Chrome v1.x Won’t Download Large Files; Fixed in Beta 2.x

A few people still seem unaware of this so just to clarify, Google Chrome (at least the current release build at v1.0.154.53) does not support downloading of files larger than 2^31 bytes (2,147,483,648 bytes, or about 2.1 gigabytes). If you try, you’ll get an error like this:

The webpage at http://syd1.ausgamers.com:88/downloads/1239230399/AOC_US_TRIAL_CLIENT-2-of-7.zip might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.

If you click the “more information on this error” link, you’ll get this slightly obscure (but still understandable) error message: “Error 8 (net::ERR_FILE_TOO_BIG): Unknown error.” (I tested with this file, which is slightly more than 2.1gb.)

This is a fairly typical problem in a lot of software that does HTTP downloads, but it is very surprising to see such a simple bug in Chrome.

However, this appears to be fixed in the 2.x beta, so if you’re using Chrome and must have the ability to download large files within it, give that a try.