Newbie's guide to Torrents

GI've had hundreds of my friends asking me how I download stuff from the net or how these things called torrents work. So here goes:

How to download stuff from the net using torrents!

I won't get into the technicalities about what torrents really are for the benefit of the layman. So... Torrents are just a simple peer-to-peer file sharing protocol. Let me explain;

When you want to download a certain file from the net, say the movie 6thSense.avi, what you do first is search for it's torrent(.torrent) file. This file (which would be around 200-500kb depening the file you wish to download) is basically just an index that lets ur Torrent-Client know, which part of the file you should download from which user on the net. Torrents make you download "parts" of a single file from various users and not necessarily just a single file from an individual user. At the end of the entire download, you have one single file; 6thsense.avi for viewing.



Lets get going.

1. Get a torrent client!

There are several clients available on the net, but I recommend utorrent. It's light and fast.
Download the client(214kb) HERE.
Or head to http://www.utorrent.com/download.php and download uTorrent 1.7.7 Stable.
Run the setup and head on to the next step.


2. Get a torrent!
Now lets just say you want to download the entire album from the movie Jodha Akbar.
You've got to look for a torrent for the album. For that, you head on to any indexing website. These sites are basically just a search engine for all the various .torrent files available on the net.
isoHunt.com ThePirateBay.com mininova.org torrentz.com are a few of them.
I recommend torrentz.com .
Enter your search keywords in the text field ("Jodha Akbar" in this case)
On hitting "Search torrent" you get a whole list of torrents pertaining to the keywords you entered. Choose the appropriate one depending on the file you want.

Always prefer those torrents which have a large no. of peers(no. in green) since this means this torrent has a larger list of users sharing that file, which means better availabilty of the file and hence better download speeds.

Next choose anyone ofthe download locations. It doesn't matter which one. I chose mininova.org .

Here, you get to view the entire contents of the download. You get a detailed list of files that would be downloaded by the torrent. (Incase you wish to download only some of those files and not all, don't go looking for another torrent. You can selectively download only the files that you want to. I'll explain that later.)

Click on one of the download locations and then the download link that appears on your screen.

Save the file to your desktop.


3. Start downloading!

Once the torrent is saved to your desktop simply double click it to start downloading.
A window pops up with a detailed list of the files contained in the torrent. Here you get to choose which files you wish to/not to download. Just uncheck the boxes for the files you wish not to download. (I've unchecked the album-art images since I don't want to download them).
Hit ok, and your done. The download begins right away.


I'll explain what the various columns are:
Name: The name of the file your downloading.
Size: The file size.
Done: Percent of download completed/remaining.
Status: Lets you know if the download is stopped/running/paused.
Seeds: Seeds are the no. of users who are sharing the file on the net.
Downspeed: The speed you are downloading at.
ETA: Estimated time remaining for the file to complete downloading.

On completing the download, browse to your Download directory (whereever you've downloaded the file) which is MyDocuments->Downloads by default. Your file should be available there!

Your done!

Now, there are certain precautions you should know about. Do read on.
Precautions:
1. Torrents aren't completely legal (duhh). So "take care".
2. Since they're illegal, indexing websites often have pornographic material as advertisements.
3. If you've got a limited internet plan, or you've got Dial-up, I recommend you not to use torrents. You are charged not only for download but also upload traffic and torrents involve a lot of uploading too.

There are ways to speed up your download speed which involves port-forwarding etc. but I won't get into that in this guide. This one is for newbies!

Thats it! I haven't been very technical in explaining things I hope.
Please do leave your feedback, it would be most appreciated.