Unnecessary checking of file after very first allocation of file

[antonsoroko]

For some reason, after first allocation of file BiglyBT also does full check of that file.
Maybe on some powerful device it is fast, so people does not notice this, but on Android TV box (2023, Amlogic S905X4 - which is the "latest" CPU for certified Android TV) + USB HDD exFAT (which is default for portable HDD use case) + big file (e.g. 10 GB) - this takes about 10 minutes. With 30GB file - it takes 30 minutes, which is not usable at all.

Would be nice to disable this check be default on "slow" devices or at least to have an option to manually disable this check. (I tried different "checking" related options - but none helped with this particular case).

Thank you.

[antonsoroko]

Just a note for other users: there is the issue with is inability of exFAT FS to allocate "full" file - which means that it takes a lot of minutes to allocate file in a "incremental" manner. With formatting HDD to "internal" format (which used to be ext4, not sure about now) - this should not be an issue.

[antonsoroko]

enabling "Enable incremental file creation [Required for FAT32 under Linux]" kind of mitigates this issue - since there is no full allocation - thus there is no check after full allocation.
but this still looks like a bug.
what is the point of checking file right after allocating it?

[Dimezis]

I've encountered the same problem.

Incremental file creation does not help though, because if you're downloading a fragment of a file close to its end, it will have to allocate the file at least to that point.
The only real fix was to format the drive as internal, switching to ext4.
With that and "sparse files" it works fast.

[codxt]

I had to wait an hour for Allocating 100 Gb file (.mkv) on exFAT IronWolf Pro 16T hdd. It's prevent defragmentation and better for hdd health.

[antonsoroko]

@phoxerity the easiest solution is to format the drive as "internal", so it will be formatted as ext4 and you will be able to enable "sparse files" option in BiglyBT. this trick works with any bittorrent client.
but "internal" drive is encrypted so you can't attach it to a (Linux) PC or other Android device.

but this also should solve issue with "folder permission needed", iirc.

and unfortunately you can't simply manually format hdd as ext4 without encryption - android ignores such drive.

alternative solution: enable "Enable incremental file creation [Required for FAT32 under Linux]" and enable "sequential download" and disable "prefer first and last piece" (last piece will force full allocation) - this will improve "wait time until start of downloading" so to speak.
but this still will be much slower than "internal" drive. and to immediately play mp4 file usually you need that "last piece" of file.