'wget --continue' does not work with '--no-clobber'

Question

I am working under Windows 7, and I want to download all new files from a Windows server directory over HTTPS using wget. In addition, I want to resume the download of large files in case of connection loss during transfer.

When I run

wget.exe --continue --recursive https://<host>:<port>/<some path>/pdf.dll

everything works fine.

But using

wget.exe --continue --no-clobber --recursive https://<host>:<port>/<some path>/pdf.dll

the download is not resumed after a connection loss, but the incomplete file remains on my local file system. The message of wget being:

File ‘//pdf.dll’ already there; not retrieving.

(We want to use the --no-clobber option in order to avoid sending HEAD requests for all files that are already transferred.)

Does this mean that --continue does not work well together with --no-clobber?

wget

Tessa Nardieu · Answer

Very late to the party but I just came across this problem and have a solution:
If you use the -N Timestamp flag in conjunction with the -c / --continue flag, on resuming, the file sizes of incomplete files will differ from the remote and the file will continue to download as expected. It will also not re-download completed files.
From https://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/wget.html#Time_002dStamping

If the local file does not exist, or the sizes of the files do not
match, Wget will download the remote file no matter what the
time-stamps say.

user414649 · Answer

That is because you are combining two options (--no-clobber  and  --continue):

--continue : Continue getting a partially-downloaded file
--no-clobber: This will clobber/overwrite the previously downloaded file before restarting to download again

As you can see, these two options ask Wget to perform quite opposite tasks, so it does not know what to do by the end. Do not combine them. You can read about download Options in details.

'wget --continue' does not work with '--no-clobber'

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