File too big

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1 Why Am I Downloading More Data Than The Size The File Is Supposed To Be? It's Too Big And It's Taking Too Long!
- 1.1 This is what happens in this situation when any bit torrent client downloads any file:
- 1.2 These are the possible things which can happen next:
2 So you may relax now. :) Everything is okay.

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Why Am I Downloading More Data Than The Size The File Is Supposed To Be? It's Too Big And It's Taking Too Long!

Whenever anybody asks me this question I always tell them to look at the General tab of the torrent details and check out the amount of discarded data and the number of hash fails.

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This is what happens in this situation when any bit torrent client downloads any file:

The client (such as Azureus) requests the data from a peer
The client receives the data, and checks it

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These are the possible things which can happen next:

The data check out ok, and are written to disk This is fine, normal, and the best possible scenario.
The data do not match the request, and are discarded This means that this data, although it may be perfectly good, was not the actual data requested by your client. The other peer sent the wrong data, your client does not know what to do with it, and so discards it. This is not tragic. It just means that the request will be made again until the data matching that request are received.
The data are corrupt, or incomplete, fail the hash check, and are discarded This means that the data sent on this occasion arrived in an unusable condition, and so were discarded. This is also not tragic. It just means that somewhere on the journey between the peer who sent the data and your client, something damaged the data. So your client will request that data again until it is received.

So, your client will count all the data that are downloaded for that torrent, and include it in the total amount downloaded for that torrent, even if some data were discarded.

This may mean that the total amount downloaded for that torrent will be a larger amount than the actual file size of the file you are downloading. This is perfectly normal. This does not mean you have the wrong file, or that something terrible is going on. It simply means that your client is not making a distinction between data that are discarded, and data that are written to disk. And all of the data were in fact actually downloaded, so it makes sense that the client would say such-and-such amount of data were downloaded, even when some of the data were discarded.

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