Web HTTrack
Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2026 11:17 am
The Internet is of a highly ephemeral/transitory nature. Many highly valuable hobby reference sites are hosted and maintained by a single person, some of whom are well past middle age. Estate transition of sites may not have been planned. And for music archives, well ... some have faced legal harassment and intimidation despite the music in question having legally passed into public domain. Hobby reference sites can and may just disappear one day.
Web HTTrack is a FOSS (free open source software) utility which (sometimes) allows the caching of an entire web site to a local computer where it can be accessed locally--no Apple options, however. Everything else is OK, including Android. Note that large amounts of local disk space may be required.
https://www.httrack.com
Ethically (unlike AI scrapers), you may wish to get permission from the person who hosts and maintains the website before downloading it in its entirety. You would not be publishing it and it is publicly available anyway. And in the event of unrecoverable disaster, you would be able to provide the hoster with a recovery point.
Unethically .... well that is up to you.
With music archives, for your own protection from legal harrassment, you may wish to use an anonymous VPN proxy, one that keeps no logs. See first paragraph above.
Web HTTrack is a FOSS (free open source software) utility which (sometimes) allows the caching of an entire web site to a local computer where it can be accessed locally--no Apple options, however. Everything else is OK, including Android. Note that large amounts of local disk space may be required.
https://www.httrack.com
Ethically (unlike AI scrapers), you may wish to get permission from the person who hosts and maintains the website before downloading it in its entirety. You would not be publishing it and it is publicly available anyway. And in the event of unrecoverable disaster, you would be able to provide the hoster with a recovery point.
Unethically .... well that is up to you.
With music archives, for your own protection from legal harrassment, you may wish to use an anonymous VPN proxy, one that keeps no logs. See first paragraph above.