How to Export/Backup torrent locations (migrations hundreds torrents)

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falena
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2021 6:45 pm

How to Export/Backup torrent locations (migrations hundreds torrents)

Post by falena »

Hi, I've transmission 2.92 on my linux machine, I've a lot of torrents (~900) seeding in different locations and different drives.
I need to migrate all torrents to another machine, I'm able to backup all *.torrent files from config directory but is there a way to save the path of each file/folder that torrents are seeding?
In the new machine I need to add all torrents but their seeding files are in different drives and paths, so I need to save a list of these paths. The plan is to add all torrent files in the new transmission and then set their file locations by selecting groups of torrents, so I can do it in a fast way.
I can't use .resume files because I'm not sure the mounting path of drives will have the same name in the new machine. Is there a better way to do it?
parachuge
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Oct 14, 2021 2:50 am

Re: How to Export/Backup torrent locations (migrations hundreds torrents)

Post by parachuge »

Short answer: I don't think so.

I just went through this headache with ~3000 torrents. How many different locations?
For me it was 4 different hard drives locations and they were fairly easy to figure out from the old info/torrents folder by simply using the date downloaded (I gradually filled up hard drives and moved on).

I had a ton of problems copying the .torrent files directly from one "transmission-daemon/info/torrents" folder to the new one. I thought it was permissions issues but I now think it may be a naming convention thing? I'm not sure. All I know is I had a lot of problems when copying torrents into the info/torrents directory which if I imported via watch-folder went away.

In the end I personally didn't end up using the .resume files at all (this does mean I lost original "Completed On" info from Transmission which I believe is stored in the .resume files but that was ok with me). What I did was: separate each torrent out into 4 different folders depending on location. Change default Transmission location to that, and add in each batch of .torrent files to my watch directory, let it verify, change watch folder, add next batch.

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ANYWAYS... if I were you, starting from scratch, here's what I'd recommend you try:
  • Use some text editor with a mass find & replace function to change all the locations from the .resume files to the new paths on the new computer, make sure you edit the character length to match the new path (see this thread).
  • Copy the new .resume files with new paths to the new machine into the resume folder. Then copy all of the torrents into the watch folder.
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