Problems with Sharing Files--Need Help

[WinstonSmith6079]

I'm a bit torrent newb just starting all at once after years of doing P2P the "old" way, such as DC++. It's all so new and rather confusing to me, becuase it seems so different than the "old" way.

I'm not having any problems leeching (d/ling files), but I don't want to just only leech, I want to u/l some files too.

The files I'm trying to share so far, I didn't d/l from anywhere (they're CD images that I have myself created). I've gotten a program called MakeTorrent (becuase I seemed to be having trouble creating torrents with BitComet [by that, if I can create torrents no prob with BitComet, that's one less prg I gotta have installed]) and have created four torrents and have uploaded them to The Pirate Bay and TorrentSpy, and three of those four to isoHunt (they wouldn't take one of them, which seemed strange to me). I used some URL from The Pirate Bay for the tracking just because it seemed the right thing to do--I'm still hazy on the concept of "tracking", and don't yet know about something I've heard about, "multi-tracking".

Okay, so I've made some torrents and submitted them, with a tracker, to a few sites. I then open the torrents (into the Seed Only window) and set the Task drop-down menus to Seed and Start now. I drag & drop these into the Game fldr in the left ('coz they're games), and see them in the window with little red up-pointing arrows. So am I doing this right (so far)? Are they really u/ling the files from me? (Remember, I'm currently the only one with the files at this time.) I did that Seed, Start now thing a while ago now and it continues to say continuously under the KB/s Up column 0kb/s. In between the Size and KB/s Down columns there's a column that is called just "%". When I started, all four read 100%, but the percantages are counting down. Is that referring to the remaining percentage before it's done seeding? It seems to be taking a long time (I guess--each of the file-sets are between 321MB and 761MB). Is that normal, even though I have a fast inet connection? There are some people trying to get the files (it seems) but I dunno if they're actually getting any of them...though I'm trying. :(

Also, the files are kept on my H:\ drive, but I keep the torrents in BitComet's 'Torrent' fldr on my E:\ drive (where I've installed BitComet). Is that okay to go? Or must the torrents be kept with the files?

Thanks for any help you can offer, as I'm in a bit of a mad-ball of confusion and all new to this and all.

[kluelos]

Bittorrent is utterly unlike what you're used to. The whole concept of "shared" files and "shared" directoriies? Not applicable. Doesn't work that way.

You've created a torrent for material you want to upload, and you've registered/uploaded that torrent file to a tracker. You've done your part, and all that you can do.

Now it's up to others, who will see that torrent on the tracker's associated web site, and maybe decide that they want it. So they'll download the torrent and open it in their bittorrent client, which will contact yours, and begin to download. Until that happens, nothing will occur on your end. Just keep its current status, and sooner or later somebody will decide they want your torrent.

If it's just one person, the download will be very, very slow. Bittorrent doesn't like seeding to just one leecher, and will try very hard to avoid/refuse to do that. Bittorrent expects a lot of leechers, who will share pieces downloaded from the seeder among themselves. That happens when you download too. You're uploading at the same time, albeit at a slower speed, because your connection is slower upstream than down. Everybody's is.

Apart from seeding new torrents, the big thing you can do is to keep torrents you've downloaded active after they've finished, at least until you've uploaded as much as you've downloaded for that torrent (and your ratio gets to 1.0 or better, same thing.)