When UrBackup is doing a full file backup and fails (for any reason, like computer goes offline), it seems that it never removes the old files (even after using remove_unknown.bat), despite a new full file backup is starting from 0% (and even if it displays “resuming” btw).
For example I have a computer with the following situation:
Full file backup finished: 155.74 GB (according to the “Backup” webpage). Note that it took several times, failure and restart at 0%, to be completed.
Sum of the incremental backup following the full file backup: less than 5MB (according to the “Backup” webpage), for about 60 incremental backups (one every hour), most of them are 0 bytes.
Space used by the computer: 252.15 GB (according to the “Statistics” webpage)
Space used by the computer folder on the server: 301 GB (according to Windows. I guess this may be caused by hard link calculation, so ok to ignore this)
So still, what could explain the huge difference (additional 100 GB, 2/3 more than initial data) between the file backup size and the space used in Statistics ?
UrBackup Server 2.0.36 on Windows 2008 R2 SP1, Server local drive is not compressed and Windows shadow copy not enabled), “Use symlinks during incremental file backups” enabled, 1 full file backup then only incremental backup policy, no image backup.
2016-10-18 12:12:29: ERROR: Client HOSTNAME went offline.
2016-10-18 12:12:29: ERROR: Error getting file metadata. Errorcode: TIMEOUT (2)
2016-10-18 12:12:43: ERROR: Backup failed
2016-10-18 12:12:54: WARNING: Connecting to ClientService of “HOSTNAME” failed: Sending logdata to client failed
2016-10-18 15:43:05: ERROR: Constructing of filelist of “HOSTNAME” failed - TIMEOUT(1)
2016-10-18 15:43:09: ERROR: Backup had an early error. Deleting partial backup.
2016-10-18 15:43:20: WARNING: Connecting to ClientService of “HOSTNAME” failed: Sending logdata to client failed
2016-10-18 16:52:27: WARNING: Restarting shadow copy of C:\ because it was started by this server
2016-10-18 18:15:36: ERROR: Error getting complete file “FILEPATH\FILENAME.EXT” from HOSTNAME. Errorcode: TIMEOUT (2)
2016-10-18 18:15:37: ERROR: Client HOSTNAME went offline.
2016-10-18 18:15:43: ERROR: Error getting file metadata. Errorcode: TIMEOUT (2)
2016-10-18 18:15:44: ERROR: Backup failed
2016-10-18 18:15:55: WARNING: Connecting to ClientService of “HOSTNAME” failed: Sending logdata to client failed
2016-10-18 18:16:05: WARNING: Connecting to ClientService of “HOSTNAME” failed: Sending logdata to client failed
In bold we can see that the server is deleting partial files on failure, but this message is not displayed each time the backup failed. Is it the reason ?
Anyone able to explain how the backup is working in case of failure ? In which cases it clean the files and in which cases it keep them to try to resume later ?
According to the documentation, the files are not deleted:
If the client goes offline during the backup and the backup is incremental the server continues creating hard links to files in the previous backup but does not try to download files again. The files that could not be downloaded are then not saved into the server side file list. If the backup is a full one and the client goes offline the backup process is interrupted and the partial file list is saved, which includes all files downloaded up to this point.