What is the difference between “Force Start” and “Start” in BitTorrent?

Question

My BitTorrent download has been stuck at 99.8% for five hours. The bar is green so I have no idea what's going on.

If I pause it and "Force Start" it again there is still no progress.

What is the availability of your file? I suspect that nobody has a full copy, which is why yours is stuck at 99.8%.
@Brad wow do you mean the seed is the availability of my file? Because it is currently 0 (0). how do i switch area to search for peers with the file?
welcome to peer-to-peer :) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

slhck · Answer 1 · 2011-08-10 19:06:00Z

Force start will force a download even if you have more downloads going then you enabled at once. For example, if you set a max download limit of 3 torrents, and have 5 all set to "Start", only 3 will run at once. However, if you force-start one of them, then 4 will run.
Pause doesn't kill your connections, it just (severely) limits your transfer speed. It keeps the connection open between peers/seeders (and the tracker), so you can (almost) instantly resume downloading.
Stop closes your connection between you, any peers/seeders, and the tracker.

It also means that if you have automatic stop-after-seeding-some-percentage configured, then it will continue seeding regardless of this setting.
ok so you are saying if i have unlimited max downloads, Force Start and Start is never going to be any different from the other (and the download speed will not be affected whatsoever)?
Force start will also start a torrent that is idle (queued) due to no peers.

1 Answer