Torrents are great, they are the best way to share large files with your friends, or even with people you don't know at all. But surprisingly enough, not many people create torrents when they need to share something. I have "a lot of" friends who know how to download torrents, but when they need to send me their latest 200MB vacation picture collection, they ask me to "get on msn".

It’s not that I have anything against msn (although the file transfer sucks), but why don’t just use BitTorrent? Especially if you want to send something to more than one person, or if you want to share high quality HDTV files, because then you can share the bandwidth.

So how do you do this? Well it’s very simple. Open your favorite BitTorrent client and do the magic trick:

file > create torrent

That’s all? Well almost. All you need to do now is put in the tracker info and tick some boxes. This can differ somewhat from client to client but it all comes down to the same thing.

uTorrent

1. File > Create new Torrent (or CTRL + N)

2. Select the files and or directories

3. Trackers: This is probably the hard part for most people. But it’s pretty easy, just put in one of the popular public trackers. You can use one or more trackers, but in general one is enough.

Here are some good trackers you can use:

http://open.tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce

http://www.torrent-downloads.to:2710/announce

http://denis.stalker.h3q.com:6969/announce

udp://denis.stalker.h3q.com:6969/announce

http://www.sumotracker.com/announce

Put one of these in the tracker box

4. Do NOT tick the private torrent box (unless you’re using a private tracker)

5. Save the torrent and send it to your friends

Bitcomet

1. File > Create Torrent (or CTRL + M)

2. Select the files and or directories

3. Select “enable public DHT network” from the dropdown box

This way you can be your own tracker if the public tracker goes down.

4. Tracker server and DHT node list

Again, This is probably the hard part for most people. But it’s pretty easy, just put in one of the popular public trackers. You can use one or more trackers, but in general one is enough.

Here are some of the most popular trackers at the moment:

http://open.tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce

http://www.torrent-downloads.to:2710/announce

http://denis.stalker.h3q.com:6969/announce

udp://denis.stalker.h3q.com:6969/announce

http://www.sumotracker.com/announce

Put one of these in the tracker box

5. Save the torrent and send it to your friends

Azureus

1. File > New Torrent (or CTRL + N)

2. Tick “use an external tracker”.

And again, This is probably the hard part for most people. But it’s pretty easy, just put in one of the popular public trackers.

Here are some of the most popular trackers at the moment:

http://tracker.prq.to/announce

http://inferno.demonoid.com:3389/announce

http://tracker.bt-chat.com/announce

http://tracker.zerotracker.com:2710/announce

Put one of these in the tracker box

3. Select single file or dicectory, click NEXT and point to the file or directory you want to share, and click NEXT

4. Do NOT tick “private torrent”

5. Do tick “allow decentralized tracking”

6. Save the torrent and send it to your friends

Happy sharing. Note that you don’t need to upload the torrent to a website or a tracker. This means you control who gets the file and who doesn’t, and it won’t be visible to others!.