How to search for music/ebooks/other files on the web effectively.

I apologize -- this is actually a repost of mine that I did not foresee being removed from indexes after I had deleted my old account. This is mostly for me -- I near had a panic attack when I realized my thread wasn't showing up in google.

Torrent

You'll need two things -- a torrent client and the .torrent file or magnet link from a trusted source that will provide the client with the needed information to hook up with other users and begin downloading.

If you're looking for a client, µTorrent is a very popular and lightweight client for all platforms. I myself prefer Transmission (linux/mac only). Here's a list. Don't be a jerk, seed to at bare minimum 1:1 ratio, and 1:2 down/up normally.

Torrents

• http://thepiratebay.se

• http://isohunt.com

• http://kat.ph/

• http://demonoid.me R.I.P.

• http://www.vertor.com

• http://www.torrentdownloads.net/

• http://www.limetorrents.com/

• http://eztv.it

Meta-search engines:

• http://torrentscan.com/

• http://torrentz.eu/

• Google-powered custom search (a little outdated)

Legal/open domain torrent sites:

• http://www.legittorrents.info/

• http://www.clearbits.net/

• http://www.publicdomaintorrents.net/

Open directories

Open directories are simply unprotected folders that have been left open to the public (be it intentionally or accidentally). Huge pots of files can be found all across the web full of pictures, music, videos, porn, whatever. Once you find an open directory, you can either click on the wanted files one by one to download or grab them all at once using wget (available on all platforms, tutorial here). r/opendirectories is an awesome reddit to subscribe to, and the community will be a good place to ask questions or get help with wget.

To search for files in open directories, you will use a custom Google search. Knowing how to use search operators is helpful but not necessary. You want pages containing "index of" in the title. You do not want HTML pages, so you eliminate pages containing "html", "htm", or "php". Put the type of files you want to end up with in quotes (for example, "mp3" or "epub"). You end up with a search looking like this.

If you want to use wget, here is my usual command:

wget -e robots=off -r --no-parent -c --limit-rate=150k [url here, no brackets]

remove --limit-rate=150k or change the number if you like, I use that so wget doesn't hog all of my bandwidth and so I can continue browsing whilst using it.

File-hosting sites

Filestube searches Mediafire, Rapidshare, Filefactory, and other sites (see the advanced search option for a full list). I've found filestube to be far superior to its rivals, which tend to only search a few of the big sites.

Ebook sites

http://manybooks.net/

http://www.gutenberg.org/

http://en.bookfi.org/

http://library.nu/

Note: yes, this is incomplete. If you have contributions, error corrections, etc please let me know as I will continue to edit this.