Rapidshare had recently (and kindly) removed many of it’s free user limitations (the 1 file/day/IP policy & the infamous Cats CAPTCHA comes to mind). However, there are still some disadvantages for being a free user. One of which is the 40 seconds delay (countdown) that appears before you can start your download.
I have come up with a way to save some time and skip this delay when downloading multiple files from Rapidshare. You don’t need any special tools or software to accomplish this, and the method is very easy to master.
The idea is simple: we’ll let the countdown for one file run on one tab (or window) and at the same time we’ll download a different file in another tab. We can’t download two files at a time, but we can make rapidshare send a file and do the countdown simultaneously!
This is how to do it:
1) Open each of your Rapidshare download links in a new tab (you should see screen A with two speed gauges – don’t click the ‘Free user’ button yet!)
2) Now, (only) on the first and second tabs, click the ‘Free user’ button.
3) Wait 40 seconds (screen B). You should now have two tabs with files ready to download (screen C). All the other tabs should still be in the gauges window (screen A).
4) Start the first download (and close the first tab)
5) When this download is complete, don’t start the next download right away. Instead, go to the next tab (the first one that still shows Window A with the gauges) and click the ‘Free user’ button (to start a new countdown). Don’t wait, proceed to step 6 immediately.
6) Go back to the previous tab (which is ready for download – window C) and start your download.
7) Every time a download is complete, repeat stages 5-7 as needed.
The point is to always have the next file ready for download by the time the current download is finished. If you download n files you can save up to (n-1)*40 seconds using this method, so if you download 50 files from Rapidshare for example, you’ll save almost 33 minutes!
That’s what SHE said!