Name: getting-data-from-other-seedboxes

Last reviewed by: Clipper, April 2026

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Getting data from other seedboxes

A lot of people change their seedbox provider at some point and would like to keep the data from their old box. Here are a few tips on how to achieve this.

Getting everything you previously had somewhere else can involve a few steps.

Note: If your data is on a personal computer or NAS rather than another seedbox, see Migrate from personal storage to Bytesized for a dedicated guide.

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Table of Contents

• Data
  • RSYNC
  • FTP
  • SSH/SCP
• Importing the torrents

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Data

First off, you're going to want to grab all the actual data — the files you want to seed or continue downloading. There are multiple ways of achieving this.

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RSYNC

Rsync is a powerful tool which can synchronize files across the network (for more info about rsync, type man rsync in the terminal). To transfer files, run rsync on the box where you want your files to end up:

screen rsync -avhzS --progress [email protected]:~/torrents/completed ~/torrents/oldbox

screen (or tmux) lets you put the file transfer in the background and check on it later — Ctrl+A D detaches the screen session, screen -rd reattaches it.

In this example, ~/torrents/completed is the completed folder on your old box, and ~/torrents/oldbox will be created on your new box to receive the files.

Case study — mirror the entire torrents folder:

screen rsync -avhzS --progress [email protected]:~/torrents/ ~/torrents/

This mirrors everything from the old box's torrents folder to the new box — completed files, downloading files, etc.

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FTP

The simplest way to grab all your data is with the command-line utility wget:

wget --ask-password -r ftp://[email protected]/path

Substitute user, oldbox.com and /path with the FTP details from your other box. If you use a non-standard port (e.g. not 21), append it to the host: oldbox.com:2121. If you're unsure about the path, try leaving it blank.

Useful wget parameters:

• -c — resume an interrupted download
• -b — run in the background and log progress to a file (be careful not to forget about it — it will keep running)

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SSH/SCP

You can also copy data to/from the seedboxes via scp. The command depends on which box you're running it from:

From your old box:

scp -r * [email protected]:~/

From your new Bytesized box:

scp -r [email protected]:/path/to/whatever ~/torrents/

You can replace * in the first command with a specific folder path, and replace ~/torrents/ in the second command with any destination you prefer.

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Importing the torrents

You probably also want to import the torrent jobs from your old seedbox. Use one of the methods above to transfer the data first, then locate your .torrent files.

Depending on the client and your settings, .torrent files could be anywhere. If you can find them, load them all into your torrent client and make sure the data is in a location the client can find — e.g. ~/torrents/completed for the default Deluge setup.

If you're not sure where they are, try:

find ~ -name "*.torrent"

You can also check ~/.session — it should contain all torrents you ever downloaded.

Migrating Deluge state (black magic edition)

If you want to carry over your full Deluge session including ratios, labels and resume data, you can copy the state files directly. They are located in:

• ~/.config/deluge/state/ — session folder
• ~/.config/deluge/*.state — individual state files

Note that state files contain absolute paths to the data on the old disk. You may need to edit ~/.config/deluge/state/torrents.state and correct the paths for your new box.

Torrent session file locations by client:

Client	Location
Deluge	~/.config/deluge/state/
rTorrent / ruTorrent	~/.session or ~/.config/rtorrent/session/

Note: If you prefer a graphical approach using VNC and FileZilla, see Transfer data from another seedbox via FTP.