How does Piolet use mp3 data of files that are not there?

[dudeman456]

I have notice that when I start downloading a song, and try to play it, that piolet has filled the parts it does not have with music near its destination folder, but in two instaces it has gotten music data from mp3s that were previously deleted before, and not even in the same folder.

How does it do that?

[rainbowdemon]

O don't think I understand the question.

[dudeman456]

when I start download a song.

I sometimes right-click it to get preview of it by clicking Play/Preview

and the song plays the parts that it has, and the parts that it does not have it uses another mp3 to fill in the parts it does not have.

What I want to know is how does it fill in the parts it does not have with mp3s that have been deleted, as it happens sometimes.

[Compy]

It almost sounds like youre confused. Afaik it cant just take other parts of another mp3 and throw them into that one, its basically pointless. What youre probably thinking of is the transfer method that the xfers (and preview streams alike) use. You start downloading from one user, and your client searches the network by the hash of the mp3, and downloads parts it doesnt have (OF THE SAME mp3), to your computer from other users. This is called multisource downloading.

Hope this might help

[dudeman456]

What happends when you preview a mp3 that has not finished downloading?

By the way I'm using Version 1.83

[Compy]

Does the mp3 play all the way through?
Usually all clients do is just take whats downloaded, sometimes copies the file to a new file for previewing purposes. Then just plays what has downloaded in the media player.

[dudeman456]

Yes it does, but the interesting thing is that sometimes it uses mp3s that have been previously deleted.

[napho]

Maybe downloads go into a temp folder before they're transferred to your download folder when complete. The preview might be playing not only what you want, but other songs in the temp folder that you deleted before from your download folder. Sometimes a program leaves 2 copies of everything, in the temp AND in the dl folder.

[dudeman456]

Well, I don't know, simply because the songs its been playing are not in a folder Piolet checks, in fact in the last two cases, they were brand new folders, this would lead to believe Piolet searches your computer.

[hasturi]

I believe this can happen on old versions of windows (95/98/ME) where cross user/application security is not really enforced. Basically if an application opens a file and writes to it at various disjoint places the parts not yet written to may contain random data from the disk.

[dudeman456]

That is a very good, theory, but how would it explain how it always is audio?

That makes good sence, as this did not happen, when the folder it downloaded to was local a Win2K, this has started to happend, when I placed the folder on a Win98 network drive.

[hasturi]

That is a very good, theory, but how would it explain how it always is audio?
Most likely there was a lot of audio on the now free disk space. You could verify this by filling up the disk with other files (large movies for example or files with recognizable text) and then removing them again. The new data should show up in partial downloads.

[dudeman456]

I will definaly try this, I will report my results.