Sync Pro Randomly Deleting Files

[iampariah]

Sync Pro is randomly deleting files from synced machines.

Machines and BTSync Versions:

1. Mac OS 10.5.11 with BitTorrent Sync 2.3.7 (2.3.7) set to Sync All
2. Mac OS 10.5.11 with BitTorrent Sync 2.3.7 (2.3.7) set to Selective Sync
3. Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 x64 with BitTorrent Sync 2.3.7 (451) set to Sync All

All three systems are on the same network. The systems are each sometimes offline or paused.

A few hundred files are just randomly deleted sometimes. Fortunately we were smart enough to get Hazel monitoring BTSync's deletions and alerting us to them.

Please help fix the random deletions.

[Helen]

Hi,

each of the cases is specific and has some peculiarities , so please give details on what is being done with the files right before they get deleted, when you notice deletion, which of the peer initiates it, what are the files, how they are being edited, if Sync on all of the peers is ON when you edit the files, etc. These and other details are pretty important when analyzing the case. 

Also, please send the logs from all peers to support, instruction is here. Thank you. 

Also, you can restore the files from .sync/Archive. 

[iampariah]

Hi, Helen.

I can't be that specific. All three systems were syncing, unmonitored, and suddenly I notice a Hazel alert that there are new files in the folder's .sync/Archive folder. The 42,168 files deleted (this time) had not been modified in years; this particular folder is an asset library from which images, fonts, etc. are linked and accessed, occasionally added to, but rarely edited or modified.

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Also, please send the logs from all peers to support, instruction is here. Thank you.

Sent.

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Also, you can restore the files from .sync/Archive. 

 

Yes. We're restoring these and hoping they don't spontaneously get deleted again. As you might expect, when 42k files are deleted from an in-use asset library, all work halts until those files are restored, which takes hours using Mac's SyncTwoFolders.

[Devonavar]

Did you ever resolve this?

I lost 150,000 files in an untouched directory last night.

It's the second time it's happened this month.  I lost 45K files at the beginning of January.

In both cases, I was able to restore from the Archive / other backups, but Resilio shouldn't silently delete entire directories with no notice, especially when those deletions can propagate.

If I didn't get notifications about mass deletions, I'd be really pissed right now.

I've loved this program since beta, but my confidence is really shaken here.  I rely on Resilio to duplicate and back up my business files.  I can't keep using it if this happens.

 

[iampariah]

14 minutes ago, Devonavar said:

Did you ever resolve this?

Nope. As you can see above, Sync Support asked me for more details, then never responded when I provided them.

Sync randomly deleted files again after that, so I learned two things from the experience:

1. It wasn't a fluke.

2. Sync Support doesn't support their customers.

We had to drop Sync Pro and go with a much clunkier system involving Dropbox and system-to-system synch desktop apps. The system is no where near as elegant as Sync Pro, but 6 months later, we've yet to have files suddenly disappear.

[Helen]

@iampariah,

Support does respond 100% reports it receives. And your report was replied (actually two of them), check your DM. We never heard back though and never got any debug logs - only a few journal files. So we would appreciate it if no false misleading statements were made, thank you. 

@Devonavar,

Yes, please collect the debug logs from all affected peers and send them to Support. 
If there are too many affected, send the logs from the one where files were moved to archive - support will figure out who initially deleted the files. Or you can check History - see line "Peername deleted file/foldername" and send the logs from that peer as well. Thank you. 

[Devonavar]

The issue happened again last night.  I've traced the problem to a failing drive controller on one system.  When the controller drops out, a drive disconnects and causes files on the missing drive to be deleted from other connected peers.  I've spent a few hours restoring the files tonight.

With respect, I'm not willing to collect debugging logs for an issue that is causing file deletions.  I've salvaged the regular logs from both machines and I'll submit them.

I'm posting my support ticket here.  This issue is serious, and needs to be publicly searchable until it is fixed.

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I've been having drive controller issues on one of my machines, causing a drive that has multiple shares on it to suddenly disappear. A reboot fixes things temporarily, but this sudden disappearance causes serious issues for the other systems on the share.

When it happens, the files on the system with the failing controller are fine, but some random files and directories on all the other systems get silently deleted (i.e. moved to the archive folder). This has happened three times, and I've lost 200+ GB of files and 20,000+ files — in one case most of an entire share.

I've been able to manually recover the files from the Archive folder and from backups.

I would not even have noticed the missing files had my backup software not notified me that data was missing. And, recovering from a failure is a manual, imprecise process because once files are moved to the Archive, I have no way of knowing which files have to be restored, and which files should remain in the Archive. In addition, files that are frequently modified get restored with modified file names (i.e. ".x" is appended to the file name before the extension), which means all revisions get restored and have to be manually tracked down. Because the most recent version has the *highest* number appended to the file name, the version with the "real" file name is the *oldest* file available.

With 20K+ files to restore, going through and manually making sure things are ok is no joke.

This behaviour from Resilio is unacceptable: Resilio should not silently delete files because it presumes files that have become inaccessible are deleted.

With respect, I am unable to provide logs for this issue, as I do not wish to trust the integrity of my file archives to do bug testing.

I would like to be notified when this issue has been patched, as I am unwilling to continue using Resilio until this is fixed.

 

[Helen]

We've worked  that case through with Devonavar and found out that after disk failures sole entries there change their system's ID. Sync considers that as rename, and processes deletion of "older file/folder name". 
We will consider a security check or a way to distinguish a disk failure from a real renaming. 

[Mitchy]

I'm having a similar issue. I've just lost very important audio files and they haven't been added to the Archive folder. I'm only syncing between 2 computers. Seems to happen when it tries to sync a file that is in use. Is there any way around this apart from pausing syncing?

[Gane O'dwyer]

@Mitchy Simple unlock file and it will be get synced to the remote peers. Also that article would help you to avoid such situation in the future. 

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Please note that the archive of any folder on THIS device receives an old version of a file only if it has been modified by ANOTHER peer. In other words, if a remote peer changes a file, its previous version will be placed in the archive on your device, however, should you change a file, its older version will appear in the archives of other peers. The files which you delete on the local device, can usually be recovered from the Trash or Recycling bin.