Server closing connection & downloads restarting -- any suggestions?

[aimeeandbeatles]

For the past twelve hours, I've been trying to download some large (gigabyte) PDF from a server (it's a volume of scanned newspapers). But every time, partway through (it varies on the exact amount), the server randomly closes the connection.

Oh, and the server doesn't support resuming. Nice.

I've tried this in both DownThemAll!(my default PDF downloader because it has the ability to download batches at once) and the Firefox default. In DtA it said Size Mismatch & in Firefox it said it couldn't read the source file. I looked up both of those issues and they seem to be from the server restarting.

I also mucked about in the DTA settings, having the downloads-per-server run from 1 to 5 (any more and sometimes I noticed they'll start randomly failing), changing the bandwidth limit (I wanted to see if downloading slower would keep from kicking me off) and messing around with the sugment size. No avail. Cycle, rinse, repeat.

So I'm hoping for some practical solutions. Anyone?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

This is in the wrong section, meant to post in Computer Talk. Crap.
Moderator Action: Moved.