So I downloaded this Pre-Installed game from a respected torrent site. But whenever I run the game, the bottom 5 files get updated/changed apparently. And this torrent goes to the error section in Qbittorrent. Now I have to delete the exe and other small files from my folder and redownload them again through this torrent else this torrent wouldn’t seed.
So I would not be able to seed those bottom 5 files unless I have a completely fresh install of the game ? and that means, I either have to unselect those bottom 5 files from my torrent client or create a copy of the game in another Folder so the exe and other python files don’t get updated as I play the game ?
Correct, you need to keep a pristine copy in your torrent folder and make a copy elsewhere.
A copy-on-write (CoW) filesystem like btrfs would be useful here. The “copy” would just be be shallow. The files exist in the new location but their contents are not copied, until a file in the new location is modified. And even then, not the whole contents of the file are duplicated. A “copy” like this would effectively only be a few kilo / mega bytes big rather than gigs
Sure ok. These filesystems are certainly superior in the ways you’ve described, but unless you were already considering changing to an fs like that, it’s probably not an appropriate solution to this simple problem.
Fair, but it’s something painless do to next time someone might be installing a new system or migrating disks. Until not too long ago I didn’t know about these kind of options, so just knowing is a good first step even without further action
Yeah I agree with you here, your comment definitely has helped me finally make the switch (mentally, at least) to btrfs. I was a slow hold-out on ext4, but my next install I’ll go the butter route.
what can I search on the internet to do what you describe?
btrfs
Is this similar to hardlinking and insta move cause I use Windows ?
I use a cross-seed program that does something similar, it creates a copy of files without it taking twice the space on the disk.
So should I just create another folder and hardlink the game and lib folder there, and copy the rest of the small files into that folder, so the original torrent directory is undisturbed whenever I open the exe in the newly created folder ?
No. Hardlinks and CoW filesystems are different things.
I don’t know much about hardlinks on windows, but hardlinks usually are two different inodes pointing to the same file. This means, for the user, a single file appears duplicated, but without using any extra space. However, both files are really the same one, so if you modify one, the other one also gets modified.
CoW filesystems, on the other hand, are a bit more complex. When you store a file, its contents get first stored, and then a file references them. When you copy the file, a copy of the reference is made, and there is no need to copy the content, because it’s already there. If you modify one of the copies, the difference between them gets stored (the modified content), but other parts of the file (or files in a folder) that don’t get modified are not duplicated.