Downloading 7gigs from NI servers....HA HA HA!!

Alright, so I, a fairly capable guitarist, succumbed to (as Bit would say) my severe GAS disorder due to a dramatic discounted price and purchased NIs Scarbee Funk Guitarist.  Which, if you listen to and are swayed by the various demos and tutorials is actually very interesting and, for me at least, potentially useful.  Anywhoo...turns out that even though this is a 7gig plus library NI wants it to be "download only".  OK.  I've downloaded bigger (albiet in smaller chunks) from other vendors.  But after over 24 hours of frustration and heartache I see I've finally been hipped to NIs little practical joke division.  They don't actually expect anyone to actually be able to download the whole thing at all.  Their shrewd marketing plan is to quite literally stress their customers out as much as possible and take them to the very brink of completion and then, like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown's oncoming kick, destroy your world at the last second and add a "Neener neener boo boo!!!" for good measure.  Now some of you might say, my dear Doghouse, you know you must use a download manager with resume capabilities when trying these large downloads.  To which I reply...NATCH!  And my "Freedownload Manager" tried valiantly to hang on even when the bitstream slowed to zero as it did so very often (Tho I'll admit I did get a kick out of the remaining time readout as it would occasionally show things like 900 hours or so).  But in the end (or ends I should say as I tried several times) it would get thrown off and show me the little red square indicating the NIs own servers cannot be "resumed".  Those crazy cusses.  I let it run all night last night and when I awoke it was like xmas morning as I scrambled from bed to see what Santa (NI) had brought me.  And there to my amazement was a zip file saying it was the full 7.45 gigs big.  Oh Joy!  Good things come to those who wait!!  Only....NOT....Freedownload Manager said that actually only 67% had downloaded and then had terminated.  I tried installing anyway.  Ha Ha.  Freedownload Manager was right.  Sigh. 
 
I left a similar missive at NI's support page.  I'm very familiar with the time frames I dealing with there.  Masochist that I am, I'll probably try again tonite.  I'm such a sucker.  And I love a good joke as much as the next dimbulb.
 
 

Sorry to say myolpal but I've never had that happen with NI downloads.

Mebee it's cuz I live in a MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREA where there USA servers are most likely located.


However, after buying Komplete 8 Ultimate on a USB drive, methinks I may never download from NI again ('cept maybe that big 'ol pianeer thang when I gots the dosh).

Interestingly... I had a FXpansion download totally crap out on me a few days ago, and I was using FDM at the time. A couple of files came through ok, with barely acceptable bandwidth, but I did have the total failure (after 96% of 3.5GB downloaded) and a massive number of low-bandwidth attempts because the server wouldn't allow FDM to create new sections (and no, I did not accept "37 hours @ 100KB/sec" or some such nonsense, so killed those failed attempts early on). Switched over to using DownThemAll via Firefox on both Mac and PC and things seemed much more stable and consistent... bandwidth from overseas wasn't stellar, but I was able to get in the 500KB/sec range per file...

Maybe FDM itself has issues and/or certain ISPs are putting up roadblocks? Not sure... Just think it's interesting that you also had a totally failed download with FDM... which, obviously, is not supposed to happen at all, because the servers supposedly support "range requests", which is how those managers divvy up the downloads... An unrecoverable failed FDM download would appear to be catastrophic, in relative terms...  

Well, after several more aborted attempts with FDM I've downloaded FastGet and am trying it as we speak.  So far it's kicking FDM in the nether regions.  I'll keep ya posted.

yorolpal

Well, after several more aborted attempts with FDM I've downloaded FastGet and am trying it as we speak.  So far it's kicking FDM in the nether regions.  I'll keep ya posted.

Sorry to hear about your troubles.  I dread big downloads.  So when i read your thread, I said I have to get this FastGet as an alternate.  Alas, I could not find FastGet; I found Flash Get.  Can you post a link to this particular download manager?

I try not to download when we start talking about gigs.  I'd prefer to have the disc but I feel your pain.  Good luck Ole Pal.

I hate downloaded libraries and almost always opt for disks when possible. But, this is a softwares companies big dollar bonanza. In other words except for relatively cheap servers, all costs of actually ... you know fulfilling a product order go direct to the customer. I spent over 24 hours downloading Sonic synth the other week. It was about 8 gigs worth, and though they told me it would take 4 weeks and 13 dollars to ship disks, I finally gave up and that and went for the download. Never again. I want something besides rented software in the first place and I at least want a hard copy back-up that I don't have to pay for out of my pocket. I'm about done with software companies, if they have anything over 10 megs,want it on disk.

This trend toward download-only business models is troubling, and I don't like it one bit. 

Like Rbh, I prefer physical disks if it's an option, even if it's an extra ten bucks. Not only do I forego the headaches of large downloads, I also get a reliable backup. When you do finally complete the download, you'll of course immediately back it up onto DVD or CD - notoriously unreliable media that may or may not actually work when you need it later.

I've been using a download manager since an especially frustrating experience downloading a multi-gigabyte library a year or so ago. That one took over three days to complete! (And wouldn't you know it, for further insult the library turned out to be weak and I ended up getting very little use out of it.) The download manager makes the process much better, decreases download times, downloads multiple files sequentially, lets you prioritize files, and best of all, can recover from a loss of connection during the transfer.

Well, I finally got everything downloaded using FlashGet.  The NI servers didn't like FreeDownloadManager at all.  Also, due to trying to install it without all the requisite files, I had to jump through several hoops including renaming the iso installer file to get it recognized.  Sheesh.  But it's up runnin hot straight and normal now.  I'll probably hear from NI sometime this week with a "why not try downloading it again?" sort of message:-)

Oh it's good all right.  But it's just another step up jackass hill.  It takes two whole fangers ta play the dern thang!!  And you can edit your chords and patterns nine ways to sunday.  Course you do have to sort of know how to arrange those chords and patterns....but....still....pretty much a monkees on typewriter kind of a deal.