We want to share a large file with friends and relatives but we don't want to waste time uploading it to a cloud service or hosting service "> qBittorrent is an excellent BitTorrent file management program on PC and also provides the tools to create your own private torrents, to be shared only with a select few or with selected people. We also talked about it in our article on Alternative programs to download Torrents . Activate the personal track server
In order to create your own private torrent, we must first activate the track server (server tracker) on our qBittorrent client and forward its port to the router (port forwarding). Then open the program, click on the gear-shaped button at the top or go to Tools -> Options, press on the Advanced menu and scroll the items until you find the item Enable integrated track server, which we will have to activate with a check mark .
Let's mark the port number in the Integrated track server port entry (default is 9000 ), then press down on Apply and OK .
Now we will have to proceed with the forwarding of the correct port inside our modem or router for Internet access: we obtain the IP of the PC in use from the network settings, open any web browser and type, in the address bar, the access IP for the router configuration panel . After successful access, we look for the menu Port Forwarding, Virtual Server, NAT Forwarding, Configure ports or similar items and configure the forwarding of the port of the trace server, entering as IP the IP address of the computer where qBittorrent is running, as port 9000 (or set in the program) and as TCP and UDP protocols .
After this configuration, we carry out a check on the correct opening of the door from the Open Port Check Tool website.
Create the private torrent
Once the trace server is activated, we can move on to creating our own torrent; open qBittorrent again, click on Tools at the top and click on Create a torrent .
We insert the path of the file or folder to be shared using the Select file or Select folder buttons at the top right, we put the check mark on the Private Torrent items (it will not be shared in the DHT network), Start immediately seed and Optimize alignment and insert all inside the URL tracker field the following string:
// [IPaddress]: [portnumber] / announce
Instead of [IPaddress] we will have to enter our public IP of the Internet connection (obtainable from here) and instead of [portnumber] we will have to enter the port of the trace server configured a little while ago (basic 9000).
At the end of the configuration, press the Create torrent button at the bottom and choose a name and a path to save the file with the .torrent extension. Now the torrent is ready and qBittorrent will automatically position itself in seed to supply the file to anyone requesting our private torrent.
To create a magnet link, just right-click on the private torrent, loaded inside the qBittorrent interface, and click on Copy magnet link .
Share the private torrent file
Once our private torrent has been created, all we have to do is leave qBittorrent and the PC on which it is installed turned on and provide our friends, colleagues, relatives or anyone we want with a copy of the .torrent file or share the magnet link created just now.For the download they can use both qBittorrent and any other compatible client, such as uTorrent.
The download will start automatically after a few minutes and, whoever finishes downloading the file, will in turn become a new seed, able to increase the download speed to any new user who starts the private torrent.
The private torrent is not visible to other BitTorrent users who do not have the links or the magnet; to increase security when we share a large file via private torrent, we recommend that you encrypt the torrent in a password-protected archive, as visible in our guide on How to encrypt files on PC and smartphone .
Conclusions
Creating and sharing a private torrent can be a very good alternative to sharing via cloud or on massive file sharing services, since it is respectful of our privacy, we have a good form of control on file sharing and we can protect its content by adding the file private torrent to a compressed archive (indispensable when we share sensitive or risky data via torrent).If we don't know in detail how torrents work, just read our in-depth analysis How torrent download works, how to download and how many problems to find all the answers.
To download torrents on our Android smartphone, we recommend you read our guide to The best apps to download torrent files from Android .
If, on the other hand, we wanted to download torrents without leaving the PC on, we can read our guide on how to download torrents without keeping the PC on: all the alternatives .
