Basic question, how do I resume interrupted / failed downloads in Firefox?
4 Answers
I learned how to do it in this tutorial.
When you download a file using Firefox, it creates two files: one is named as the downloaded file and remains empty until the download finishes; the other is a .part file, which receives the downloaded content.
So, let's say your internet connection failed and the download was interrupted.
If you look in the folder though, the .part file is still there.
EDIT: Don't attempt a retry unless you are sure the server supports it, otherwise it might restart your download from the beginning, losing all the progress.
To resume, do the following: call the same download again, but in another folder, say a subfolder called "resume". Firefox will generate a new .part file automatically, which will start empty just like before. Pause this download and move your previous .part into the new folder and overwrite the existing one. Then resume the download.
Resuming HTTP downloads depends on the capability of the server. If the server supports partial requests, it will advertise this with a response header called "Accept-Ranges", which indicates the client can ask it for a part of a file by adding a request header called "Range". This is what is needed in order to resume downloads, otherwise the client can only start again.
So, in short it depends on the server whether you can resume or not. Most modern servers support it, but some cases it's difficult, e.g. for script-generated content.
As long as the file is still in your download history, recent versions of Firefox have a "Retry" button nxt to the file in the download manager.
1Another way is to move the .part file of the aborted download into another folder (f.e. the desktop or whichever comes more handy to you).
Then start a new download of the file to the original download folder, pause this download and erase the fresh made .part file from the recent download and replace (or just overwrite) it with the old .part you moved to another folder used as clipboard.
In this way you can save time to, 1. create a new folder to resume the aborted download and 2. set the download path to the new created folder.
Both ways give the result desired, but if you are like me, prefering transactions between folders instead of to create a new one and set the path to, you maybe like more to use this method.
