The problem:
For over a year now, I have been confronted with some torrents being written to two locations at once, thus wasting my storage space. Every time I deleted the corresponding files and folders in the unwanted location, the torrent started to download again (even though a completed version was already present in my default download folder).
The solution:
I took a look into how, and where it is defined where torrents are being stored, and solved the problem to the point that I can delete files at unwanted locations without further consequences. On Windows, this meant:
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Start Tribler, and click on the download that is affected by the aforementioned problem
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Under details, look up its infohash
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Press the windows key
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Type %APPDATA% folowed by enter
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open .Tribler\dlcheckpoints folder
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Find the .state file that begins with the infohash of the problematic torrent
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Open this file in a text editor
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All my .state files belonging to problematic torrents contained multiple instances of lines beginning with: "saveas = ", whereas normal torrent .state files contain only one such line. Delete those lines, pointing to download locations differing from the one you prefer.
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Save the file
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Restart Tribler
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Delete the files in the unwanted download location
If the above doesn’t help others with the same problem, then maybe it may provide the developers with clues as to where the bug arose.