Make the "Preallocate" option behave in a sane manner

[birdie-github]

When this option is enabled, qBittorrent preallocates files for all torrents regardless their state.

Please, make qBittorrent preallocate space only for files which have just been started downloading, e.g. we have a torrent with many files, a torrent client doesn't receive the chunks pertaining to all the files simultaneously - it happens gradually over time.

So, only we have received a chunk for a file A, then preallocate file A, otherwise this file should not be created at all.

[sledgehammer999]

Please clarify. Do you mean that qbt should preallocate torrents that are added after this and not the already downloading ones? Or are you telling me that if a torrent has downloaded one file in sparse mode, you change to preallocate it should only preallocate the rest of the files of that torrent?

[birdie-github]

OK, here's what we have now:

I have this option disabled and I have 50 paused (never started) torrents (not a single file downloaded). Whenever I enable this option qbt pre-allocates all the files belonging to these torrents even though I haven't even started them.

What I want to see is that qbt only pre-allocates files which 1) belong to running torrents and 2) only if a certain file has received at least one chunk from the Internet.

2 - is not strictly necessary but desired.

[birdie-github]

OK, here's what I've found out.

storage_mode is set globally on torrent initiation and that's not right for the reasons mentioned above. This is a feature request and it should be filed at the libtorrent bug tracker.

[alfrix]

duplicate of #147

[mzso]

By the way, can sparse file allocation be disabled?

[sledgehammer999]

By the way, can sparse file allocation be disabled?

Enable preallocation in the options.

[ghost]

This is the current behaviour in latest versions.