When seeing an incomplete file on Usenet, the first thing you should do is make sure that you have downloaded all of the posts. Suppose that somebody is posting a file that consists of 1,000 posts. He has sent 400 when you first go into the newsgroup, and downloaded the first 300 posts, and see the partial file. More of the posts for this file can be found by clicking the “Get Older Posts” button. More can be seen by clicking the “Get New Posts” button repeatedly as he continues to send them.
If you are convinced you have all the posts and the file is still incomplete, this can be for several reasons:
- Incomplete propagation – No computer or network is perfect. A Usenet post made in the UK will probably have to travel through a few different servers and networks before it arrives at a Usenet server in the USA. Sometimes posts get lost. If you see a lot of missing posts on your server, you may want to switch to a premium service such as Easynews.
- Expiration – Posts are not kept forever. Old posts are removed from your Usenet server every day. If the file in question is old, it may be that some of its posts have been removed. When you see this, it is sometimes possible to get the remaining posts from another Usenet server that has not yet expired them.
- Poster errors – Everything you see in a newsgroup is put there by regular people like you. Sometimes people make mistakes. In such a case, you can post a message to the group and ask the poster to send the remaining pieces.
- Fills – a fill usually happens as a result of the above situation. The incomplete file you are looking at may never be completed because it was never intended to be complete, but rather to “fill” in a few pieces of an older file as a favor to somebody who was missing them.
If you want to download incomplete files, you have two options:
- Tell NewzToolz to not combine them – Do this if you think you will be able to get more of the posts soon. The files will be left in the Downloads folder inside the NewzToolz folder. You can also do this for large files that are not yet done being posted. Download the posts that are there, click “Get New Posts” and if more show up, download the file again. NewzToolz will not download the same parts twice. So, if you are impatient, you can download files a little bit faster this way.
- Tell NewzToolz to combine them – You can do this if you are convinced that you will not be able to find the remaining parts, and the file is a non-sensitive format such as MPEG. For example, if an MPEG is posted in ten parts, and you only have the first nine, you can paste the nine parts together and have a playable file. It will stop abruptly near the end, but you will still have something. If you are downloading a video game, then there is practically no chance that the file will be usable unless you have every single part. You can also tell NewzToolz to combine the files if there are PAR files available. The un-PARing process can use data from partially-completed files.