Piece has failed hash check?

Question

Hi I was wondering what this is/means. I'm not a wiz at torrents, but I believe it means that the data was corrupt and it was going to get it elsewhere. (I'm not sure that is correct though) and so far I have gotten 16 of these messages on one torrent and its 4.4% downloaded. And there is also a "Banned -such and such-" message. That was the person sending corrupt things? I was also wondering if the torrent was any good, or if I would be better off trying to find it elsewhere? Or if this is just normal too. (I'm using uTorrent)

Answer 1

The piece failing the hash check means that the data sent to you does not match up with the torrent.

A torrent allows only specific data to be transferred. (this helps to keep malware out as someone cannot add malware to an existing clean torrent).

That many hash fails is not normal.  It is likely that some anti-P2P group is polluting that torrent.  It would be better to find a different torrent that has comments indicating that it is running well.

The banned message is probably due to the fact that uTorrent will ban an IP that sends you  bad data more than a few times.  

Not to do with this issue, but you might want to check this guide for setting uTorrent up for best speeds:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/...