Use uTorrent to Organize Your BitTorrent Downloads
Written by Ernesto on August 06, 2007BitTorrent is great, but all those downloaded torrents have the habit of making a mess of your harddrive. Do you still have all your downloaded stuff in a single folder? Take action, organize your torrents.
Here are a few tips and tricks that you could use to put the downloads where you want, and keep your hard drive organized. We’ve posted about this already a while ago, but we thought it deserves some renewed attention.
1. Separate complete from incomplete files
Just for the sake of clarity. All my active downloads will go to /downloads/incomplete, once they are finished, uTorrent will automatically move them to the /downloads directory.
Go to options/preferences/downloads to enable it
I agree, this is not the most spectacular tweak, but it’s a good start, and it makes browsing though your downloads directory a bit easier.
2. Label torrents and automatically create separate folders
This is definitely one of my favorite features. uTorrent has the option to label torrents, and it will move the completed downloads to the corresponding directories.
go to options/preferences/advanced/user_interface here you can enter a set of persistent labels for your downloads. I use movies|tv|apps|docs|music, but you can create as many labels as you want.
next, go to options/preferences/downloads and tick the “append the torrent’s label to the directory name” box and you’re ready to go.
You can label torrents by right-clicking the torrent in the main window. You can also use this context menu to add new labels “on the fly”.
Great, now you know how to label your torrents, but there is more. Personally I like to see the labels in the main (download) window, so you’re able to check what and how you tagged your torrents. In order to do this you need to right-click the top bar and tick the label option. If the label is still too far to the right for you to see you need to drag it to the left (see pic)
3. Sub-labels for the real TorrentFreaks
Ok, lets say you have a movies label, but you download a lot of movies so you want subdirectories like movies/action and movies/documentary. No problem. Right-click on a download, go to label/new_label and enter movies\documentary etc.
That’s it!
Do you feel organized already?…. great ain’t it?
Previously: The Pirate Bay Now Has a Forum
Next: uTorrent and WinZip New Targets of BitTorrent Malware
36 Responses
As usual utorrent playing catchup to azureus features that have been included since the dawn of time. :p
This is not a new feature, just one many people don’t know about ;)
drive Z
jesus h. crist xd
Why are you gawking over the Z, it’s likely just a mounted network share. He doesn’t have that many drives.
he spelled it dowloads
[quote comment="143333"]he spelled it dowloads[/quote]
and the funny thing is, I’ve never noticed it up until today…
The really funny thing is that in an article about how to be organized the OP is clearly not really organized… :D
Drive “Z” Could also be a “TrueCrypted” mounted “”drive”". It is what I do if I want to hide files etc. All that extra processing power to encrypt movies though just to hide from the RIAA\MPAA etc? Although I am in Canada what would I know… Dont have to worry about them too much..
Thanks for the great review on organization within µTorrent…
Uhh… maybe its a networked drive?
I set my SAMBA mounts to X, Y, and Z. In fact, the default drive mapping IS Z.
I think people have deviated a bit too much from the article itself.
Nice job, Ernesto. I appreciate the little “guide”, I do like having my HDD organized and I wasn’t aware I could do that by tweaking uTorrent’s preferences. Again, helpful little guide, thanks.
Thanks for the article, I hadn’t noticed the persistent labels & “append label” stuff.
But what about changing the labels after you’ve started the download? Will the data be automatically moved?
If you use a temporary download folder, the files won’t be moved according to your label until they’ve finished downloading, so you can change label up until they are done. If you change it after that, nothing will happen afaik.
So if you check “Append the torrent’s label to directory name,” do you have subfolders for each media type? That is, if I label something as “music,” once it is completed it will go into Z:\downloads\music ? Or are labels just for shits and giggles?
Ernesto, may i ask why you just post such a guide for µT and not for Az? Az had that kind of features for quite some time now…
The 8472 smells biased reporting here.
