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Friday, January 24, 2014

How to resume stuck/crashed downloads in firefox

In this post, I am going to teach you all, on how to resuming downloads which are stuck half way through, or crashed due to some network or server problem, from where it crashed. This is being an old 'popping-a-vein-in-your-forehead' problem with the direct downloads, we perform in our browsers. Its really frustrating when you are trying to download a huge file say 500 MB - 2 GB, and it crashes half way and then doesn't resumes, and then the only thing left for you is starting the download all the way from the start.

But no more. In this post I'll show you how to conserve the data that you have already downloaded and use it for further download, when using Firefox (I am not sure about other browsers like chrome etc yet, I have tested this trick in firefox so am recommending ff only).

Another thing to note in this trick is, this will work only on Windows OS, because we will need a little bit coding in Batch (.bat) as you will read further. So Mac. Linux etc users, better turn around from here only, sorry :-p

Soo here is the trick:

Suppose we are trying to download a 100mb file named 'file.exe', the name is 'file' and its extension is '.exe', you have to notice the filename and extension of the file you are downloading carefully in order to get this trick correct.

And now suppose our download is now stuck/crashed at some point, lets say at 45mb, i.e., at 45%.

Step 1:

Saving the 'part' file:-

a) In case the download is stuck, then there should be a part-file at the destination where you are downloading your file (file.exe) named 'file.exe.part'. A part file is a file where the current downloaded data/progress is saved and then converted into your actual file, and this whole trick revolves around this part-file only. Copy the part-file to some other folder, so that we can use it at later point, and then just cancel the download from the manager of the browser.


b) In case the download has crashed, then your file i.e., 'file.exe' should appear as-is onto the destination, but if you check its properties it will show you incorrect size, as in our case we are assuming our download crashed at 45mb, on checking the size of that file in the properties it will show 45mb instead of 100mb. Now we know that our file weighs 100mb, and if it is showing 45mb only, then probably its crashed. So how do we use our 45mb of downloaded data to resume it from there. The answers lies in the part-file I mentioned in 'Step 1 a)'. In the case, where the download crashes we have to convert the half downloaded file into part-file manually.

To convert the file to part file, open notepad or any text editor, and type the following:

@echo off
ren file.exe file.exe.part

Note: Make sure there are no spaces between the filename like 'file name.exe', if there is, then just for this conversion process rename the file into some small and non-space containing name like 'a.exe' and after the file is converted into a part file, rename it back into original name like 'file name.exe.part'.

Now save it as a '.bat' file in the destination where your file is downloaded. And then run it. You will see now your file 'file.exe' is converted into a part file as 'file.exe.part'. Now copy this part file into some other folder for using afterwards.

Step 2:

Resuming the download using the old part file:-

Now that we have the old part-file saved, we will have to restart the download from wherever we started it before, and the moment the download starts, pause it. Now you will see there is a new part-file of our file 'file.exe' generated in the same destination, and if you see its properties, you'll see its size is very small like 2kb etc, its because this part file has just been created. Now copy and replace the new part file with the old part file that we saved into another folder in the 'Step 1 a)' and/or 'Step 1 b)'. And then resume your download from the manager.

Thats it. Now you're download will resume from the point it stuck/crashed before on.

Trick At a Glance

1- Save or convert (as mentioned above) the old (incomplete) part file to some other folder
2- Restart the download, and pause it
3- Copy and replace the new part file with the old one that you saved
4- Resume your download

The above process can be used as many time as required

Enjoy.




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