My Comp crashed in the middle of a massive download! HELP!

[Doc Sark]

I'd downloaded about 500/900 mb of info. Do I have to start the download again from scratch or is there a way of resuming it? I was using the standard Internet Explorer downloader.

[TheAbominatrix]

I dont think you can resume it, but before starting again I recommend you get GetRight so this doesnt happen again.

[Doc Sark]

Bum. That really grates my cheese. GetRight you say. I'm on it. Thanks anyway.

[TheAbominatrix]

I could be wrong, I'm not exactly the most knowledgable person on the subject, but GetRight is the way to go otherwise. Maybe someone knows a way to resume it in it's current status, I hope so.

[Dr Unne]

I think the server has to support partial downloads in order to resume a download that has died in the middle. If the server supports it, you can likely use any program you want, if you can configure the program to work properly. A lot of those programs store their partially downloaded files in different ways.

Firefox has built-in support for pausing and restarting downloads. Might I also suggest bittorrent. Might I further suggest anything but IE.

[Baloki]

If you didn't turn the power off at the switch Internet Explorer should have cahced it allowing you to resume, if you let the mains power switch go off you've lost it sorry.

[Doc Sark]

Firefox has built-in support for pausing and restarting downloads. Might I also suggest bittorrent. Might I further suggest anything but IE.

Haha, so what you're saying is (and you'd be right) that I my lack of knowledge about anything regarding computers has cost me my 500mbs because I am using the fossil of all explorer programs! Point taken, Firefox it is. Thanks chaps.

[crono_logical]

I personally use wget for larger HTTP downloads, even in Windows. Good thing too, since the last time I got an ISO image, the connection dropped around 600 times, since the server itself was poor :p


If you didn't turn the power off at the switch Internet Explorer should have cahced it allowing you to resume, if you let the mains power switch go off you've lost it sorry.Wow, I didn't know turning the power off caused anything saved to disk to mysteriously vanish. Alternatively, are you trying to tell me it buffers several hundred MB of data in RAM/swap? (Oh, it's IE, I wouldn't be surprised, actually :p ) Regardless, it's more a question of whether your cache was cleared lately or not, either manually or automatically by IE, otherwise you could salvage the incomplete file from there, then resume with something like wget. Explorer uses some alternate display format though in the cache folders, so you might need to go through a command prompt.

[Baloki]

IE keeps a page in memory/RAM for some reason that tells it to keep the cache from downloads, so if you clear the ram it clears the cache next time IE loads up, its the weirdest system ever...

[Dr Unne]

I didn't know they made wget for Windows. Or did someone other than me actually start using Linux?

[Doomgaze]

I believe there is a port of wget to windows, but like most *nix -> windows ports it's not as good on Windows.

[Rainecloud]

Might I further suggest anything but IE.

I know it's been said time and time again, but the old doctor is right.

Good luck with your next download attempt.

[crono_logical]

I use wget from Cygwin, so yeah, it's for Windows :p I think that and dd are the two tools I really only use occasionally out of Cygwin though. I suppose you could add ls as well if you count when I type that instead of dir by mistake in a command window :p