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I requested a Google data takeout in 2GB chunks. However, while most of the files (22/23) are <=2GB, one is over 30GB. I don't know why this is the case, and I don't know what's in it and why it's so big, but I expect it to take a while to download.

I am concerned that I may lose connection or my computer might restart while I am downloading it (to an external hard drive). I am hoping to find a way to download this giant ZIP folder in a way that won't fail if something happens. I looked at this question, but the only answer links to some proprietary software I've never heard of, and I don't really want to download anything through it, as I'd imagine the 30GB+ file has sensitive data somewhere.

This answer looks promising, but it comes with some disclaimers that it might not always work, which is not something I'm willing to commit to unless it's the only option because if it fails, I would need to repeat the entire download.

Another answer suggested using wget, which is probably the most promising. I'm using Windows, but wget does have a Windows version. However I would imagine Google has some pretty major authentication for Takeout downloads which I don't think I'd be able to pass through command line. Additionally I don't know if there would be any issues downloading to an external (encrypted) drive if the computer loses power or the drive gets knocked off.

Does anyone know if there are any alternative ways to do this that is more reliable for what I'm trying to do and doesn't use any random software?

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    PowerShell and wget are perfectly capable of doing this.
    – Ramhound
    Mar 23, 2018 at 0:19

1 Answer 1

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I ran into the same issue and I found a pretty convinient/simple solution.

First of all I used JDownloader app for my solution. It is an open-source download management tool which could be downlaoded for free from here: http://jdownloader.org/

After you install JDownloader, follow the steps below in order to download the Google takeof file/s:

  1. Click on the "Download archive" link provided by Google.
  2. Proceed as required (authentication, etc.) until the download starts from your browser (I used chrome).
  3. Navigate to the browser downloads page (in chrome it is chrome://downloads/).
  4. Locate the download and copy its link address.
  5. Add the link address in JDownloader.
  6. Finally in the JDownloader LinkGrabber tab locate the folder with the name the starts with "takeout-", right click on it and select "Start Downloads".

Wait for the download to complete and that's it!

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  • Also works with wget. Follow steps 1. to 4. then at the terminal: $ wget "<paste link from download>" -O file1.tgz -> Include quotes but not brakets in your link. -> change filetype accordingly for your type (.zip, etc). -> use -c to continue download if paused -> $ tar zxvf file1.tgz to unzip
    – MethodMan
    Oct 21, 2021 at 18:22

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