Hi, I am trying to use GDCdownload (package TCGAbiolinks) but I am having an error all the time when I try to download my data. I do the query and when I try to download it starts downloading for a while and then stops with a error message. I have tried to do it with other query (even from Bioconductor webpage) and I obtain the same message.

The code is obtained from the paper titled "TCGA Workflow: Analyze cancer genomics and epigenomics data using Bioconductor packages" (Silva).

I paste my code and the messages that I am obtaining:

> query.met.gbm=GDCquery(project="TCGA-GBM", legacy=TRUE, data.category="DNA methylation", platform="Illumina Human Methylation 450", barcode=c("TCGA-76-4926-01B-01D-1481-05", "TCGA-28-5211-01C-11D-1844-05"))
--------------------------------------
o GDCquery: Searching in GDC database
--------------------------------------
Genome of reference: hg19
--------------------------------------------
oo Accessing GDC. This might take a while...
--------------------------------------------
[1] "https://api.gdc.cancer.gov/legacy/files/?pretty=true&expand=cases.samples.portions.analytes.aliquots,cases.project,center,analysis,cases.samples&size=988&filters=%7B%22op%22:%22and%22,%22content%22:[%7B%22op%22:%22in%22,%22content%22:%7B%22field%22:%22cases.project.project_id%22,%22value%22:[%22TCGA-GBM%22]%7D%7D,%7B%22op%22:%22in%22,%22content%22:%7B%22field%22:%22files.data_category%22,%22value%22:[%22DNA%20methylation%22]%7D%7D,%7B%22op%22:%22in%22,%22content%22:%7B%22field%22:%22files.platform%22,%22value%22:[%22Illumina%20Human%20Methylation%20450%22]%7D%7D]%7D&format=JSON"
ooo Project: TCGA-GBM
--------------------
oo Filtering results
--------------------
ooo By platform
ooo By barcode
----------------
oo Checking data
----------------
ooo Check if there are duplicated cases
ooo Check if there results for the query
-------------------
o Preparing output
-------------------
> GDCdownload(query.met.gbm)
Downloading data for project TCGA-GBM
GDCdownload will download 2 files. A total of 42.603084 MB
Downloading as: Tue_Dec_18_11_13_35_2018.tar.gz
Downloading: 20 MB     <simpleWarning in file.create(to[okay]): cannot create file 'GDCdata/TCGA-GBM/legacy/DNA_methylation/Methylation_beta_value/0faddb5f-fe60-4269-90cd-736048a5b061/jhu-usc.edu_GBM.HumanMethylation450.6.lvl-3.TCGA-76-4926-01B-01D-1481-05.txt', reason 'No such file or directory'>
<simpleWarning in file.create(to[okay]): cannot create file 'GDCdata/TCGA-GBM/legacy/DNA_methylation/Methylation_beta_value/abb0c4c1-9249-4582-8fa3-34c0a5e3b8e6/jhu-usc.edu_GBM.HumanMethylation450.8.lvl-3.TCGA-28-5211-01C-11D-1844-05.txt', reason 'No such file or directory'>


> sessionInfo()
R version 3.5.1 (2018-07-02)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows >= 8 x64 (build 9200)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=Spanish_Spain.1252  LC_CTYPE=Spanish_Spain.1252    LC_MONETARY=Spanish_Spain.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C                   LC_TIME=Spanish_Spain.1252    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] TCGAbiolinks_2.10.0

