Every connection at once. Picked up where it stopped.

No connection sits idle

MDM opens 8 connections by default, and you can set anything from 1 to 32 in Options → Connection. When a connection finishes its part, it takes over half of the largest part still left, so the work is shared out again and again until the file is done. A connection that falls far behind the others is dropped and opened again.

The progress window draws it as it happens: a bar of the whole file with each connection's start and progress, and a table with what every connection is doing right now.

Measured, not claimed

On the same PC and the same test server, MDM fetched a 1 GiB file in 1.0 s against IDM 6.42's 5.5 s, and a 256 KiB file in 0.03 s against 3.1 s: the medians of alternating runs. The benchmark page has every run, the method and the raw data.

More connections help only where a server sends each one at a limited speed. Most servers allow a few connections per address, and MDM notices when one says no: it stops asking that server for more and lists what it learned under Exceptions in Options → Connection. You can set a number for a server yourself there too.

More than 32, if you want them

Allow more than 32 connections in Options → Connection raises the limit to 128 per download, for server exceptions too. The command line's -c takes 1 to 128.

Resume that survives a crash

MDM saves how far each part has got as it goes. A download picks up where it stopped after you pause it, after the connection drops, or after Windows or MDM itself crashes. A connection that fails is retried on its own, and the table shows Retrying with the reason.

Before it continues, MDM checks that the file on the server is still the same one, so a changed file never gets stitched onto an old half. When a server can't send a file in parts, the progress window says Resume capability: No before you rely on it.

Straight to disk

Each connection writes directly into the file's place on disk, in a part file next to the final one. There is no temporary folder and no joining step at the end: when the last part arrives, MDM checks the size and renames the file.

Resume a broken download shows what to do when a link has expired.