HBS3 backup to Backblaze B2 issue, resolution, notes

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doodles56
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Posts: 20
Joined: Sat Dec 19, 2020 5:43 am

HBS3 backup to Backblaze B2 issue, resolution, notes

Post by doodles56 »

I've been using HBS3 to do nightly backups of the data on my TS-453D to both a local USB HDD docking station and online to Backblaze B2. I set it up a couple of years ago, and the process has been pretty robust for that whole time. Just over a month ago I started to get failures on the job that backs up my music files. The timing of the failures coincided with my adding a lot of new music files to that folder on my NAS. Since my jobs only backup updated files, there had been very little data to upload to Backblaze ever since the original creation of my account there, but now there was a lot more upload activity required. Other existing jobs that covered my non-media data kept on running with no issues - but there had not been a sudden step increase in the data in those folders.
One other recent change that I made to my system was the addition of Pi-Hole running in Container Station. While it is not a very demanding application, it does take up some CPU and memory resources, so this probably was not helping my situation. It's also possible that my ISP account's upload rate may have dropped over the years.

The typical error message I would see in my notifications was
Message: [Hybrid Backup Sync] Failed to complete Backup job: "Backblaze music nightly". Failed to upload metadata. Check your network settings.. Check logs for more information.

The logs in HBS3 didn't really shed any light (to me) on what the cause of the issue was. I had both file compression and QuDeDup turned on originally - I edited the job and turned them both off, but the failures continued.
I saw similar tales of woe from other HBS3-Backblaze users on this forum and on Reddit, but found no reports of how to resolve the issue.

After 4 or 5 days of trying everything I could think of, I eventually stumbled on two changes that fixed the issue for me:
1) Reducing the "Concurrent File Processing Limit" to 3, from the default 5(?) in the backup job settings
2) Reducing the "Multipart Size" value in the backup job creation dialog, from the default 100MB to 16MB. NOTE: that value is not accessible via editing an existing job - you can only see this choice while creating a new backup job. This was not a concern for me, since I had already made the decision to create a new "bucket" in Backblaze to become the repository for my multimedia backups.
I think the second change was the most important factor. It didn't seem like the choices of Multipart Size or Concurrent Files values had any noticeable impact on overall backup time, but I think they do reduce the burden on system RAM and CPU.

Once I made those changes and started the new backup job, it worked great. There were about 8 songs (out of 8,235) that failed uploading for whatever reason, but it was not enough to cause the whole job to fail. I did manually stop and restart the job a few times, and I noticed it would first upload any of the songs that had previously failed (they all succeeded on the second try).
I have also come to the realization that there is no value to compressing my music files, since they are already in a compressed format (.flac for me). I tested compressing a few albums and the file size stayed the same or increased a bit.
Nor do I feel is there a lot of value to enabling QuDeDup, since the Artist/Album folder structure I use would make duplicate entries rare. I believe the same holds true for photos and videos, again being already compressed files.

One other thing I decided to do, to help alleviate any similar issues in the future, is to upgrade the memory on my TS-453D from 4GB to 8GB, to allow more space for the backup and Pi-hole processes to co-exist. A worthwhile $40 investment I think.
Just wanted to share my experience, and hope it may be helpful for anyone else who runs into similar mysterious HBS3 to Backblaze backup failures in the future.
NAS model: QNAP TS-453D
Firmware version: 5.0.1.2376
AlexAbsurd
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Joined: Thu May 04, 2023 3:05 pm

Re: HBS3 backup to Backblaze B2 issue, resolution, notes

Post by AlexAbsurd »

Hi doodles56, thanks a lot for your post. I have just started using Backblaze B2 with HBS 3 on my QNAP TS 231, and my backup job failed immediately with the following message:
[Hybrid Backup Sync] Failed to complete Backup job: "Test backup to Backblaze". Disk error. Check NAS disks.. Check logs for more information.
I also checked the backupengine.log, but it wasn't very helpful, even after an online search.

So I tried what you suggested, and the change that made a difference for me was to reduce "Multipart size" from 100 to 64 MB. I was then able to complete a small backup job of about 1 GB in size. We'll see if larger backup jobs require further tweaking of the backup parameters, but at least you put me on the right track.

Thanks again!
doodles56
Starting out
Posts: 20
Joined: Sat Dec 19, 2020 5:43 am

Re: HBS3 backup to Backblaze B2 issue, resolution, notes

Post by doodles56 »

Hi AlexAbsurd,
I am glad to hear that worked for you! I found that suggestion about multipart size on the Backblaze doc about using HBS3, in the Tips & Tricks at the bottom.

https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/art ... ud-Storage

A few weeks after I posted that, my ISP (Spectrum) called and said they detected my connection was kind of flaky, so they came out and ran a new cable.
The poor connection was probably at least part of my upload problem.

I really like Backblaze. It has been very reliable and quite affordable. I have about 900GB there and it is running $4.41 a month.
My next goal is to get Object Lock set up to have maximum protection in case of ransomware. If that is of interest to you, read up on it before you upload your files, since it seems difficult (maybe not possible) to activate Object Lock on any files already in your bucket.

Best regards,
Doodles56


AlexAbsurd wrote: Thu May 04, 2023 3:39 pm Hi doodles56, thanks a lot for your post. I have just started using Backblaze B2 with HBS 3 on my QNAP TS 231, and my backup job failed immediately with the following message:
[Hybrid Backup Sync] Failed to complete Backup job: "Test backup to Backblaze". Disk error. Check NAS disks.. Check logs for more information.
I also checked the backupengine.log, but it wasn't very helpful, even after an online search.

So I tried what you suggested, and the change that made a difference for me was to reduce "Multipart size" from 100 to 64 MB. I was then able to complete a small backup job of about 1 GB in size. We'll see if larger backup jobs require further tweaking of the backup parameters, but at least you put me on the right track.

Thanks again!
NAS model: QNAP TS-453D
Firmware version: 5.0.1.2376
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