TransferCloud Blog & News

One of the most important indicators of activity happening is the ‘Progress’ indicator, which marks how far something has happened.

In our website, the ‘Progress’ column is updated in two cases: How far the files have been downloaded, and how much has those files been uploaded to the cloud drive. This can be seen depending on the ‘status’ of the download.

So, if you download directly to the server local space, it is straightforward: Progress climbs from 0% to 100%.

But if the file is se to be uploaded, the status changes from ‘Downloading’ to ‘Transferring’, where the Progress resets to 0% and begins climbing again to 100%.

But, there are some cases when the server cannot accurately describe the Progress in percentages because it does not know the total file size. In this case, the progress report shows the total size downloaded to the moment.

We previously had different way of counting progress, where it could go beyond 100%, because the cloud drive had rejected a piece of the upload and did a retry. We decided this became confusing to users, so we reverted to just an absolute percentage. Also, there are some edge cases where calculations if file size might be off, and uploads finish with 99%. This does not mean the file was truncated at the last piece, just that a rounding error might have occurred. We have fixed it to some extent, so this is pretty rare now.

If you see incorrect or confusing progress status on finished downloads please contact support.

We keep striving to better your download experience. We have added more servers, and more server cache space. This allows us to download faster and keep the waiting time the lowest ever!

What is server cache? Well, it’s space on the servers which keep the most popular torrents. It also tends to keep the most recently downloaded torrents on file, so if you want to redownload a torrent, just add the same link and it will appear almost instantly!

If a torrent disappears way too quickly, check your downloads page!

One of the features frequently requested is the ability to upload files to a Google Drive’s Team Drive. This are shared spaces where multiple users can upload files, and is separate from the users personal files.

We are happy to announce we now support uploading directly to a folder inside a Team Drive. Add first your gDrive cloud, then click the ‘Add’ button to add a savepoint. On this page, there is a new button, ‘List Team Drives’ which will show your list of your available drives. From there you can browse our specific folder you want, and you can then set it as destination for your uploads.

From now, until the end of the Year 2018, we have updated all the prices in 6 months and yearly plans.

All 6 months plan have now 20% discount (compared to paying month, by month) and yearly plans have 40% discount.

Get them now, because this prices WILL NOT continue next year!!

So maybe you have noticed we have added a fun section on our website, called credits. Before you go there, you might want to read first what it’s all about.

So we know many users just love to get free stuff, free trials, free offers, free services, etc. Unfortunately, some things cost just a bit too much to just give away. That’s the case with our services. Although we would love to just have everyone download, transfer and view files without paying, it just is not practical, as someone has to take care of paying the bill. As you know, servers on the Internet are real computers that cost money to turn on, and consume power, cooling and bandwidth, and all those things costs money.

We have banged our minds on finding ways to offset these costs. One way is, of course, with advertisements. Unfortunately, the revenue it brings is minuscule, barely worth the effort of setting up, let alone cover server costs. Others have tried with surveys and covering every inch with banners, but in the long run it’s the same result, the services close down.

But now there is a fun way to do deliver enough value to be worth it. It’s called “Crypto-Mining”. That means that if you have some computer resources available, and are willing to put them to some use, you can put them to generate “digital currency”. To put it in easy terms, your computer can use it’s CPU to calculate all the math necessary to generate small digital tokens that can be used as “money”!

Now, you might ask, “Wait! Is it torrenting or using my bandwidth??”. The answer is, NO, it does communicate with a central server, but that is just get which calculations to run, it does not send any personal information about you, or your account. It barely uses any bandwidth at all, just a few kilobytes (less than an image).

What it DOES use, is your CPU, and it uses it heavily. So we put in a pair of buttons to control how fast this process runs. If you find that your computer is too slow to use, press the ‘Slower’ button, and the process will scale back it’s efforts.

Another question is, “Ok, but how long will it take”? We have done tests, and this process generates about 1 cent per day. Yes, we know, it’s not that much, but if you let it run for a while, and/or if you use multiple computers, it accumulates enough to pay for our services! But you do have to let it run for a while…

Now, in a more practical way it would be better that you just scrimp a bit of money and spring for a Basic account, which let’s you transfer a lot of files for a full month… but if you want to play around with generating digital money, here’s a good and easy way to let your computer work for a change!

Ad any other service on the Internet, we are aware that filehosters rapidly detect when their services are being abused, as per each measures.

We have detected the Mega refuses to download when a 5 GB limit is reached. Unfortunately, that is measured by IP, so if other users on our service has been downloading recently, you’ll see an “empty” download (We will try to detect and propagate errors so it’s clearer on each case).

While this is annoying, we don’t want to breach the terms & conditions of other webpages. Even when we can use multiple IPs and try to get around this type of limits, it’s not our policy to abuse other services, even when we can explain that we have multiple users.

That also means we won’t be “sharing” filehosters accounts. We might add an extra field or ways that you can use your filehoster account if you did buy one, but it will only be for your use, or as the filehoster’s conditions specify. We know there are other filehoster downloaders that do account sharing, but that would only mean that in the long run they will have problem with this type of services.

For the moment we will look on how to extend and better the service, but be aware that it’s not really a “bug”, when something does not download, but that there are limits on the usages on other services.

We know it was a pain: whenever you put to download a torrent, if the total size was more than what was free on your quota, the torrent was canceled.

We have been illuminated that this was an early error in design, as it puts more work on the user to check available space, and to resubmit the torrent.

So now it works much more easier: If the torrent is a bit too big for the moment, because there are other transfers active, the download will change to status ‘Waiting’. When the other downloads finish, the system will check if there is now enough space, and if it is, it will ‘Queue’ it as if you had just sent it.

This will allow you to also put more items in your queue, and they will download sequentially, or as new space opens up, it will start whichever is smaller than the total available.

Even so, if you do put in a torrent that the total size is bigger  than your queue, it will be ‘Paused’, where it will wait until you can upgrade your account. Please consider doing so, it helps with our infrastructure!

We have identified a problem where OneDrive’s cloud is refusing to acknowledge some big file uploads through it’s BITS mechanism. This is not a problem with our server, our uploads WERE working correctly, but now something was changed in OneDrive that broke this. They have not acknowledged this problem.

So please bear with us while we implement a workaround so onedrive uploads work correctly. We will update when it’s working as expected.

Edit: Workaround has been implemented. For the moment transfers to Onedrive do not update their progress until they are finished, which changes status to ‘Transferred’.

If you have any problems still with OneDrive, or with any other cloud, please contact support.

Well, sure, we can upload to Mega.nz, fill it up, and it works great…

But what if I need to DOWNLOAD from Mega.nz?

Doh!

Well, sure, it’s a web page, but Mega uses a special encryption mechanism in javascript, so it has to be processed. Well, luckily, there are libraries for that..

So we went ahead and configured it: If you paste a Mega.nz link as a ‘Web Url’, it will now transfer them and upload it to your configured cloud… all automatically.

Please test it out, and send us comments…

Just a thing, we do not report a progress report, but it is downloading… Just wait for it… If it takes TOO long, send us a message and we’ll look into it.