HBS3 Folder Pairs invalid at random

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gr1msheeper
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HBS3 Folder Pairs invalid at random

Post by gr1msheeper »

Hi all,

im having a nightmare with my TS-669 Pro. Currently running FW 4.3.4.1976

We have around 3TB of data. 1.7TB to one USB disk and 1.3Tb to another. The USB disks are all 2TB. We have 14 USB disks to use for the week. 2 USB disk are connected at any one time ready for the backup.

We were using HBS2 with 2 jobs running daily to 2 separate disks. There were 2 seperate jobs for each day of the week because HBS2 would not allow us to pick the one day a week to not back up (Sunday). The jobs were set to eject daily except on a saturday where they did not eject, meaning Sundays jobs ran on the same disks.

This was messy, and there were way too many jobs for my liking.

Fast forward to me deciding to upgrade to HBS3. This looked great. I could make one job, choose a "weekly" job and untick Sundays as this wasnt actually needed. I was also able to create folder pairs pointing at 2 disks within one job... great i thought. I have got 14 jobs down to 1. Or so i thought until it didnt actually work.

This new HBS3 job's folder pairs to USB disk 1 worked great. The folder pairs to disk 2 in this same job were being checked, then ignored. Nothing was being transferred at all and no errors were being flagged. We just received a "backup completed OK" Email notification.
When i realised this was just not going to work and was likely a bug, i seperated the jobs into two, one doing the pairs for disk 1 and one doing the pairs for disk 2. It then transpires that if i schedule these jobs in HBS3 you are unable to set it to eject the disks?!?
I decided another workaround for this was to create the jobs so that the end of job 1 triggered the start of job 2. When you set it this way you are able to get job 2 to eject the disk. I then decided the only way to make disk 1 eject as well was to create a small dummy job first which copies 1 file (to disk one), doesnt eject, then this triggers job 2 (to disk 1), then job 3 (to disk 2).

What a nightmare. This however does work...........mostly.

Now for my current problem. Completely at random i get
"[Hybrid Backup Sync] Failed to complete Sync job: "xxxxxx". Folder pairs are invalid or inaccessible. Error code: -50"

This is the last disk (disk 2) and job 3 if you will. Last in the queue of jobs.

If i log on to the NAS, the disk is still connected, if i run it again manually, same error. If i check the folder pairs, double check where they are set to go (its only ONE FOLDER!!) they seem valid. Reconfirm the folder pair and save, then try again and it works?!

It seems completely random whether it likes the folder pair or not, despite having done a previous backup to this disk in the same way the week before. One thing i did notice was that it was very picky about the upper/lower case naming of folders. So i made sure this was OK.

Sorry for the epic post but hopefully it all makes sense!

Nick
gr1msheeper
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Re: HBS3 Folder Pairs invalid at random

Post by gr1msheeper »

Nobody able to shed any light on this then?

What i have resorted to now is to create 2 dummy jobs to copy a single text file to the route of the disk at 2 seperate times. This means i am able to 'follow' the job with another using the trigger.

I still have 2 backup jobs going to 2 seperate disks as required, with a bit of trickery.

3am Scheduled: Job 1 copies single file to route of disk 1 (doesnt eject drive as not able to anyway)
Tiggered job : Job 2 does my normal daily backup to the correct folder pairs on disk 1 (drive is then ejected as this is selected)

4am Scheduled: Job 3 copies single file to route of disk 2 (doesnt eject drive as not able to anyway)
Tiggered job : Job 4 does my normal daily backup to the correct folder pairs on disk 2 (drive is then ejected as this is selected)
FSC830
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Re: HBS3 Folder Pairs invalid at random

Post by FSC830 »

You can download a detailed job log as .csv, this helped me some time ago to investigate deeper.
In my case I found a subfolder created by an app which includes an invalid character.
The simple "Folder pairs invalid" message is mess as indicator.

Regards
gr1msheeper
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Re: HBS3 Folder Pairs invalid at random

Post by gr1msheeper »

@FSC380 - thanks for the advice. I checked that and it gives no additional information than what you get when the job fails normally.

However, i can see that you can dig in to the report under the SYSTEM\ folders relating to your backup jobs. This gives you more information however only shows todays data (which didnt fail)

I will have to wait for a failure again to then dig into this further!
gr1msheeper
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Re: HBS3 Folder Pairs invalid at random

Post by gr1msheeper »

So my work around for this is to create 2 'dummy' jobs which transfer a single file.

1. Dummy job 1 - transfer single file to disk 1. (no eject)
2. Backup 1 to disk 1 - scheduled to start AFTER Dummy job 1 [THEN EJECTS]
3. Dummy job 2 - transfer single file to disk 2. (no eject)
4. Backup 2 to disk 2 - scheduled to start AFTER Dummy job 2 [THEN EJECTS]

So the only way to get your jobs to eject is to schedule them to run after another job.

The new problem I have is that the second dummy job (and subsequent backup 2) fail sporadically. The fix is to go to the dummy job 2, check the folder pairs and RESELECT the destination folder pair and click save. ie. changing NOTHING.
Back out and confirm/check/save the Backup 2 destination folder pair and re-run.

They then work OK. Nothing changes... its like some check happens before the first disk is fully 'released' and then it fails
gr1msheeper
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Re: HBS3 Folder Pairs invalid at random

Post by gr1msheeper »

Still failing at random.

Doesnt matter which day it is, some days it will sync both jobs to their respective disks, the next day it will fail on the second pair (which is the only remaining disk still connected).

If i log in and re-check the source/destination folder pairs and click save again it works fine!

Strangely we do have certain times (Mondays backup) which ALWAYS fails this way. No idea why that day is special.
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OneCD
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Re: HBS3 Folder Pairs invalid at random

Post by OneCD »

gr1msheeper wrote: Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:57 pm Strangely we do have certain times (Mondays backup) which ALWAYS fails this way. No idea why that day is special.
It's the first day of the week (well, depending on your local calendar), and nobody likes working the first day of the week. :P

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