Thanks for your understanding.

This is not a  Feedback and Support - DriverPacks Base related topic

I worked for the phone company. The desktop support group was a unit of several dozen people who supported over 5k desktops, and we were admins, However, we did not have full access to the network, that was a different department, and I can assure you they would not have allowed us torrent downloads... period. On the other hand they could easily afford to pay the bill for us to provide the direct downloads year in and year out. They may have even supplied the server to use for this at no cost to the project. In that situation it would be a good investment to support us. The cost of supporting us would be far less than the increased cost of supporting 5000 desktops without us.

If not having direct downloads gets you fired up, do something about it. Sounds like you work for an organization that has the resources to be able to help. So rather than complaining and compounding the problem, become part of the solution.

Our bandwidth routinely exceeds 10TB a month... no free options to handle that kind of bandwidth.
We are considering a pay for option for our users that would have CDN downloads. We haven't had much interest expressed in that option to date. As always everyone wants something for nothing... Ask for a little money and people act like you ran over their cat. Torrents cost very little and that is what our user base is willing to pay. If you would be interested in or willing to donate for direct downloads this is your opportunity to say so .

Direct downloads would cost us well over 1000 USD a month based on 10~20 TB, We were fortunate in the past to have that donated, but we can not expect that to always be an option. Direct downloads are preferred by us as well as you but we simply can't, our revenue stream does not exist. The cost of one month of direct downloads would far exceed the combined total of all donations received over the past two years .

the short version is:
10~20 terabytes of traffic a month costs a huge amount of money...
Nobody ever donates any money.
Torrents are free, and that is what we can afford based on the donations we receive.

Thanks for being such a big fan of our project. We like that .

Thanks for taking the time to post and welcome to DriverPacks.net forum. 

summary, Does this get you fired up? Then do something about it... The ball is in your court.

Anyway, as to USB flash drives:
I think the major problem lies within Windows' Autorun function.
Any sane Admin should disable all autorun functions completely.
A compromised Autorun.INF file on an optical medium is just as bad as on a flash drive...

Obviously, the MD5 hashes provided serve as a file integrity check (moving the files from home to work).

The security group will not allow me to use Bit Torrent as it is a security risk

Absolutely.  As an admin in my organization I would NEVER open a port for bittorrent activity because it is a massive security risk for the corporate network.  It's the bittorrent upload/download activity that is the risk. 
DriverPacks themselves posses zero risk.
So what's your answer?  Download them from home.

Bad idea.  USB flash memory drives are also a security risk (virus carrier) and we've banned them in our organization also.  Burn them to DVD-RW and scan them before introducing them to your network.

From our News post:

DriverPacks as an ecosystem cannot be sustained indefinitely without donations.  Just hosting the website alone costs Wim a LOT of his own money.  The infrastructure we maintain comes at a significant cost that one man cannot be expected to pay for on his own.

How dare you sir!  I find it an insult for you to DEMAND for us to provide you products and services that cost us several hundred man-hours to develop and support.

If you don't like what we provide for free, then do it yourself!

I don't know what possessed you to remove the direct download link for the driverpack files.

This.

Bad luck, I guess.
What do you need the DriverPacks for, anyhow?
Either you are the Admin in said corporation, then *YOU* should be the one in charge for network settings etc. or you aren't, then you do not need the DriverPacks.

No can do. Unless you want to donate some bandwidth or hosting costs...

I'm not sure what this "security group" really is but if they have at least any clue, they'd allow the DriverPacks if you are responsible for driver updates.

Yep, so it seems to me.
As I said, if it's your job, then talk to your boss; you should be allowed to do your job, at least.
If it isn't, then you should keep the DriverPacks on your private PC at home.

Don't be mad at us, it's not our fault.
There was no alternative to this, due to nonexisting donations.
Have you donated already?
If not, stop complaining about something that is offered to you FOR FREE!

PLEASE PUT BACK THE DIRECT DOWNLOAD LINK.  It took me two weeks to get the security group to allow me to direct download from this site and since you have moved to Bit Torrent downloads, I haven't been able to update anydrivers. 

In order to get the new files I will have to download the files at home, move them to a flash drive and then bring them into work.  That seems very counter-productive to me.