Sync problems

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September 12, 2008 - 10:53am

PollieXmas

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Sync problems

Hi Steve/anyone

I use Portable FreeCommander to keep my backup in sync with my portable drive but then saw that Toucan allows you to save jobs which FreeCommander does not, which should make "backups" much easier.

I have no rules, just simply asking Toucan to mirror (update) x:\Projects with y:\Projects with all "other" options selected.

When I previewed it it showed all my target folders as red which means it will be excluded even though I do not have any rules. Expanding the target shows all files as green. I was only expecting 1 or 2 files to need updating.

Anyway, I told Toucan to go ahead thinking it needs to perform a first full copy to get it's own "log/db" up to date.

The mirror (update) took forever so I let it finish and only the next day did I perform the same job to test to see if it now recognises only the changed files.

Running the preview shows the exact same results, i.e. all folders in red and all files after expanding green, when Portable FreeCommander only show the single file I was working on that needed updating?

My source is a USB HDD (XP Pro SP3) and my Target is a NAS (LinkStation) (linux file system).

I'm not sure why Toucan thinks it needs to update everything despite the files having the exact same timestamp.

Am I not using it correctly or is this a bug?

Thanks
Paul

September 12, 2008 - 11:29am

Steve Lamerton

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Hmm, this

doesn't sound right at all. I have just had a quick look at this, the mirror modes do seem to be rather confused, I shall take a deeper look at what is going on and get back to you as soon as I can. One point to note though is that the two modes did function correctly for me, it looks like it might just be the previews for the mirror modes which are not quite right at the moment.

Thanks for the report

September 29, 2008 - 6:47am

(Reply to #2) #3

rowandmf

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Same here

G'day Steve,

I have run into the same problem. Folders are shown in red and files are shown in green. I have done a number of tests involving a single folder and syncing it between my computer and my external hard drive and found that it does not matter whether I have the option ticked for Retain Timestamps. I am attempting to do a Mirror Update.

An additional problem I have found is that when I do the Mirror Update my destination folder then does not display the contents of the folder. They are still there as attested by the Folder Size, but I cannot see them, and therefore cannot open them. Once again I have not found a way to circumvent this problem.

Your help in these matters would be greatly appreciated.

Rowan

October 4, 2008 - 5:48am

(Reply to #3) #4

Steve Lamerton

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when retain timestamps is ticked the destination files do not have the same timestamps as the source files?

As for the second point are you trying to look at them in Explorer or in Toucan?

October 9, 2008 - 1:29am

(Reply to #4) #5

Oskar Kim

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The Same

First of all thanks for the Toucan. I have the same problem, but with the "update" option, it is exactly the same - folders are red and all the files are green and it is updating not only changed files it is updating all of them and it takes realy long time. The "update" option works as "copy". Timestamps of the destination files are the same as for the source files after updating. Looked at them in explorer.

October 9, 2008 - 12:19pm

(Reply to #5) #6

Steve Lamerton

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Could

you try the pre-release here please, it should fix this.

October 22, 2008 - 7:40am

(Reply to #6) #7

broekema

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Tried prerelease and failed

Hi Steve and others,

I had the same problem. While Toucan took a few seconds to find some 20 changes (in 25.000+ files), it took 3 days+ and had not made all the changes. Using it over a slow network connection makes things worse, so I'd better disconnect the central drive, connect it as local, delete all old files and copy all - a lot faster.

So, I tried the new prerelease 3 and made notes:

First I used Toucan to COPY a (1) file over an existing one. That worked. Then, using the same file and map structure:

1. MIRROR update with time stamp, attribs and read-only ticked
2. test run reports: 'green' (overwrite)
3. run reports: time stamp on file and map changed (but I could see no difference)
4. total time 2 minutes

1. MIRROR update with time stamp, attribs OFF (r/o ticked)
2. test run reports: 'black'(no change)
3. run reports: no change
4. total time 2 minutes (!)

Two minutes for 'no change', multiplied by 25K files = 35 days...

Next I tried this with a map with 48 files (of which 27 were new; total size 500MB+)

1. MIRROR update with time stamp, attribs OFF (r/o ticked)
2. test run reports: existing files 'green' and new ones 'blue'
3. run reports: copied 27 new files
4. total time 1H 30mins
5. copied files are stamped HSR (hidden, system, r/o) (?) and A (archive)

I also found that sometimes you need to close Toucan and open it again to get the correct file attrib readings (this might be due to WinXP Explorer and a cache). In general I am not sure that the colours match the actions, and it is not clear to me why leaving files alone (green seems to do that) would take more than a minute to complete. On a slow system this is more obvious, such as my network

Anyway, if you feel like solving it, I wish you good luck and I really hope this can be fixed because besides that, I really like Toucan due to its simplicity of use and very small size. Compliments!

