Since few years, I did notice that porn uses too much space on my disk. As I did subscribe to OnlyFans and could use my programming skills to circumvent DRM, I thought a good idea was to not only download for me that content but also share with the gay community on a torrent site. Why? Because internet remembers! Enter: gaytor.rent moderation!
Yesterday one of my recent torrents did disappear, so I asked for help and went to the forum. I was told it is because the padding files. What are those padding files? I have seen them in qBittorrent client, which I routinely use for few years. But moderator did complain they are and they increase the torrent size. So I asked Google: Why in qBittorrent I produce hybrid torrents and user using other client sometimes sees padding files and sometimes not? Explain are padding files increasing torrent size or not?
This the answer:
You are producing hybrid torrents in qBittorrent because the "Optimize alignment" option is enabled in the Torrent Creator, often combined with selecting both V1 and V2 formats. Hybrid torrents create ".pad" files to ensure each file starts at the beginning of a new piece, enhancing compatibility with modern v2 clients while maintaining a v1 swarm for older ones.
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Why Padding Files Appear and Disappear
Padding files are essentially tiny, invisible, or ignored files placed between real data files to ensure they align properly with piece boundaries.
Why you see them: When you, or others, use a client that supports "padding file" metadata (like modern qBittorrent, libtorrent-based clients, or updated uTorrent), the client reads the metadata and hides these files from the file list, as they are meant to be invisible.
Why they disappear: The client understands they are just empty space for alignment.
Why some users see them: Users running very old clients or clients that do not strictly adhere to BitTorrent Enhancement Proposals (BEP 47 - Padding Files) will see these files as if they are part of the actual content.
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Do Padding Files Increase Torrent Size?
Yes, technically padding files increase the total size of the torrent on disk, but not in the way you might think.
Actual Data vs. Disk Space: Padding files add empty data (null bytes) to the end of files to fill up the remaining space in a "piece" (e.g., if a file ends in the middle of a 2MB piece, 1MB of padding is added).
Small Impact: For most torrents, this is negligible.
High Impact Scenarios: If you are sharing a folder with thousands of tiny files, and each one is padded to meet a large piece size (e.g., 4MB or 8MB), the total size of the torrent on disk can become significantly larger than the actual files
I did ask Copilot too:
Why do some users see padding files and others don’t?
This happens because padding files are part of the metadata of a V2 or Hybrid torrent, but different clients display them differently.
️ 1. qBittorrent always shows padding files in the file tree
qBittorrent exposes the internal structure of the torrent, so it shows:
_____padding_file_0
_____padding_file_1
etc.
Even though they are:
not downloaded,
not stored on disk,
not part of the real data.
️ 2. Some clients hide padding files automatically
Clients like Transmission, Deluge, BiglyBT, and some older clients:
hide padding files,
merge them into the internal structure,
or show them only in advanced mode.
So the same torrent may look different depending on the client.
️ 3. Some clients don’t support V2 fully
If a client only supports V1:
It ignores the V2 part of the hybrid torrent.
Padding files exist only in the V2 structure.
Therefore, V1‑only clients never show padding files.
This is the most common reason for the inconsistency you’re seeing.
Do padding files increase the torrent size?
️ They increase the metadata size
Padding files appear in the .torrent file’s metadata.
This makes the .torrent file slightly larger.
Usually:
+1–50 KB for small torrents
+100–500 KB for large multi‑file torrents
They do NOT increase the downloaded data size
Padding files are:
automatically marked “Do Not Download”
not transferred over the network
not stored on disk
not part of the payload
So the actual data downloaded = unchanged.
They do NOT increase the size of the final files
Your real files remain exactly the same size.
So, because I have used DEFAULT option of qBittorrent my few years of work are gone now.
Why this is inadequate?
- Each OnlyFans subscription costs from 10 to 20 USD, on average it is 15 USD, thus I have paid for 60 deleted torrents 900$ + 21% VAT. This the money I lost, because for older files I have probably no backup. This also is the value, which the community of this torrent site did loose
- Most of these files were DRM protected, I had to programme a script for each site to decypher and download the content, thus a lot of my time and devotion went for nothing
- Neither the guide for an uploader, not other manuals on the site do mention any problem with padding files, so how should I know desires of moderators?
Moderators never have contacted me to solve the issue if it was present, they just deleted perfectly working torrents without giving any chance to download the content and reupload it in a reasonable time frame.
I wonder if people who moderate have ever been subscribed to OF, have they ever downloaded and shared paid content with community. Most importantly I wonder if uploaders are any respected here.