If you ever tried downloading files from file-hosting sites like RapidShare, you know how unfriendly that process is.

You click on a link pointing to some RapidShare hosted file, wait around a minute for the timer to complete and then you get a direct link to download the corresponding file. And if you don’t download within the next minute or so, the link expires and you need to repeat the whole cycle in order to download that file.

Things get even more confusing if you are trying to download files during peak hours or need to download multiple files in one go.

For obvious reasons, none of these file hosting sites provide “official” download managers and the ones you already have on your machine (like GetRight, Orbit or FlashGet) aren’t quite compatible.

If you are a frequent user of these file hosting sites, here’s a new open-source app hosted on Microsoft’s CodePlex that might interest you. Called MDownloader, this Windows-only utility will let you download files in the background without you having to wait in the browser for the timer to complete.

You can either copy-paste the file links manually into the downloader window or supply the URL of a web page and the utility will scrap all the possible file links that may be listed on that page. Once the downloads are added to the queue, it will do everything for you in the background - if you exceed the download limit, the utility will wait and re-queue the download.

In addition to RapidShare, you can use this utility as the default download manager for a dozen other file hosting sites including MegaUpload, Uploading.com, DepositFiles and more.