The pages-meta-history.xml.bz2 is showing 115.4GB written (in progress) at: http://download.wikipedia.org/enwiki/20100130/
The older pages-meta-history.xml.bz2 from http://download.wikipedia.org/enwiki/20091128/ shows 255.1GB written (failed build)
So once the 20100130 current pages-meta-history.xml.bz2 dump is finished writing, will it be over 255GB as it is newer than the older copy and contains more info?
Correct.
Also these big files aren't weblinked for download lately I noticed. I think they should be as they contain the full wikipedia history/discussion pages which have humongous amounts of useful information that should be available for easy distribution. What is the reason they aren't
weblinked, the bandwidth costs?
Do you mean that the failed runs aren't web linked? If so then I'd rather not point people to corrupted files.
--tomasz