Hey guys.

So, I believe I'm not the only one that had its share of trouble with the Witcher 3 preload. Took me a day to reach 71% download completion before the download stalled out of nowhere. But, at least, I was able to download the extras of the game.

After reading some sugestions at the forums, I decided to download the whole game using GOG Downloader and it worked like a charm. Took me 6 hours to download the 26GB file and install it.

"Victory" - You guys might think. But then, my problem starts.

Because "why not", I decided that I needed to see the game on my Library, at Galaxy, as installed. So I lurked a bit and found an option to sync with the GOG Download folder and I started the process. Some seconds later, Galaxy started downloading the whole 26GB again (at 0.1MB/s, yey). Naturally, I paused it and started to think to myself "Well... wtf just happened here?" - So i went to check the game folder and what I found almost made me cry: Nothing.

Galaxy decided to wipe clean the whole folder, including the extras.

Well, my luck I guess... - Time to download the whole 28GB again, this time staying as far from Galaxy as I can.

It did the same to me. Galaxy asked to update, I said yes and when it finished and opened back up it started Downloaiding W3 again. I thought maybe it had reset my directory settings after the update but they were still correct so I went to check the downloads folder and the install folder, both were empty.

Well, that's an unfortunate story. Please remember that Galaxy is still beta and I wouldn't deal with it in a "why not" manner. In its current state it has some unpredictable behaviour. I'm trying to warn everyone who encountered some trouble with Galaxy that it re-downloads stuff. It does for extras and from your experience now we know it does with installers too. Use installers as a backup means, don't let Galaxy interfere with them, especially with important ones such as TW3.

What seems strange is that Galaxy started synchronisation automatically. Didn't you tell Galaxy to download the installer from "Download Extras" section on the game page?

you can try file recovery software if you haven't used the PC a lot since then, with a little luck you'll be able to recover almost all the files. the ones you have trouble with you can always grab off a torrent or something

The ones he has trouble with he can easily get from GOG site. And if he doesn't have download quota it's much easier just to re-download everything than dealing with recovery software. If downloading bulky stuff is an issue, then you may be right.

and this is why forever I will ONLY go manual downloads, no auto anything, no preload. I can't afford a 28 gig download.
Galaxy is still in beta but some can't afford the bandwidth for such bugs.

The GOG downloader does a great job and I shall forever use that and if it is not avail eventually, well I will just have to use my own download manager which is a problem. But I can see they can't maintain two. Both Galaxy and GOG downloader.

Youthink you have poblemswih Galaxy! I have low broadband speed (like most of the wolsd!) and dcided o install th indivisualbins frommy library shelve. While the first bin dowbnloaded fine, the others have stop at 2-3gb!

If I'm not mistaken they've stopped or planned to stop Downloader support. It will be there, but no new updates.
And please don't forget Galaxy is beta, buggy annoying beta, so I fully understand your concern. But maybe you can come back when it's stable and does its job like Downloader does now?

Absolutely yes. I know GOGdownloader will stop getting updated but this is my preferred method. I totally agree, yes Beta will have it's issues but at present I am staying with the website and GOGdownloader and then I guess my own download manager. I prefer to do things manually. GOG is all about choice as they say :)

I'm just wondering if I did this right. I clicked my account. Clicked on the Witcher 3. Then more. Then Gog download links. And then I clicked Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The - Windows - installer. It opens up in the GOG download as 21.95 but why do other people saying 26 gigs?

I tried doing the 7 part manual download but they kept saying error every time it finished.

My "why not" way of thinking took the best of me on this. So yeah, I had the awesome idea to create a folder called lib inside Galaxy's folder.

After putting some thought on that, I actually got what happened there... So it's kinda clear that I messed up.

Anyhow, I downloaded the game again through GOG Downloader and, this time, I set the destination folder on another place. So, now, I'm just waiting for the launch date.

Btw, if I decide to sync again I believe the same thing will not happen again, now that the game is in another place. Am I right?

21.95 GB - for installer, 24.5 GB (not 26, at least in NTFS file ssytem) - for uncompressed ready-to-play game folder.

Saying "manual download" do you mean via browser? Then it maybe something weird/wrong with it. Stick to GOG Downloader for now and you should be fine.
Do you mean Galaxy will verify files like Downloader does before downloading and not blindly overwrite them?