Jan Willem
(former programme manager open standards and open source software (OSOSS) for the Dutch Government)

Regards,
Jan Willem

October 22, 2008 - 12:22pm

(Reply to #7) #8

Steve Lamerton

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Thankyou

for the post! Details like this make it much easier to actually track down what is causing the issue and I shall definitely look into this as soon as I can, expect a longer post then

Thanks again

October 31, 2008 - 6:17am

(Reply to #8) #9

Steve Lamerton

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am putting out a release of 2.0.2 today which should greatly improve things, I just ran my home backup script that deals with 40GB of files (~15,000) of which about 500 were updated and the whole script took 15 minutes, which seems to be a vast improvement

November 2, 2008 - 10:33am

(Reply to #9) #10

broekema

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2.0.2 R4

Just tried it out on some directories ('maps' for those new to computers). It seems to work OK, copies new ones, does not change existing ones, changes time stamps on directories.

However, some files appear 'green' (=newer) while they are not. Time stamps are the same. They are not updated according to the log file (which is good). Even after an update run, they appear green. It looks as though the green files are limited to subdirectories and those in the root stay black. So it looks to be only an artefact of the colour, nothing more.

I will try it out now on the full set (25.000+ files, 100+ GB). See what happens

Jan Willem

Oh yeah, sometimes you need to update the views in Toucan by forcing it to close and open again (or do a testrun). So sometimes you think you see an error while there is none.

Regards,
Jan Willem

November 3, 2008 - 5:25pm

(Reply to #10) #11

broekema

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2.0.2 R4 test and update runs

The present run was not finished after 24 hours, so I stopped that one. I figured that the error might occur in the SUBdirectories, with the files marked green. So I set up a test. For every test I used Mirror/Update with Time, Attribs and R/O marked. Here is an elaborate decription:

Step 1 on drive
- created directory A\ - 6 files, 130MB
- created directory B\ - 1 file, 20MB
-created directory B\C\ - 5 files, 110MB

Step 2 on drive Y:
- used Toucan to recreate A on drive Y:
- used Toucan to recreate B + B\C on drive Y:
- time: ~7 mins

Step 3
- testrun on A\
-- 3 seconds
-- all files in dir A "black" (=same)

- Mirror/Update on A\
-- time stamps directory
-- 10 seconds

Step 4
- testrun on B\:
-- took a second
-- marks all files in dir B "black" (=same), in subdir C "green" (=newer)

- Mirror/Update on B\
-- one minute
-- no files copied (no network activity)
+++ conclusion seems to be that the system works OK +++

A run on 5.000 files (15GB) took two hours. Considering that a TEST run takes only a second or two, one might wonder what the system is doing in the meantime during an Update run. Only a few files (

Regards,
Jan Willem

November 5, 2008 - 3:17pm

(Reply to #11) #12

broekema

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Third test run 2.0.2 R4

Just finished a third test run on 6GB (700 files in 25 SUBdirectories):

Aan het Starten... (=starting)
Tijd:12:23:36
Tijd:20:26:25
Klaar (=finished)

So, it took precisely 8 hours to do nothing. Doing nothing was correct, in fact. In a 4th run it took 15 minutes to complete...???

Additionally Toucan states:

Verwijderd (=removed) \\Centrale_disk\fotos\2003\Sandra\Thumbs.db
21:06:20: Error: Failed to open '\\Centrale_disk\fotos\2003\Sandra\Thumbs.db' for reading (error 2: het systeem kan het opgegeven bestand niet vinden.)
21:06:20: Error: Failed to retrieve file times for '\\Centrale_disk\fotos\2003\Sandra\Thumbs.db' (error 2: het systeem kan het opgegeven bestand niet vinden.)
21:06:20: Error: Failed to open 'K:\Fotos\2003\Sandra\Thumbs.db' for writing (error 2: het systeem kan het opgegeven bestand niet vinden.)
21:06:20: Error: Failed to modify file times for 'K:\Fotos\2003\Sandra\Thumbs.db' (error 2: het systeem kan het opgegeven bestand niet vinden.)

It kills an old file and afterwards still tries to update the directory. That seems a waste of time (smile).

Jan Willem

(remember, my network is slow. But Toucan uses only 7% of the network capacity. And doing a test run is very fast).

Regards,
Jan Willem

November 5, 2008 - 3:23pm

(Reply to #12) #13

Steve Lamerton

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Could

you drop me an email please, you can get it from my profile page, I would love to try a few different builds with you on your sets of files

November 7, 2008 - 5:02am

(Reply to #13) #14

broekema

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Roger

will do

Regards,
Jan Willem

November 5, 2008 - 2:58pm

(Reply to #14) #15

Steve Lamerton

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Not

a binary compare, but if it detects that there is a file which is older (i.e. needs updating) it does do a checksum on it to see if it is the same, I think I will make this optional in the release after next as it does help stop timestamp mistakes, but it is slower.

And thanks again, I shall read the post in most detail as soon as I can.

October 31, 2008 - 7:31am

(Reply to #15) #16

horusofoz

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Thanks broekema

I really like this app but do not have the know how to contribute to its improvement. Thank you for your feedback which from Steve's reactions sounds like it was really helpful.

I hope you come back and continue to give your valued feedback.

PortableApps.com Advocate

November 5, 2008 - 8:53pm

#17

horusofoz

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Synch Inaccuracy

Hi Steve

This isn't very specific but I found doing a syncg of about 40gb of data most of it was all good. unfortunately I found one of the albums from my music collection which comprises about 8 gb did not transfer. It copied the artist folder and all the album folders but one of the folders was empty Anyway just a note. Thanks for Toucan

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