one 16GB and two 32GB versions. I then have two generic USB flash drives, one is 64GB and the other is 128GB. They all serve various purposes and I usually only have one that is "resting". Until recently, I never really saw an unbearable lag on any of these USB flash drives. And when I did, only one thing actually fixed it...
A Download Story
As I have written before, I find it good practice to actually use a USB flash drive as the location for all my downloads. They are inexpensive to replace, and will help deter against running down your hard drive or SSD.
To give a better perspective of how tough I can be on these USB flash drives, I could be running anywhere between 1-5 downloads from a download manager, while using a torrent client from 1-10 different torrents, and still using my browser to download files like a PDF, ZIP, or EXE.
As such, I started with one of my 32GB USB flash drives. It did well and I cannot recall ever watching it show lag more than a few seconds (when applicable). I soon realized that I would often run out of room, and instead of just slowing down my download agenda, I decided to upgrade to a 64GB USB flash drive. After rearranging all the locations for my browsers and download manager to point to the 64GB, I started up my downloading frenzies again. It too did a phenomenal job and I saw no real performance hit compared to the 32GB. The thing was that I yet again noticed my storage space was insufficient for my needs.
So, I decided to try a 128GB USB flash drive. I purchased a generic one for about $10 that included shipping from China. I should mention that the 32GB was a brand name USB flash drive (Toshiba) purchased for around $30-$40 when it was brand new a few years ago. The 64GB USB flash drive was also a generic brand, very likely Chinese considering where I got it from, and was bought for less than $20.
128GB Too Much?
Before I designated the 128GB as my main drive for downloads, I tested it out to make sure it worked. It seemed to, so I made the necessary arrangements and began my downloading.
At first, everything was fine. I wasn't downloading nearly as much as normal, but downloads were completing in good time with little to no lag. I started off with one torrent at a time, which seemingly did well. However, when I started adding multiple torrents (e.g. two or three), I started to notice how sluggish the 128GB would get...
It was so bad that downloads on my download manager would complete and then take anywhere between 15-45 minutes to actually finish. My torrent client would suddenly freeze for similar amounts of time. And when I would try to transfer files off of the drive, it could take up to 30 minutes. Sometimes all three of these things would be occurring increasing the already lengthy times to double those amounts!
I had even used the Task Manager to end the torrent client process on numerous occasions, and while it would be speedy on startup, it would soon revert back to a sluggish state. After reformatting the 128GB USB flash drive a few times, it would always start the same, speedy. But it would always end up the same with lag coming back into play.
The Speed (Performance) Trick
Then I recalled a trick that I had seen while looking up some other information. If you are using a lot of generic USB flash drives, or have a lot of the same name brand drives, you will either want to take them all out save the one in question, or already know the generic name given to that USB drive, in preparation of this method:
- Open up "My Computer".
- Right-click on the USB flash drive (any drive will actually do).
- Click "Properties".
- Click the "Hardware" tab.
- Choose the generic name of the USB flash drive.
- Click on "Properties".
- Click the "Policies" tab.
- Click the "Better performance" radio button. (If this is already selected, you are out of luck.)
- Click "OK".
- Click "OK".
Note: Changing to "Better performance" only has one downside. It will force you to eject the USB flash drive every time you want to remove it (something you should be doing regardless). If you don't, you could compromise data integrity and cause a loss of data.
This technique should work on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1, and 10; and can be done from the Device Manager if preferred. It is not a speed increase in the normal sense, but if your USB flash drive is sluggish, it will help speed it back up to what it should already be able to do.
This technique does not require or perform a format to your USB flash drive, so your data should remain intact. However, as a safety precaution, you may want to copy all the data on the USB flash drive to another safe location.
Test Results
I immediately noticed a difference in the lag, as it had dwindled itself to that of the 32GB or 64GB USB flash drives (if not a tad better). To test this I started two downloads with my download manager and one torrent with my respective client.
