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I thought that using magnet links for torrents precluded me from saving torrent files to hard drive.

But it appears there's a folder - C:\Users\homedir\Appdata\Roaming\uTorrent that contains all torrent files which i didnt download (i used magnet links)

What does it mean? Why did it save these torrent files (despite me using magnet links)?

What does this "Roaming" mean?

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2 Answers 2

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1) uTorrent 1.8.x does not ask for target path when downloading from magnet link. It always downloads to %APPDATA%\uTorrent.

2) AppData is split to Local and Roaming. When you are in corporate environment (have domain controller) and log in to various computers using the same logon credentials, Roaming AppData is syncronized across all of them via domain controller, and Local AppData isn't syncronized.

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  • 2) Thanks! It's actually split to Local, Roaming and LocalLow. What's LocalLow??
    – DrStrangeLove
    Mar 28, 2013 at 15:12
  • LocalNow is data that is able (but not required, just allowed) to be wiped upon logoff and the program that stored the data there won't care. Think of it as another type of user specific temp folder.
    – Scott Chamberlain
    Mar 28, 2013 at 15:28
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You have got the concept of roles of torrent files and magnet URI wrong. A couple of Wikipedia quotes for you.

Torrent file

To share a file or group of files, a peer first creates a small file called a "torrent" (e.g. MyFile.torrent). This file contains metadata (e.g. video, audio, image, application, text) about the files to be shared and about the tracker, the computer that coordinates the file distribution. Peers that want to download the file must first obtain a torrent file for it and connect to the specified tracker, which tells them from which other peers to download the pieces of the file.

Magnet URI

The Magnet URI scheme is a de facto standard (instead of an open standard) defining a URI scheme for Magnet links, which mainly refer to resources available for download via peer-to-peer networks. Such a link typically identifies a file not by location, but by content—more precisely, by the content's cryptographic hash value.

Basically, the torrent files includes all the necessary info about the shared files to download via the BitTorrent protocol. You can't download any files shared via torrents without these metadata. Magnet URI on other hand does contain any data within, simply encoding a name for the application to seek from peers, in this case the torrent in question. So if you have a magnet URI and no peer with the torrent it refers to, you will never get the files it shares. You will notice (specially if you have a slow connection) that μTorrent mentions "downloading metadata" when you open a Magnet URI. That is downloading the torrent itself from the peers already holding it. If you don't find any peers, you won't even reach this step.

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