Option to pass final download path to torrent client

Feature Requests
#1

Hello,
I have just setup sonarr and radarr and it’s an amazing piece of SW.
However I was really suprized that the feature from the topic title is not available.
TO understand, here is my setup:

  • Server is hosting plex, and it has several HDDs where. On each HDD there is a Movies and a Tv series folder (4 in total, it’s a HP microserver).
  • Plex is set to monitor these folders.
  • When I searched for a movie/tv show, I have set the download location to one of the locatios from the 4 hdds, either in Movies or Tv Series, depending on the type of the file.
  • Once the download was complete, plex indexed it and the show/movie was available.

Now, I understand that this is not currently possible with sonarr/radarr . The download location will be always the one that is set in setting that passed to the torrent client or the default one, not the final location of the downloaded movie/tv show. Once the torrent is downloaded, the content is moved to the final location.
This leads to the problem that If the download location is on a different disk, hardlink won’t work, and a massive amount of IO is performed.

I would like to have to option to pass to transmission or whichever torrent client the final download path, where the torrent client will download the file. In this case, moving or hardlinking is not needed.

Of course, I see the benefit of having a separate folder for downloads, but the setup scenario described above could be used by many users, not just me.

#2

It’s a non-starter imo, because you still want the download location and final sorted files location to be the same. That it’s 4 different disks doesn’t really matter. It’s just not how any of the *arr apps work fundamentally.

#3

There are many reasons why this won’t be added, the primary reason is any upgrade would result in deleted files (or Sonarr would have to manage telling clients to move files all over the place), a lot of added logic and potential for failures.

I’d recommend a few things in combination:

  1. Use a download client that supports proper categories (aka not Transmission, qbit tends to get the most recommendations)
  2. Add a category for each disk
  3. Use tags in Sonarr to assign each series to a tag corresponding with it’s location (auto tagging could do this based on location)
  4. Add a download client for each disk and assign each the correct tag

This will result in Sonarr using the download client with the matching tag when grabbing and importing, because downloaded files are already on the disk the series is on hardlinks will work.

Of course using a system that supports merging of disks and hardlinks on the merged filesystem would be preferential.

#4

Hello Markus,
What you are suggesting means that I already have some of the series, but yes, this could be a solution.
For now I will stick to the separate download location. For smaller movie files it’s not an issue, but for 4K long tv series this will add a lot of i/o and server load while moving around the files. But I understand the reasoning behind why not implementing such a feature. However when I download manually, I still put the files directly into the folders which are watched by sonarr and plex and seems to work without issues. Both recognize the neewly added content as ‘available’