These are very large files that take a long time to download. If the download failed you could try again using 'save as' to avoid your smart browser from delivering you the same incomplete (and cached) file again.
I too have had no luck downloading the complete global mdb file after many attempts with many different browsers and operating systems, both at work and at home...all with reliable internet connections. The download often fails part-way but sometimes seems to download the full file but results in a corrupt or incomplete zip. The download speeds often crawl at a snail's pace of 1 kB/s or less. I've never experienced downloads as unreliable as this and I have downloaded spatial data that are many times larger than 500 Mb.
I realise this is a free service but there appears to be a problem with gadm's ability to serve the data. I will try to download the three levels separately and see how that goes, but the download speeds are too slow at present to make it feasible. I know there are other open-source projects with data hosting capabilities and I'm sure the relative size of this database would be very easy for them to host at no cost.
I just downloaded the .gdb file for the whole world in about 30 minutes. The download speed fluctuated between 30 and 150 KB/s but it completed and the file was usable. I'm downloading from Japan for what it's worth...
As for the issue of corruption, the .gdb file did NOT have a spatial reference, so in ArcGIS (9.3, SP6), I just ran the Define Projection tool and set it to GCS WGS 84---same as the .shp file version. Seems okay. Also, this is a personal geodatabase that you need ArcGIS 9.2 and up to run (I think). If you are using a previous version or different software altogether, you'd probably be better off with the .shp version. Of course, the .gdb has some really cool non-Latin names that could come in handy depending on your purpose.
Thanks Tom but there seems to be issues for many people, however I did finally have success using the command-line Wget program!
I'd recommend using Wget for anyone who's having trouble with the GADM web-server interrupting the download before it completes. Wget is a far more robust file downloader than most (all?) browsers. Wget is slow when you're trying to download many files recursively, but for this example where we only wanted one file it was fantastic!
The following wget command should work, after you've installed Wget that is:
download
These are very large files that take a long time to download. If the download failed you could try again using 'save as' to avoid your smart browser from delivering you the same incomplete (and cached) file again.
Slow downloads
I too have had no luck downloading the complete global mdb file after many attempts with many different browsers and operating systems, both at work and at home...all with reliable internet connections. The download often fails part-way but sometimes seems to download the full file but results in a corrupt or incomplete zip. The download speeds often crawl at a snail's pace of 1 kB/s or less. I've never experienced downloads as unreliable as this and I have downloaded spatial data that are many times larger than 500 Mb.
I realise this is a free service but there appears to be a problem with gadm's ability to serve the data. I will try to download the three levels separately and see how that goes, but the download speeds are too slow at present to make it feasible. I know there are other open-source projects with data hosting capabilities and I'm sure the relative size of this database would be very easy for them to host at no cost.
I just downloaded the .gdb
I just downloaded the .gdb file for the whole world in about 30 minutes. The download speed fluctuated between 30 and 150 KB/s but it completed and the file was usable. I'm downloading from Japan for what it's worth...
As for the issue of corruption, the .gdb file did NOT have a spatial reference, so in ArcGIS (9.3, SP6), I just ran the Define Projection tool and set it to GCS WGS 84---same as the .shp file version. Seems okay. Also, this is a personal geodatabase that you need ArcGIS 9.2 and up to run (I think). If you are using a previous version or different software altogether, you'd probably be better off with the .shp version. Of course, the .gdb has some really cool non-Latin names that could come in handy depending on your purpose.
Cheers, Tom Ballatore
Use Wget!
Thanks Tom but there seems to be issues for many people, however I did finally have success using the command-line Wget program!
I'd recommend using Wget for anyone who's having trouble with the GADM web-server interrupting the download before it completes. Wget is a far more robust file downloader than most (all?) browsers. Wget is slow when you're trying to download many files recursively, but for this example where we only wanted one file it was fantastic!
The following wget command should work, after you've installed Wget that is:
wget -r -c -nd -l1 -t 20 -b http://gadm.org/data/gadm_v1_mdb.zip
It probably doesn't need all those options since I adapted this command from another program I was using, but still it worked fine for me.
Hope this helps.
Slow Downloads
It seems that even countries such as Brazil can download extremely slowly or fail.