You can easilly select those files from a given torrent which you would like to download and seed.

Me with only 250GB ssd in an intel nuc lmao

There are smaller torrents < 80gb go take a look on their website

Yes. When downloading the torrent, go to the files list for that torrent and un-check boxes. Resist the urge to leave only the first files in the list(as most people will do this leaving few-if-anyone seeding the rest), **and try instead to grab files from the middle or end, or just be random about it.

When the torrent finishes downloading the files you've selected, it will automatically seed those portions of the torrent which you have downloaded.

EDIT: I just remembered, some torrent programs will actually show you the seed ratio per file in the torrent. There are reasons hardly anyone is (sincerely) trying to reinvent this wheel.

I have a few questions as you appear to be part of the archive or at least very familiar with it.

Roughly how often are the archives updated?

Do you guys already have a proper backup method or are your seeds acting as that backup?

Any idea realistically how much bigger the archive can get data wise in the next few years? Estimates or educated guesses are fine. I want to know how much I need to plan in advance.

If I take the whole archive, must I deploy it or can it be searched through if I have the whole thing and I want something specific out of it?

Ah perfect. I'll throw some of the 300gb archives on my rig when I get home.

I hope you are wrong. A big multi-part archive can't normally be operated if any part is missing. I hope they do separate zips of a smaller size, like 100gb chunks of random books. By looking at one person's comment it seems the largest compilations are very unpopular.

You're reciting their bullshit. I don't care about the size, what I care is that there's no documentation on the format they're using and nobody speaking about how to use those torrents.

Those guys made a lot with their website but that format is totally bullshit. If they truly cared about preservation they wouldn't be sharing obscure format s instead they would just provide a simple sharded backup of the metadata and files - meaning that anyone could pick one part and the contents would be the actual PDF/ePub files without any special encoding. This approach would've been better in multiple ways:

1. If most parts are lost the remaining would still be available and usable;
2. If the guys vanish from the surface of the planet anyone could easily pick up the available parts and build a new library from them;
3. Simple sharded backup means that people could use those torrents to download books as well, just add the torrent and pick the specific file to download. This would make the torrents way more likely to be shared and seeded as most people could afford to keeps parts or specific books they want and not an entire 300GB torrent. For what's worth individualism and selfishness always win in society, giving people a usable sharded backup would make it more likely to last.

What I see is the the guys running the website are just asking people to share HDD space to keep their database intact in case of legal trouble so they can rebuilt, but they choose to do it in a way that makes it really hard for others to replicate what they've build from their files effectively creating a monopoly on their stuff. Too bad this behavior just fucks up the community if they go away and can't / don't want to come back.

Edit: let me even got further on this. If they were actually interested in preservation they would just provide all their files as individual torrents/magnets people could use both for downloading and seeding long term. Then they could just provide a file with a list of all magnets or a zip of all torrent files in order to allow seeders to preserve large chunks of the database with minimal effort - import all torrents in folder and done.