Ill conceived idea to resurrect a dead torrent (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 5 days ago by sad_detective_man@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Hi, let me know if this is obviously stupid and won't work. I'm an old pirate but obviously still pretty uneducated. I've got a dead torrent that's a collection of roms. 4 seeders, 800 abandoned peers (ungrateful basterds). Seeders are rarely online or can't provide more than 8% after a week. The roms are pretty mainstream and it's strange for this torrent to have been abandoned.

If I can find find the exact releases of as many roms as possible in the collection from other singular sources, can I resurrect this torrent by just copy+overwrite into the unfinished folder? is it that simple or is this hubris? am I too old to be this stupid?

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[-] sad_detective_man@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 5 days ago

so I got a copies from Vimm's Lair to overwrite and bump up the progress on the torrent. but I just noticed the new files only show that they're 99.3-99.7% after overwriting and rechecking the torrent. would this indicate that they're the wrong hash afterall?

[-] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 25 points 5 days ago

If you checked the torrent file and it's showing 99+% that means you almost certainly have the right file but some minute piece of metadata is off. Good news is now you only have to snag ~1% of that file from the seeders that pop in an out and you'll be set.

[-] sad_detective_man@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 5 days ago

that's exactly what happened. this was so dope to watch happen

[-] lIlIllIlIIIllIlIlII@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 days ago

Maybe not only metadata. Could be baddumps, overdumps or alt roms.

[-] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 days ago

With 99+% of hashes matching?

Whatever the issue, theres good odds that the pieces with matching hashes are perfectly fine and the <1% of pieces with errors OPs bittorrent client can and did replace, so now the files are identical to source and good to go!

[-] lIlIllIlIIIllIlIlII@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago

With 99+% of hashes matching?

Yes.

[-] nya@lemmy.kya.moe 8 points 5 days ago

I believe the 99.3-99.7% that means it's the right hash, but because it doesn't have the start/end of the next/previous file, the pieces that contain the edges of the rom aren't complete (torrents are devided into pieces of 1MB/256kB/8MB/...)

Could also be a small metadata error in the file though idk much about

[-] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 3 days ago

If you have a few dollars to spare you might try on real debrid. If someone has once downloaded it on their service, it may still be in their cache. I've resurrected quite a few vintage torrents with this technique.

[-] IllNess@infosec.pub 4 points 5 days ago

I seed but never created a torrent file. I wonder if there is a command to create a new hash to see if you can compare the old one with the new one. That way you can see if it truly is the same file.