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
  [1] colorspace_1.3-2            selectr_0.4-1               rjson_0.2.20                hwriter_1.3.2               circlize_0.4.5              XVector_0.22.0             
  [7] GenomicRanges_1.34.0        GlobalOptions_0.1.0         ggpubr_0.2                  matlab_1.0.2                ggrepel_0.8.0               bit64_0.9-7                
 [13] AnnotationDbi_1.44.0        xml2_1.2.0                  codetools_0.2-15            splines_3.5.1               R.methodsS3_1.7.1           doParallel_1.0.14          
 [19] DESeq_1.34.0                geneplotter_1.60.0          knitr_1.21                  jsonlite_1.6                Rsamtools_1.34.0            km.ci_0.5-2                
 [25] broom_0.5.1                 annotate_1.60.0             cluster_2.0.7-1             R.oo_1.22.0                 readr_1.3.0                 compiler_3.5.1             
 [31] httr_1.4.0                  backports_1.1.3             assertthat_0.2.0            Matrix_1.2-14               lazyeval_0.2.1              limma_3.38.3               
 [37] prettyunits_1.0.2           tools_3.5.1                 bindrcpp_0.2.2              gtable_0.2.0                glue_1.3.0                  GenomeInfoDbData_1.2.0     
 [43] dplyr_0.7.8                 ggthemes_4.0.1              ShortRead_1.40.0            Rcpp_1.0.0                  Biobase_2.42.0              Biostrings_2.50.1          
 [49] nlme_3.1-137                rtracklayer_1.42.1          iterators_1.0.10            xfun_0.4                    stringr_1.3.1               rvest_0.3.2                
 [55] XML_3.98-1.16               edgeR_3.24.2                zoo_1.8-4                   zlibbioc_1.28.0             scales_1.0.0                aroma.light_3.12.0         
 [61] hms_0.4.2                   parallel_3.5.1              SummarizedExperiment_1.12.0 RColorBrewer_1.1-2          curl_3.2                    ComplexHeatmap_1.20.0      
 [67] memoise_1.1.0               gridExtra_2.3               KMsurv_0.1-5                ggplot2_3.1.0               downloader_0.4              biomaRt_2.38.0             
 [73] latticeExtra_0.6-28         stringi_1.2.4               RSQLite_2.1.1               genefilter_1.64.0           S4Vectors_0.20.1            foreach_1.4.4              
 [79] GenomicFeatures_1.34.1      BiocGenerics_0.28.0         BiocParallel_1.16.2         shape_1.4.4                 GenomeInfoDb_1.18.1         rlang_0.3.0.1              
 [85] pkgconfig_2.0.2             matrixStats_0.54.0          bitops_1.0-6                lattice_0.20-35             purrr_0.2.5                 bindr_0.1.1                
 [91] cmprsk_2.2-7                GenomicAlignments_1.18.0    bit_1.1-14                  tidyselect_0.2.5            plyr_1.8.4                  magrittr_1.5               
 [97] R6_2.3.0                    IRanges_2.16.0              generics_0.0.2              DelayedArray_0.8.0          DBI_1.0.0                   mgcv_1.8-24                
[103] pillar_1.3.1                survival_2.42-3             RCurl_1.95-4.11             tibble_1.4.2                EDASeq_2.16.0               crayon_1.3.4               
[109] survMisc_0.5.5              GetoptLong_0.1.7            progress_1.2.0              locfit_1.5-9.1              grid_3.5.1                  sva_3.30.0                 
[115] data.table_1.11.8           blob_1.1.1                  ConsensusClusterPlus_1.46.0 digest_0.6.18               xtable_1.8-3                tidyr_0.8.2                
[121] R.utils_2.7.0               stats4_3.5.1                munsell_0.5.0               survminer_0.4.3  

So the critical part of the error (which is pretty self explanatory) is this part:

cannot create file '<blah blah blah>' reason 'No such file or directory'

Which means, in this instance, that whatever directory you are specifying doesn't exist, so R can't create a file there. Ideally there would be some error checking that does something like

if(!file.exists(dirname(<some random path name>))) file.create(dirname(<some random path name>))

to ensure that whatever random path you are specifying actually exists first. But failing that, you do get a pretty clear error, IMO.

In the Windows API (with some exceptions discussed in the following paragraphs), the maximum length for a path is MAX_PATH, which is defined as 260 character (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/fileio/naming-a-file#maximum-path-length-limitation)

In windows 10 you can enable long path: https://www.howtogeek.com/266621/how-to-make-windows-10-accept-file-paths-over-260-characters/