Sorry but I can’t think of another word for it right now. This is mostly just venting but also if anyone has a better way to do it I wouldn’t hate to hear it.
I’m trying to set up a home server for all of our family photos. We’re on our way to de-googling, and part of the impetus for the change is that our Google Drive is almost full.We have a few hundred gigs of photos between us. The problem with trying to download your data from Google is that it will only allow you to do so in a reasonable way through Google takeout. First you have to order it. Then you have to wait anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for Google to “prepare” the download. Then you have one week before the takeout “expires.” That’s one week to the minute from the time of the initial request.
I don’t have some kind of fancy California internet, I just have normal home internet and there is just no way to download a 50gig (or 2 gig) file in one go - there are always intrruptions that require restarting the download. But if you try to download the files too many times, Google will give you another error and you have to start over and request a new takeout. Google doesn’t let you download the entire archive either, you have to select each file part individually.
I can’t tell you how many weeks it’s been that I’ve tried to download all of the files before they expire, or google gives me another error.
It’s not the speed - it’s the interruptions. If I could guarantee an uninterrupted download for 12 hours, then I could do it over the course of 3-4 days. I’m looking into some of the download management tools that people here have suggested.
that might work; I don’t know if you live in a remote area, but I’d also consider a coffee shop, library, university, or hotel lobby with wifi. You might be able to download it within an hour.
Get a program that can auto resume downloads?
Great, any suggestions?
I would recommend Aria2. It can download several chunks of a file in parallel, resume downloads automatically with a set number of retries, it supports mirrors (maybe not an option for Google Takeout, but for other cases), and it can dpwnload over many different protocols.
Thanks, I’ll give it a shot. The download links are a little weird due to the google authentication, so they can only be used from a logged in account.
You can use FF’s or Chrome’s cookie files: http://aria2.github.io/manual/en/html/aria2c.html#load-cookies
I believe jdownloader is able to.
If I am not mistaken wget and curl can resume a download as well but that may require a small script with error catching and auto loopijg until finished.