i've been using a gnutella client (LW) for about a year now and i am curious about something. if all of my shared files are on my hard drive, how come it never seems like my HD is being read when someone uploads from me? where are they getting the shared files from?

also, it's the same with searches. how do the searches coming in to my PC know what files i am sharing if my HD never seems to get read???

i've read lots about gnutella, but cant seem to find my answer anywhere.

I'm not sure how you know your drive is being read. If you're listening to sounds it makes, not all reads make sounds. An activity light either on the unit or on the screen would be more accurate.

When someone uploads from you they are reading from your hard drive unless you have a large amount of memory and small files. The application might cache the files themselves in RAM, but I don't think that's likely.

Searches on the other hand are done almost entirely in memory. Queries come in pretty fast so the speed of RAM is necessary to keep up. When starting the client up the hard drive is read to figure what is shared but once the filenames are loaded searches are done in RAM.

efield,

your assumption was right. i was just listening for any noise from the HD. mine usually makes a racket when it gets accessed so i figured it would make just as much noise when someone uploaded from me. but as you say maybe it doesnt in this case.

i kind of figured the shared files were stored as a list in RAM, but wasnt sure.

thanks for clearing it up!