Downloading incomplete files Question

[hornplaya]

I just switched from grabit to Alt.binz and I am using Astraweb. My problem is that every file I download is corrupted or damaged. When I load the nzb or whatever into Alt.binz it says all the parts are there and gives me the green highlight which should mean everything is ok. However, once it starts downloading a file it turns red and the parts begins to dwindle.

i.e. There are 261/261 parts before download and everything seems to be fine, then when downloading starts the parts begin to decrease until there are no parts and the rar or par2 file have no parts. It downloads, but when I try to open with winrar it just gives me the corrupted or damaged archive and when I open with QuickPar there no parts in any of the files.

Any help would be appreciated as this is driving me crazy! I have tried this on files from all retention periods, 2 to 240 days and its the same story.

Edit:

I just tried it with a known working NZB with a retention of 41 days and it seemed to work. Will alt.binz download a file that is missing?

[Hecks]

Astraweb's retention is 160 days, growing over time (although not yet it seems) to 270 days.

Your Log contains very precise information about what exactly Alt.Binz has downloaded, and what it can't download - look for 'Article not found' messages, this means too old for your server typically.  Obviously Alt.Binz can only download what's on your server.

The % completion that shows in your queue has nothing to do with whether *you* can actually grab it, it only shows the completion on the server that the indexing site used when it added the header info to its database.  In Newzleech's case, this means Giganews.  People can use any server to download, so unless you actually check the headers on your own server yourself, there's no way of knowing with Alt.Binz whether it's downloadable until you actually try to download it - because Alt.Binz doesn't handle headers at all.

Edit: but, just in case this wasn't clear, use your server's published retention as a guide, and don't try to download anything older than 160 days (yet) and you should be fine.

[hornplaya]

Thanks for the info. I thought if the server did not have the file it would not download anything and give me an article not found message. Which is where the confusion came from because alt.binz downloaded the file and put it into the proper download folder without any error message. Even though the file contained no data it still acted like it did.

I also contacted Astraweb and they said that there retention had already reached 270 days, but it looks as if that was false information.

[davidq666]

Thanks for the info. I thought if the server did not have the file it would not download anything and give me an article not found message. Which is where the confusion came from because alt.binz downloaded the file and put it into the proper download folder without any error message. Even though the file contained no data it still acted like it did.

the "article not found messages" are only found in the log. altbinz handles each block of the file individualy so if there is even one block of the file available a file is created...

[hornplaya]

Ok, thanks for all the help, I just switched from Grabit where it gives the "article not found" if any part is missing.