Is there a way to do this retroactively, for the 100+ torrents that are already completed so I re-download the torrent and point it to a new location?
[quote comment="143652"]Is there a way to do this retroactively, for the 100+ torrents that are already completed so I re-download the torrent and point it to a new location?[/quote]
Hmm, not sure, I don’t think so
[quote comment="143651"]Ernesto, may i ask why you just post such a guide for µT and not for Az? Az had that kind of features for quite some time now…
The 8472 smells biased reporting here.[/quote]
I see your point, but it’s impossible for me to cover everything.
You have to understand that I only have limited time to write (it’s still just a hobby).
I’m using uTorrent myself, so this is the easiest for me to write about.
who wants a z drive???!!
Start> Run> subst z: c:\
mwahhaa…
Well, if you personally use it that explains it. But many torrent users consider torrentfreak as a kind of news source (or at least a news aggregator), so you should keep that in mind if you post guides (which are basically endorsements for clients).
ooo, i also didn’t know you could do this. so simple and yet so awesome. thank you for the guide!
Now if we only could auto-label torrents based on their names! Then I would feel all warm inside.
@Rusli, you can do that with the auto categorizer plugin
The 8472: sounds sweet, going to check that out.
8472: Hmm can’t find it around. Are you sure that is for utorrent and not Azereus?
OMG thanks a lot for this. I am an organization freak and these tips are what I have always wanted for my torrenteering!
Thanks for this. I use it 24/7 and never realised I could set it up like this so nice one.
Although I usually have to start spreading the files to all different HDD’s as I run out of space each week until I burn a few Gb!
Cheers
And I am amazed that people don’t even know that you can change the letter for a drive in windows just by going to Computer Management (goto cntrl panel, then cmp management) and selecting disk management, then right click the drive and select…um…change drive letter…
Man, STFU about the drive letters.
This is a good guide. If you download lots of torrents, and aren’t an Azureus fanboy … then this is a handy guide to use a feature that has been neglected by many.
Wonderful pages! Keep up the grat work.d
Thanks so very much for taking your time to create this very useful and informative site. I have learned a lot from your site. Thanks!!9
[quote comment="143643"]So if you check “Append the torrent’s label to directory name,” do you have subfolders for each media type? That is, if I label something as “music,” once it is completed it will go into Z:\downloads\music ? Or are labels just for shits and giggles?[/quote]
Is anyone who answered this or know the answer?? I really want the solution for this problem too. I want to move the completed downloads to different subfolders but still letting them to be seeded.
For me it seems that after completed download they do not move to the corresponding subfolder though i labeled it
LOL – People getting upset and saying Azureus is better are clearly newbies. If you download a file and it has a label it will move when it FINISHES downloading. If you want to do this for your previous downloads – you can move them to the download directory again, label it, then force a hash re-check, although it is quite time consuming. I’m wondering if anyone knows how to change the “data file” that uTorrent uses to keep track of file locations. I just added another couple TB’s and I moved everything to a new drive (Z btw – hahaha), and new torrents work fine, but all the previous ones fail because they can’t be located (obviously). Any input?
[quote comment="143726"]who wants a z drive???!!
Start> Run> subst z: c:\
mwahhaa…[/quote]
HEY G DOG … WAS JUS MESSING WITH MY COMPUTER … HOW DO YOU DELETE IT FROM THERE …
Thanks great guide, btw i just recently moved from azureus to utorrent, and this is very helpful as i didnt no this feature. Later
[quote comment="143731"]Well, if you personally use it that explains it. But many torrent users consider torrentfreak as a kind of news source (or at least a news aggregator), so you should keep that in mind if you post guides (which are basically endorsements for clients).[/quote]
Quick observation: no one gives a shit .
Anyway to do this with Transmission on the Mac?
How come everytime I download the music with the Codecs it still only plays the sound of the movie and not the Picture?????
SOMEBODY PLEASE RESPOND ASAP.!
new to utorrent and this is just what i needed..thanks
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