Syncovery Support Forum

I'm a long-time user of Syncovery - since it used to be named Super Flexible File Synchronizer. My needs have changed over the years to the point that all I used it for now is simple exact mirror backups to my on-site NAS. When I buy a new computer, I just take the profiles from the old machine and import them to Syncovery installed on the new machine. No muss, no fuss.

The last time I purchased new machines for myself and the few people who still work with me (getting ready to retire), I had an unfortunate string of faulty machines. Two duds when first purchased, then my machine failed again after just a few months. I use a lot of different software packages, so it takes me a few days to configure a new machine. At the time of the last failure, I was too busy to fully configure the latest machine. Now 8 months later, it seems I forgot to install Syncovery. Fortunately, data corruption wasn't one of the issues I experienced.

I installed Syncovery and imported the old profiles as usual. Because it had been so long, I did the initial sync in attended mode to check for reasonableness. Obviously, there was a lot for that first sync to catch up on. Then I enabled all the profiles and let them sync in real time mode as usual. And that's where the trouble begins.

Over the last few days, I've seen some VERY strange things going on. All deletions are copied to a "delete" folder before being deleted from the NAS backup location. I cleaned out that folder after the initial sync, but now I'm seeing files in there that haven't been deleted. I have files that still exist on my computer and on the NAS backup folder, but also appear in the delete folder. I have a file in the delete folder with the same name as an existing file, but it has a date that is years old, and that old date is correct as to the previous version. But the entire "delete" folder was wiped after the initial sync. How did it re-appear? I'm also noticing that files which were deleted yesterday and appeared in the delete folder yesterday are no longer there today. But today there are new files in the delete folder that I haven't touched since installing Syncovery a few days ago. These all have identical file names, dates, and sizes on my computer, on the NAS in the backup location, and in the delete folder.

It gets even stranger. Yesterday, I noticed that a folder which contains the corpus of my life's work was missing hundreds of files and subfolders on the NAS side. New files, old files dating back 10, 15, 20 years, all randomly missing. Today, most of them seem to have re-appeared. There are too many to verify manually, but I think they are all back.

None of this strange activity is showing up in the Syncovery logs. I've run integrity checks on the SSD in my computer and the two hard drives (mirrored for data integrity and loss prevention) on the NAS. The NAS hard drives are about 18 months old and nowhere near their end of life. The NAS is powered from a (6-month-old) battery backup as is the network, and power glitches are rare around here anyway, so that isn't the problem either.

I haven't yet done any data checking on the other computers around here, but I'm about to do so. All machines are recent vintage upper-end (not cheap) plain Windows 11 machines running common business productivity software. Anti-virus, Windows updates, and software updates are automated as much as the software packages allow.

Thoughts? What is going on here? To say this is distressing would be an understatement.

Hello,
thanks for the interesting report! I will assume that problems are only on the NAS itself, not on your computer. Because a one-way Exact Mirror sync ensures that Syncovery never touches the source side.

Letting Syncovery move deleted files into a "deleted" folder is an optional setting, and it's actually recommended. You can check if you are using it under Files->Deletions in the profile. Look at the checkmark "Move Deleted Files Into A Specified Folder..." and the button "Edit paths...".

You may sometimes see files in the deleted folder which you didn't really delete. These are then duplicates or older versions of files that Syncovery cleaned up.

Finally, I assume you did some reorganizations such as folder moving, renaming, and other such actions, duing the past 8 months. In such cases, especially older versions of Syncovery may need more than one full run to be able to make everything match. So I believe you turned on the real-time and scheduler a bit too early.

What I would do is turn off the scheduler, run every job again in Attended Mode, and repeat it until the Sync Preview is really empty. An empty Sync Preview means that there are no differences and there is nothing to do. In that case, you can rely on all folders files being synced, except for deselected folders and excluded items. Syncovery has masks and filters, as well as a subfolder selection, which may exclude some items.

Especially the detection of moved and renamed folders was improved in Syncovery 11, so that it should be able to make both sides match in just one paths, in the most cases. The latest Syncovery version today is 12.

Of course there might also be conflicts with other sync software. For example, recent Windows versions almost force you to use OneDrive, which can do strange things on its own. But those problems you would see on the PC first rather than the NAS.

Finally, there might be incorrect profile settings. If the profiles came from an older PC, it's not guaranteed that their configuration still matches your current folder layout.

Feel free to send a few log files and maybe screenshots to support@syncovery.com so I can check your settings. A profile's settings are always included at the end of each log file.

To send log files, it's best to have the logs folder in Windows File Explorer rather than view them from within Syncovery. To get there, please click on the File menu in Syncovery and choose the menu item at the bottom: Show Log Folder...

Of course before sending log files to support, you should look inside and check if there is any confidential information that you'd want to remove.

I hope this helps for now, and please let me know if problems remain.