# Download a fraction of data from HuggingFace Datasets

> Source: <https://discuss.huggingface.co/t/download-a-fraction-of-data-from-huggingface-datasets/126236#post_7>
> Published: 2026-10-03 22:33:01+00:00

hey all, I want to download about 15GBs of data from each subsection/language of the [stack dataset](https://huggingface.co/datasets/bigcode/the-stack). Is there any way to do this?

I can download the entire subsection using following code snippet, but i want a fraction of the data(decided by a percentage or number of files).

``` python
from  datasets  import  load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("bigcode/the-stack", data_dir="data/c", split="train")
```

Thanks in advance

 
 
I think it should be possible if you specify the directory name in the **allow_patterns** filter for **snapshot_download**.

I’m not very familiar with it, but it seems that the **datasets** library itself also has functions to extract a part of a dataset.

 
 
yeah, it has data_dir and data_files, but what I was looking for was be able to download 10 GBs or 10 files of data , what the above will do is download the complete sub directory.

 
 
I think this is close, but technically speaking, it’s not the number of files, and you can’t specify the size.

You can use HfApi to get a list of the files in a repo and see their sizes, but that’s almost like doing it manually…

 
 
yes, thats what I did, thanks for the help btw.

 
 
Hello,

Is the method applicable for zipped filestoo?

I have some zippred files aroudn 20 30 GB but I dont want to download them as a whole

Best,

Deniz