uTorrent is a torrenting software that can store a log of activities, including downloaded and uploaded files, making recovery of that history essential. While there are a plethora of other contenders for the “leading software for torrents” title and its user base consequently dropped, it still manages to stay afloat. Many users start a torrent and either cancel the P2P (peer-to-peer) transfer, delete it accidentally, or erase the entry following a successful download or upload, thinking they’ll never need it again. Unfortunately, they often regret that decision. That’s where our guide on how to recover the uTorrent history can help.
1. Look inside uTorrent’s ApplicationData folder on Windows
Some users have hundreds, even thousands of torrents transferring data at times. It’s also common for someone to either shut their computer down or experience a system crash while data transfers. For those reasons, uTorrent saves session data, so they can continue where they left off after loading the software. Additionally, it saves a duplicate of every torrent you load, whether from a file or a magnet link. With that said, there are two distinct methods to recover history from uTorrent:
1. Check within uTorrent’s AppData folder
While on the topic of duplicate torrents, we want either remind or inform you that uTorrent creates a backup of every torrent you open. These files will usually be an exact copy of the torrent name on the list, and end with a .torrent file extension. If you’re not sure what we’re referring to, it’s likely these files are in the default location on Windows: C:\Users\<computer username>\AppData\Roaming\uTorrent\
If you can’t see one of these folders, stopping you from proceeding, that means it’s hidden. You will need to:
- Open Start and search for “hidden”.
- Click the Show settings link next to “Change settings to show hidden and system files.”
- Put the dot inside the circle in front of Show hidden files, folders, and drives.
Note. You can also open Run, then enter %appdata%/Roaming/uTorrent or %appdata%/uTorrent to open the folder.
If .torrent files are still nowhere to be found, there’s a chance someone selected a different folder. To check, do this:
- Click the Options entry in the top menu of uTorrent.
- Select Preferences.
- Choose the Directories option in the left sidebar.
- Find the option titled “Location of torrents” and pay attention to the file path under Store .torrents in.
- Optionally, click the … button to open the actual folder or copy the file path.
Regardless of the data path, once you find the files, you can simply double-click the file to open it in uTorrent and start/resume a download.
2. Delete and regenerate the resume.dat file
The method above is pivotal if you want to revisit several torrents you interacted with in the past. It’s also key if you recently deleted a file and need to start downloading it again without searching on torrent sites. But what if you meticulously kept a collection under “Torrents” in the left sidebar that includes hundreds, if not thousands of torrents? Though possible, it’s inefficient to go one by one. Thankfully, uTorrent stores the entire collection of torrents on a list in a file called “resume.dat”. Even better, you can find it inside the same folder we mentioned above. Here’s the procedure afterward:
- Close uTorrent and make sure it’s closed within Task Manager.
- Rename the resume.dat file to anything except resume-old.dat, for example, “resume-newest.dat”.
- The step above steps from the fact this torrenting program, when it detects changes, updates the former file (“resume.dat”) and renames the previous “resume.dat” file to “resume-old.dat” automatically. Therefore, it makes sense to create a manual duplicate of the newest session (or the entire uTorrent folder, unless it’s large.
- With preparation done, you can now rename the resume-old.dat file to resume.dat.
- Launch uTorrent, and you should have managed to recover the entire history.
Note. Some users propose employing encoding such as Bencode if you can notice additional files such as “resume.dat.1627198044.bad”. After repeating step 1, follow step 3 on that newly encoded file. We can’t vouch for or demonstrate this technique, but if you try it, use your best judgment and make backups.
2. Find uTorrent history on Mac in the Application Support folder
The instructions above applied to Windows, but those folders don’t exist on Mac. Luckily, the files are nearly identical, and you can follow all the aforementioned steps, including finding a custom location. The crucial difference is that the default uTorrent folder is, by default, inside ~/Library/Application Support. The easiest way to get there is to open the Finder, then either choose Go To Folder or press Command + Shift + G on your keyboard. Enter the location above and select Go.
3. Use data recovery software to recover uTorrent history
Both procedures so far work only when data loss happened to uTorrent, but the software itself is still working, and the operating system is in good shape. But what if you uninstalled uTorrent or suffered data loss such as partition formatting? That’s where data retrieval software for Windows and data rescue Mac software come into play. Since files are not erased immediately (instead, addresses the computer uses to locate them are), there’s a chance to not only find uTorrent history but the files you downloaded previously. To give you an idea of how this works, we’ll use EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, even though we’re unaffiliated. Here’s what to do afterward
- After downloading and installing, open EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard on Mac or Windows.
- Select PC Recovery in the left sidebar.
- Choose the partition where the history is located. We’ll pick “C:/” to go in line with the default file path.
- Select Scan below the partition icon.
- Give the scan time to finish. When it does, you can go through files based on type and location, or even use the “Search files or folders” field to find a particular piece of history or the old versions of the “resume.dat” file.
- After putting a checkmark in front of those you want to restore, click on Recover and select a location on your computer.
