partial seeding improves your ratio - a myth

[Polarbear]

many people think partial seeding is a good way to improve your ratio. let me tell you why i think this is wrong.

let's pretend you grab one rar of a popular xvid and seed it. let's also pretend the torrent gets 20 snatches after you start to seed:

20 x 14mb = 280mb upload - 14mb = 266mb buffer, file ratio 20.0

let's now pretend you donwload the whole movie.

20 x 700mb = 14gb upload - 700mb = 13,3gb buffer, file ratio 20.0

the ratio improvement is exactly the same. it doesn't matter wether you grab only a part of the torrent or the whole thing. the key factor is the total number of snatches you get.

when you download the whole movie you can:

a.) watch it (which is the purpose of downloading movies in the first place)
b.) get a much higher buffer!

please don't tell me that you save harddisk space. if you can't afford 700mb saved to your hd, get a bigger one (they're cheap) or delete some files.

the only case where partial downloading makes sense is, if there's a pack and you only want a portion of the content.

[apextwin146]

wat if the 20 snatches are by 20 bit-tards who believe in downloading a single rar ....

EDIT :- Anyways i thght that partial seeding was when there was like a very big movie pack( <25gb) and you wanted just some movies so u just download them and seed them ...

[droste]

If you have a slow connection, like me, then partial seeding is better.
It takes quite a lot of time to leech a 700mb movie with 0.25mbit/0.25mbit.
The others snatchers who will jump on the file after me will pass me quite fast and I will be the one who leeches from them. Always when I grab a movie it will only leech, not seed at all....

[soulreaper]

LOL

Partial seeding is probably the only/best way for newbies to increase their ratio esp for the latest torrents(esp on bitmetv with RSS/IRC feeds enabled).

Let's say you dl 14-20mb of the latest 172 mb torrent the second it's released. You'd be able to upload about 150-250 mb in a matter of a few hours with an upspeed of 30-40 KB/s. You can continue to partially seed that torrent to feed your ratio buffer. This is especially helpful for users with bad speeds.

However,If I choose to dl the entire 172 mb, by the time I finished dlding it there would be so many seeders that I'd be seeding back about 20-30 mb.

In conclusion, partial seeding works like a charm for me(esp on bmtv) and it's certainly not a myth.

[Raban]

partial seeding work fine the only real problem with it is getting in trouble with staff... to keep in the best standing on sites you don't want any confusion... nor do you want them to suspect you of cheating or scamming or whatnot... partial seeding leads to account stats and a download history that doesn't really match up.

personally i'd rather not risk losing an account over it.

[ovisan]

They allow it on TL
I asked the staff, they said its okay to partial-seed to increase my ratio but not too much...

[soulreaper]

Partial seeding is not only allowed,its encouraged!

[MadIrish]

many people think partial seeding is a good way to improve your ratio. let me tell you why i think this is wrong.

let's pretend you grab one rar of a popular xvid and seed it. let's also pretend you get 20 snatches after you start to seed:

20 x 14mb = 280mb upload - 14mb = 266mb buffer, file ratio 20.0

let's now pretend you donwload the whole movie.

20 x 700mb = 14gb upload - 700mb = 13,3gb buffer, file ratio 20.0

the ratio improvement is exactly the same. it doesn't matter wether you grab only a part of the torrent or the whole thing. the key factor is the total number of snatches you get.

when you download the whole movie you can:

a.) watch it (which is the purpose of downloading movies in the first place)
b.) get a much higher buffer!

please don't tell me that you save harddisk space. if you can't afford 700mb saved to your hd, get a bigger one (they're cheap) or delete some files.

the only case where partial downloading makes sense is, if there's a pack and you only want a portion of the content.

Agree with the sentiment generally, but there is a flaw in your maths dude. Unless using a seedbox or something (in which case I can't see someone needing to p.seed anyway), its going to be an awful lot easier for someone on a weak home connection to upload 20 x 14mb than it will be 20 x 700mb. It takes a hell of a lot longer, and the seed - leech ratio will be increasing exponentially as you go, making it infinitely harder to continue maxing your upload.

Before I changed isp a year or so ago, what with throttling and with the damn slow top rate, I could only u/l a max of ~1gb/day no matter what. Were I to have partial seeded I could have gradually attained a better ratio on the sites I was using...... however, I didn't, I just downloaded only what I knew I had the b/w to seed back, and always kept a positive ratio anyway (including on some sites supposedly among the hardest to seed on).

The real problem with partial seeding (on anything other than packs) is that its simply lame. Firstly, you're downloading something you can't actually watch/listen to, as you point out, which is silly. Secondly, it distorts the numbers in a swarm, making it appear like there's leeches when there aren't. Anyone who says they can't maintain a ratio without it is just wrong, they just need to stop downloading so much and start seeding longer.

Also, what is it with "buffering" accounts anyway. I mean, seriously, why? The ideal ratio for a user to have on a site is surely 1.05? On sites where I have a ratio significantly more than that because of FL, bonuses, or just natural seeding for a long time, I deliberately leave some torrents for days, weeks even before leeching them so that others who might need the u/l more can get it. Then I seed the files for weeks myself, keeping them alive and knowing that my b/w won't be too saturated by having tons active.

The only justification for deliberately building huge buffers that I can see are (a) account trading (excessively lame), (b) e-penis (even more lame), or (c) because you want to h&r later (the most lame).

Partial seeding is not only allowed,its encouraged!

Not on all sites.... its explicitly against the rules on TorrentBytes

[TP635]

I think you make a bad assumption.
20 x 14mb = 280mb upload - 14mb = 266mb buffer, file ratio 20.0
is a reasonable assumption.

But
20 x 700mb = 14gb upload - 700mb = 13,3gb buffer, file ratio 20.0,
is just way off, even if the seeding time is double this may not happen.

[IdolEyes787]

I fully appreciate that some people have a hard time maintaining ratio on certain sites but in my opinion partial seeding is just another way of cheating.
Trackers need to look at changing their policies so people don't have to resort to playing dirty.