When the first download from the manager completed, it took very little time to finish and transfer it. Transferring took a minimal amount of time despite being a large file and using the move command (which I've noticed takes more time than copying). The second download from the manager then completed, which took a bit more time to actually finish. To transfer I decided to use the copy command, which still took more time than the first, but it was on par with the 32GB or 64GB.
Throughout this time the torrent never hung once, which indicated to me that this trick was indeed working, and could also be accounted for the lag on the second download (given the increase in speed the torrent client got after each download completed).
The torrent never stopped. Not even while opening another torrent. I did notice that trying to download initial torrent files (to start a torrent), and magnetic links clicked while waiting for the initial torrent files to download, did take an abnormal amount of time. Possibly about as much as when it was sluggish. Regardless, the torrent chugged along only freezing when I had clicked a good amount of magnetic links that were failing to open quickly. Eventually, the magnet links worked.
At one point the torrent froze completely, likely due to me trying to add another additional torrent while I had other magnet links popping up. This shouldn't have been a problem for a "normal" USB flash drive, but given this 128GB's history, it certainly could be a remaining issue.
I started the torrent client again, which did take some time before it was functioning properly. By this time I had two torrents running, one nearly finished, another one just starting. The first finished and started flushing to disk. I had to go before it would be transferable, and the second finished before I got back, so I can't say if it took an extremely long time before I could actually do anything with the files.
To retest the torrents and see them through, I started up a single download with my download manager, and three torrents with my client. When the download from the manager completed, it did end up freezing the torrent client as it finished. But once it finished, the torrents started back up. I used the move command to transfer the file and I would say it wasn't as fast as the first download with the manager, but quicker than the second.
Note: It seemed to put a little less stress (and lag) on the USB flash drive to already have its folder opened before moving or copying anything from it.
The first of the three torrents to complete was about half the size of the very first torrent I had downloaded. It took about 4 minutes to flush to disk. I at first had an issue with trying to move another file I had downloaded with the manager while waiting. I had to restart Windows Explorer. After doing so, and when I could get back to the directory of my torrents, I used the copy command which was by far the fastest transfer yet. I then redid my transfer (with the copy command) of the file that had caused Windows Explorer to crash. It too was extremely quick.
At this time, I had closed my torrent client as I needed the extra bandwidth for something else. I came back and restarted the client. Another torrent file completed soon after, that was about 3/4 of a gigabyte. About 2 minutes later it was fully flushed to disk. I made the mistake of opening another folder with the torrent client (which took another two minutes). I then copied the file over, which took another minute or two to start, but the actual copying took a few seconds. The second download finished in about 2-3 minutes. I used my pre-opened folder of the USB flash drive and copied the download. It took around a minute or so to finish transferring.
One additional note, while the last two torrents were finishing the third had stopped downloading from lack of seeders. This may have helped somewhat in moving things along.
The Lesson Here
While this simple method can help a sluggish USB flash drive, it should be noted that my problem seemed to really stem from torrents. I open several initial torrent files and magnet links in an attempt to add more trackers. Sometimes this is beneficial for torrents with few seeds or peers. Other times it is not. While this helps perpetuate the lag I experienced, the torrent and client itself were still the main culprits.
That being said, whether using the method or not, I still noticed quite a lag to navigate or perform actions on items in my USB flash drive while using the torrent client.
Moreorless, don't use torrents. If you do, try to keep to a maximum of 2 for best results. Three is when things start adding lag for me. And try to download via magnetic links. If you must use initial torrent files, download and open them one at a time and be patient.
Everything Comes to an End
So, there you have it. A way to speed up your USB flash drive. Some people may try it and notice no difference, but they should really perform tests on it first to see if there was truly a significant difference. Others may be using torrent clients and realize that this is a method to aid them in their downloading endeavors.
Part of my thoughts as to why this happened is because it is a larger USB flash drive making it more susceptible to slower write speeds (as evident with SSD's, which are essentially what USB flash drives are). But this could happen to USB flash drives of any size, and performing the above steps should help.
If you feel jilted, then I apologize. There is only one real technique I know of to get USB flash drives to increase their read/write speeds. Come back to my blog later to find out...
