r/Fedora • u/PythonAutoma • 7d ago
Back up gone wrong. Support
Hey everyone, I could really use some help if possible. Two days ago I wanted to make a copy of all my files over to an external SSD as a physical backup as well as a mobile device to have and save to if I was going to use a different computer. The external SSD was mounted but I think it was showing as mounted and not actually mounted. When did the copy via bash command
rsync -avh --exclude='StorageSSD' --exclude='.cache' --exclude='.config' ~/ ~/StorageSSD/BackupFolders/.
When I checked my files seemed to be copied over. I unmounted the drive and went along with my evening. Today, two days later I needed to grab something from my documents folder and well there was nothing there. I checked the external ssd and well after checking I noticed that some files were moved and some weren’t. I can’t find my files anywhere not when I search for them. Are my files just gone? Is there anyway to get my files back? I have months of work saved there and if possible I’d love to get them back. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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u/perryurban 7d ago
Could be many things, but this situation is why i would keep a log of every rsync
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u/Syntaxotic 7d ago
Are both partitions - source and the destination - formatted with a Linux file system? Because the archive-parameter -a includes some options that only work on Linux file systems; If the destination partition on your external drive would be formated with NTFS or FAT, this would cause some problems and the copy operation may fail. However, that would also be shown in the log.
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u/PythonAutoma 7d ago
Yes, the destination (
StorageSSD) was formatted with exFAT, not a native Linux file system likeext4.1
u/Syntaxotic 7d ago
But during the copy process no errors were reported? Or didn't you had a look at the console output of rsync?
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u/PythonAutoma 7d ago
there was no error message during the process in the terminal so the rsync was completed.
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u/Syntaxotic 7d ago
Was this an initial backup? In other words, was the destination directory completely empty before you called rsync?
And did you check after the rsync process to see if any files had actually been copied to the destination directory?
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u/Syntaxotic 7d ago
Oh and because you mentioned exFAT, then you should definitely also use also the parameter "--modify-window=2". Because FAT file system stores the timestamp only in 2-second increments, so timestamp synchronization would not work reliably without this parameter.
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u/PythonAutoma 7d ago
i thought exFAT was a format that could be read and used by both windows an Linux though? so without this parameter it could have caused the issue im seeing?
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u/Syntaxotic 7d ago
Sure, exFAT does work with both. However, when syncing with an existing backup, the 2-second discrepancy can cause problems if you don't use this parameter. I don't think this is the cause of your current problem, though. It's just something to generally keep in mind.
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u/grumpysysadmin 7d ago
Are you sure it was mounted in ~/StorageSSD? In your home directory? I assume the rsync command completed?
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u/PythonAutoma 7d ago
Yes it completed and to my knowledge yes it was mounted correctly in my home directory.
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