I've used WinHTTrack for a few years.

As a whole, it usually works okay.  A few sites it can't handle, but as a
whole, it's okay.

But one thing that has always frustrated me is its slow scanning of pages.

You know, the entry at the top of the list where it's scanning and testing
links.

A lot of times, it spends more time scanning and testing links than it does
actually downloading the website!

It seems like it goes out of its way to test every possible link, and scan
byte by byte and no telling what else.

Sometimes I'm lucky to download one new page every 10 seconds.  With a typical
throughput of maybe 100 bytes per second.

Sure, downloading files and such speed things up, but when it's bogged down in
the scanning phase, that's how fast WinHTTrack runs.  It's dead dog slow.

I've turned off (and on) every option I can think of, but it seems determined
to spend a lot of time scanning and testing instead of downloading.

It's not a new problem.  It's been like this in probably every one I've used
over the years.

I've used other web downloaders.  Several of them, including wget and GetLeft
(just to name two whos name I remember right off the top of my head), and they
don't have the kinds of problems that WinHTTrack does.

Those download the page, see links, and then download the stuff.  They never
bog down in the scanning & testing phase.  And they don't try scanning .exe
and .zip files for links, like I've seen WinHTTrack do.


I don't know how WinHTTrack is programmed.  All I know is that sometimes, its
incredible lack of speed is darn frustrating.