How to Resume Interrupted Download with Wget on Ubuntu

This guide explains how to resume interrupted downloads using the wget command line tool on Ubuntu. It covers the specific flags required to continue fetching files from where they left off, ensuring you do not waste bandwidth or time restarting large downloads from the beginning.

To resume a download, you need to use the -c flag with the wget command. This option tells wget to continue getting a partially downloaded file. If the file is fully downloaded, wget will skip it.

The basic syntax is:

wget -c [URL]

Replace [URL] with the actual link to the file you were downloading. For example:

wget -c http://example.com/large-file.iso

When you run this command, wget checks the size of the existing file on your disk. It then contacts the server and requests only the remaining portion of the file. This process is seamless and requires no manual file merging.

Ensure the server supports range requests. Most modern web servers do, but if the server does not support this feature, wget will start the download from the beginning regardless of the -c flag. You can verify the download completed successfully by checking the file size or using a checksum if one is provided by the source.