The Great Geek Manual

With bittorrent sites like MiniNova and Piratebay thriving, it can be easy to overlook the alternative piracy methods, such as IRC, eMule, and file hosts, such as Rapidshare. It can be a little tricky to find what you’re looking for on file hosts like Depositfiles and RapidShare. File links are usually not in a directory format, the way they are with bittorrent sites, the sites that do list large numbers of links are usually operated by Russians, and you usually need to wade through more than a bit of porn to find anything. However, these sites do have their advantages. For starters, the popularity (or age) of a file doesn’t have any impact on the speed of the download. For another thing, a lot of strange little things that never make it onto torrent sites show up.

Below is a list of my favorite blog-formatted Rapidshare link directories. None of them are forums, they all feature mostly English descriptions, and, in my experience, these sites feature the fewest porn ads. At these sites, you’ll generally find clipart, fonts, icons, magazines, movies, templates, software utilities, and video games.

• Avax – General
• Design Wars – Mostly graphic design related downloads
• Exclusize – General
• Exet News – General
• FreeliZ – General, with a lot of music
• Funky Souls – Mostly music and videos
• GFX World – A graphic design community
• HDTV Blog – Movies and videos
• iNetHouse – Graphics, software, video games
• LTTeam – General
• Mac File – Mac software
• Magesy – General with a lot of music related downloads
• Masolit – A lot of software utilities
• Netzor – General
• Nigmae – General
• Quickstyle – Mainly software
• Soft-Hard – Software
• Softaz – General with an emphasis on software
• Softland – General with an emphasis on software
• WebforYou – Music, software and video games
• Wind Tuning – General

If downloading via Rapidshare becomes a regular habit, you may want to look into ways to minimize the wait between downloads. Start with these sites:

Tech Recipes – “Hacks to Beat Rapidshare Download Limits and Waiting Time” has some helpful suggestions.

Tech Buzz – Has a short list of utilities that will circumvent the wait altogether.

Raymond’s Blog – Explains how to use the popular software, Rapidkill, in conjunction with Rapidshare to streamline the download process.