I'm new to usenet and I'm having a really bad time so far.

[alonewestand]

I can get smaller stuff just fine, but the problem comes when I go to download larger files.  The first time I experienced a problem was with a 20 GB file.  The file was about 30 minutes from completion after 7 hours of waiting for it, and then I check and it says that the download failed, server retention yada-yada.

The second time, I was downloading something that was about 40 GB.  Download finished this time, but during unpacking I got a CRC error.  sabnzbd finished unpacking, but I found that several of the files are corrupted making the whole 40 GB download useless.  So now I have wasted about 21 hours downloading things that I can't use.

I read the file on CRC errors and while it listed the cause, I don't feel it went into detail on solutions.  It mentioned astraweb being affiliated with this problem, and suggested "getting a better host."  What host is better?  Looking through the forums, there are tons of people who don't have any problem with astraweb and are recommending it to everyone.  What should I be using instead?

Also, what causes a download to fail so close to completion?  Why can't I just resume it?  Why can't files be checked as they are download and re-download specific broken parts instead of ruining that entire set?  If a rar is corrupted in part 42, why can't the program check that after it's done downloading and go ahead and re-download it or alert me before-hand?  Is it really impossible to tell that things are corrupted before wasting my entire day on them?

I apologize if I come off hostile or unappreciative, because I do not mean to be.  I am merely upset at the time I wasted with these files that are of no use to me and, weary as I am, was hoping someone would offer up an explanation on how to prevent this in the future.  I simply do not have the energy to scour the net as I usually would searching for answers.  Thank you very much for your time.

Version: 0.5.0 Final
OS: Windows 7
Install-type: Windows Installer
Skin (if applicable): Plush
Firewall Software: None
Are you using IPV6? most likely no
Is the issue reproducible? if you want to download 60 GB worth of material and watch them fail, sure.

[inpheaux]

Supernews / Giganews are the only hosts out there you'll find with better completion than Astraweb.

Re-downloading files won't accomplish anything in most cases. If it's broken it's broken, that's what pars are for. Similarly, "resuming" wouldn't accomplish anything either.

It seems you have some misconceptions about how usenet works. The set you attempted to download didn't "fail so close to completion". With how SABnzbd currently works, you just don't know if something will be usable until you try to download it. A download works like this:

1) Attempt to download all rars and one par file
2) Determine if the rars are 100% perfect
3) If they aren't, run par2verify to determine how many parts are missing
4) Determine if there are enough pars referred to in the NZB to repair (if not, fail)
5) Attempt to download enough pars to repair
6) Run par2repair on the whole set
7) If there still aren't enough parts, fail

As you see, concepts like "resuming" or "retrying" aren't really useful there. By the time SABnzbd fails it has done all it can to try and get as much usable content from your server as is possible.

We presently can't tell if a file will be repairable until we've finished attempting to download it all. There are some scripts being worked on that would allow you to check before downloading, like this one, but they're all still pretty early in development.

The only other useful thing I can mention is that SABnzbd 0.6 will have the ability to retry a failed post. The only time this will help is if after the failure you change usenet hosts, or add a new fillserver, or something. It doesn't help you immediately, though, as 0.6 is still a good distance from release.

Edit: also, to address your comments regarding other people saying Astraweb is fine. Astraweb swings back and forth in quality. Sometimes it'll be perfectly fine for months. Sometimes it won't. Over the past several weeks I've seen several complaints in IRC that Astraweb is back to having completion problems, specifically out near the top end of their retention.

[rascalli]

Also like to add :

When grabbing an .nzb , always look at how old it is (When is it posted)
As the older the files (+200 days) the more change you have that things can fail.

[alonewestand]

Well thanks for taking the time to respond.  I appreciate the information.  Now I'm a little wiser.  I should have blamed the distributor not the delivery service, so to speak.  For now I've been avoiding larger files and downloading younger files when I can.