If you download data from the SRA (Sequence Read Archive) FTP site, we would encourage you to try the SRA Toolkit. This is particularly true if you use the SRA Fuse/FTP site at ftp://ftp-trace.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/sra-instant, which the SRA team will decommission on December 1, 2019.
The SRA Toolkit offers several advantages for downloading SRA data, including greater flexibility in specifying the data you need as well as access to public SRA data in the cloud. If you’re new to the Toolkit, you may want to start with these instructions.
If you have any questions or concerns about downloading SRA data, please contact sra@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. We’d love to hear from you!
People would use the tool if it was not horrible. There is not even an option to download compressed files.